Parenting From The Place Of Knowledge

When we talk about parenting from the place of knowledge, I hear people take it from different perspectives. I hear people ask do we really need knowledge? Why do we even need to bother about knowledge? Is it really necessary? In this blog post, I will show you why parenting from a place of knowledge is a must for everyone who wants to parent intentionally.

THERE ARE 6 TENETS OF INTENTIONAL PARENTING.

1. Ability to Frame Problems Appropriately: It is difficult for you to solve a problem you do not know and in your journey as a parent you need to understand that there is an ability to solve problems and if you do not know it will be difficult to parent. A lot of times we are struggling because we can’t frame the problem that we have. You need to be aware.

2. Ability to Aim For The Right Purpose: There is a right purpose in parenting, a lot of people do not understand why they are parenting. Are you just raising Children who will survive, grow up, have a good life, or are you raising Children who will fulfill purpose?

3. Your Ability to Expand On Your Perspective. Your perspective is limited so you need the ability to expand on the knowledge you have, this is another tenet of parenting.

4. Ability to Have Your Emotions In Check: If you must parent intentionally then your emotions must be in check. A lot of the mess we make in our journey can be traced to a lack of emotional intelligence.
5. Understanding the Concept of Balance and Essentialism: In intentional parenting, you must be able to identify what is essential to you per time. On the journey of parenting, we teach essentialism, not just balance. At a point in your parenting, there will be a lot of demand on you and the concept of balance will no longer make sense, this is where essentialism becomes necessary. For instance, what is essential to a Toddler Mum is different from what is essential to a Teen Mum.

6. Ability to Apply The Right Knowledge: It is okay to get knowledge but much better to be able to apply knowledge. What gives the result is the application and not just getting the knowledge. Intentional parenting teaches you the application of knowledge.

Knowledge in parenting must be drawn from two parts { Formal knowledge and Informal Knowledge} Formal knowledge being research-based knowledge and informal knowledge being the lived experiences of people, your personal experience, your journey, and your personal insights. You can\’t go far if you don’t have this knowledge merged together.

Another knowledge parents need is self-knowledge, a lot of parents do not know who they are: this is about being honestly aware of who you are, your values, beliefs. Do you know and are in touch with them? You need to have self-knowledge first before you start parenting.

WHY DO I NEED KNOWLEDGE?
1. Making parental tough decisions can be easier when you have a moral compass to guide you on the way. During the sex – educate like a pro challenge, I said to the participants that their values will limit and impact on their sex conversations with their children. For you to make impact on your journey, you must be able to look at your values, beliefs, and prejudices per time. What are they? So they don’t form a conflict in your journey. Your values will affect the values you pass down to your children.

2. Communicating to your child will be very difficult except you understand what matters to your Child. You need to understand your Child : their learning style, the way that they look at issues, their personality, and love language. If you do not know all these, you will misunderstand your Child and the things that matter to them. If you raise children without knowledge, you are raising them based on probability. There are 2 ways to raise Children; intentionally or by probability. Probability will give you random results.

HOW TO ACCESS KNOWLEDGE
1. Being Aware of Your Limitations and having the courage to seek support and guidance is key. Wisdom is in the things that others know that you do not know
2. Do a study on your self-knowledge
3. You need to know the strengths and limits of different forms of knowledge
4. You need to know yourself, take time to study you, your weaknesses, strengths, blind spots, limitations, and how you can strengthen them
5. You need to know the child, learning style, personality, temperament