“Parents weren’t meant to spend most of their time correcting their children. How do we help things go right, instead of react when things go wrong?”
The Arbinger Company
Learning about the parenting pyramid was truly life-changing knowledge that immediately improved my parenting. The parenting pyramid is a simple tool that can be used to check-in with where our priorities as a parent lie. Are we too heavily focused on correction? Are we expecting our children to take to heart what we teach if they don’t have a good relationship with us?
The parenting pyramid depicts the foundation of parenthood and places them in order of most important to least important. All the categories are important and have their place, but the pyramid helps to show which categories should be focused on first or “fixed” before moving on to the next category.
According to The Arbinger Company (1998), “Here’s a summary of what the pyramid tells us:
- Although correction is part of parenthood, IT IS THE SMALLEST PART.
- The key to effective correction is effective teaching.
- The key to effective teaching is a good parent/child relationship.
- The key to a good parent/child relationship is a good husband/wife relationship.
- The key to a good husband/wife relationship is our personal way of being. Indeed, this quality affects every other aspect of the pyramid; that is why it is the deepest foundation.”
This knowledge may be a hard pill to swallow. I know it was for me! It helped me to step back and take a good look at how I was parenting. I realized that I was focusing far too much on correction and teaching when I was not spending near as much time just trying to have a strong connection with my son. It also helped me to see how much self-improvement I need in order to be a better example for him.
“The solution to a problem in one part of the pyramid lies below that part of the pyramid” (The Arbinger Company, 1998).
To learn more about the parenting pyramid visit:
https://content.byui.edu/file/91e7c911-20c5-4b9f-b8fc-9e4b1b37b6fc/1/Parenting_Pyramid_article.pdf
Resources:
The Arbinger Company. “The Parenting Pyramid,” 1998. https://content.byui.edu/file/91e7c911-20c5-4b9f-b8fc-9e4b1b37b6fc/1/Parenting_Pyramid_article.pdf.
FPN Admin. “Episode 161: Jeff Emery – When Nothing Has Worked with My Kid.” The Family Podcast Network, November 21, 2014. https://thefamilypodcastnetwork.com/parentpyramid.
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