The Four What?

So you’re probably wondering what I mean by pillars. A pillar is a vital part of a structure – or, in our case, a person – that provides support and stability. Missing or weak pillars cause it to become unstable and will eventually lead to a collapse.

In every area of ​​life, there are pillars available to help you succeed if you commit to them and work hard to strengthen and balance each one.

Let me give you some examples:

Think back to when you were in school. What did the best students always have in common? They typically sat in the front row of class, spent hours after school in the library, and studied for exams a week in advance.

They didn’t just try to “get by.” Instead, they decided to be the best students that they could be, they were always the hardest workers, and they never took the easy path.

What about the pillars of sport? You must practice and become extremely skilled physically, emotionally, and mentally. If an athlete has great physical abilities but withers under pressure, he will never be good at his sport.

What makes Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan so good? It’s not just your physical talents. Instead, it is the way they handle themselves mentally and emotionally in difficult situations. They have trained for years because they decided to be the best athlete possible, they always worked harder and never took the easy route.

The pillars of weight loss? Anyone who has tried a special diet knows that it won’t work in the long run, as much as all those “diet and fitness experts” want you to believe otherwise. To lose weight permanently you must eat well, do cardiovascular exercise and strength training.

If any of these are missing, it will fail. You can exercise 8 hours a day, but if you consume more calories than you burn, you will not lose weight. Therefore, you must make a decision once and for all that you will get and stay healthy, work hard, and never take the easy way out.

Are you starting to see a pattern here? To be excellent at anything, you must:

o Decide that you want to be cool

o Dedicate yourself to dedicating time and effort

o Never cut corners or look for the easy way out

What does this have to do with parenting?

Parenting takes as much work as anything else, and sometimes more. You have to work as hard as the best golfer or the smartest student would. You can’t expect it to be easy. You must continually learn and take time to strengthen and balance the four pillars of parenting. Only then will you understand what great parenting really is.

So have I hit this on the ground enough? Have I made it clear that being cool takes time and effort? That it won’t be easy?

Let me explain each of The Four Pillars so that you know exactly what to do. All of these are equally important and it is not until you have balanced yourself in all four areas that you will realize your potential because relying too much on one will cause you to collapse.

Pillar 1: prevent the pattern

This Pillar, also known as your “Family of Origin,” includes your family history, the family traditions you want to continue (or don’t want to continue), and most importantly, how your parents raised you.

In all aspects of life, you can only do the things you know how to do. You cannot be expected to do something you have never learned, and this can be very dangerous if your parents were negative, did not love you, or abandoned you. If most of what you were taught was negative, most of what you teach your children will also be negative, unless you make a change.

But don’t be too harsh on your parents because chances are their parents acted the same way to them and so did their parents’ parents and so on. This is the negative parenting pattern that you should keep from continuing. You don’t want your children to have the same negative experiences as you.

Divorce, alcoholism, and different types of abuse are extreme examples of negative patterns that are passed down from generation to generation. Yours may not be that extreme. Instead, perhaps it was a lack of compassion, affection, or love. It may be that your parents always expected too much of you and nothing you did was good enough. Whatever it is, whether it’s hurtful or negative, it needs to stop.

Most of the family problems that I deal with on a daily basis are not problems with children. Instead, parents have unmet needs from their past that they project onto their children, either consciously (they know they are doing it) or unconsciously (they don’t realize they are doing it). So how your parents raised you is something you need to address because once you start to make peace with your past, you can be emotionally available to your children.

Most of the parents I have come across skip this completely. Why? Because these can be difficult and sometimes very painful problems. If your parents hurt you physically or emotionally, if they were divorced when you were young, or if you have different beliefs than theirs, it can be very difficult for you to go back and face that. That is normal, but it can also be very dangerous. Therefore, you must learn to accept your past and stop negative parenting patterns before they harm your children.

Pillar 2: conquer the culture

Times continue to change rapidly and you need to understand what you are dealing with as a parent. There are more distractions, temptations, and influences now than when you were a child and you must be aware of them.

Here are some easy questions for you about the culture your children live in right now to see how “informed” you really are. (See the bottom of this section for the answers.)

1. Who is a normal teenager by day and a pop star by night?

2. What do you do if someone “pokes you”?

3. Who is Troy Bolton?

4. Who is Tom? And are you friends with him?

So how did you do it? Did you get all or most of them right? Hopefully you did because these are questions you should be able to answer if your children are old enough to go to school, have access to a television or a computer. Because I guarantee that even if you don’t know these answers, they do.

Children have many influences on today’s culture. Sex, drugs, and violence are everywhere – on the internet, on television, in movies, and in video games – and they all have an incredible influence on young minds.

Do they allow their children on the Internet unsupervised? When should they be allowed to start watching movies rated PG-13 or R? Which TV channels are okay and which ones need to be monitored or banned? These are some of the issues you need to address.

There will always be a new influence out there, so you need to keep up with the culture in order to be prepared.

Answers:

1. Miley Cyrus / Hannah Montana 2. You’re on Facebook. (What is Facebook? You need more help than you thought.) 3. He is the star of Disney’s High School Musical. 4. Tom is one of the founders of Myspace.com and he currently has 225,916,857 friends online – yes, that’s over 225 million people and counting.

Pillar 3: Teach the tools

This is what you are constantly looking for, something you can use to solve your parenting problems. These tools are important and you need to learn as many as you can to be prepared for whatever situation you may face. But more importantly, you need to learn WHEN and HOW to use these tools correctly because good parenting tools are useless if used incorrectly.

For example, different actions work in different situations. Timeouts may work for a specific child in a specific situation, but not for other children or situations. Removing privileges may work very well for one child, but not for the other. And how long do you take them off? One day? In the week? All of these actions have been shown to work if used correctly.

Therefore, you must learn WHEN to use WHAT to get the best response from your child. You need a lot of parenting tips. You can’t just be a one-trick pony dad. Sometimes you need to know whether to cheat or treat your children. Too? Yes, I thought so, but you get my point.

These tools should focus on three key areas: empowerment, discipline, and punishment. (Discipline and punishment are NOT the same)

Empowerment: tools for raising children who can take care of themselves: physical, spiritual, emotional, mental, sexual, financial, social, and any other word that ends in -ally.

Discipline: tools to reinforce good behaviors, stop bad behaviors, and teach your child to be honest and respectful.

Punishment – This is part of the discipline, but it is an area that can be extremely confusing. Therefore, it is essential to have more details about effective punishment techniques used to stop misbehavior. Pay attention to the word “effective” because many of the punishment techniques you can use can be ineffective and even reinforce bad behavior.

Pillar 4: cultivate character

You have an obligation to your children and to society in general to raise them with good character and values. It is your responsibility to raise them to be positive, happy, and loving. The world is filled with so much anger, hatred and negativity now that this will be difficult, but you must do it. Because, as cliche as it may sound, we have to make the world a better place, one generation at a time.

So how do you do this? You must set a good example and teach your children how to act correctly. Some examples are:

o Teach your boys to respect girls.

o Teach your girls how to value their bodies.

o Volunteer time and money for those less fortunate.

o Grow spiritually or religiously.

Creating a child of character is more important now than ever. However, the good news is that if you lead, they will follow.

Why aren’t you a great father?

“I’d be better, but I don’t have time.”

“I would learn everything I had to do, but I don’t have the money to buy all those books.”

“I would try harder, but my kids don’t listen to me anyway.”

You can make up all the excuses you want, but the only reason you are not the parent you always dreamed of being is that:

You have chosen not to be.

It’s that easy. No matter what the people around you are doing or the situation you find yourself in, you can become a great parent if you want to be. It is completely up to you.

You must commit to building and balancing The Four Pillars of Parenting so that you can grow as a parent. Don’t keep looking for new “breakthrough” ideas because without solid support around you, your new “awesome” tool or technique will never be successful in the long run.

They may not be as stylish or interesting as some of the ideas out there, but they work. You should never feel “lost” as a parent. You should always have a choice and these pillars give it to you.

So are you ready?

It is time for you to make a change, a real and lasting change in your upbringing. You must decide right now that you will never look for an easy way out again and dedicate yourself to working hard, learning, and perfecting The Four Pillars of Parenting.

You must be 100% committed because it will take time and effort. It won’t be easy, but nothing worthwhile is. This is not a quick fix to your problems, but it is the only way to make a lasting change.