Today’s families are facing a crisis, and fatherless homes are ever-increasing. We are in no doubt a time when men need to rise to the challenge of what it means to be a virtuous father.
You may not control what goes on in the world, but you can control how you treat your children in your home.
Fatherhood should be regarded as an honor and a duty to bring joy into our child’s life. Being a father is one of the hardest jobs you will have, and it should be welcomed with pride.
You may be thinking, why should you put in the effort, and why should you pursue peaceful parenting?
Nothing easy is worth doing, and becoming a better father demands raising your children based on moral principles.
A father’s legacy consists of the values he passes down to his children. If you are honest about your mission, you can move away from destructive behaviors you are not aware of taking place in your home.
By acquiring self-knowledge and discipline, you can start to model good behavior in yourself for your children to follow. We typically don’t give much insight into how we treat our kids and hold to damaging systems that we endured ourselves as a child.
The goal of parenting is to have your kids dependent on you when they are younger to instill in them the values to create a healthy and prosperous life. When your children are young and vulnerable, they must be treated with love and kindness. When this attachment is nurtured, and they grow, your voice will be their guide into becoming confident and strong individuals.
This can never be formed through a process of continuous abuse. Fathers need to examine if their actions are being upheld to high standards. Having the courage to move away from what they know to be destructive and face the challenges of being truly connected to their child.
Men need to do hard things, and sometimes that involves facing the abuses you endured in childhood so you can avoid inflicting those hardships on your own children. Ultimately we want our children to succeed in life and become the best possible person they can become. For this to happen, we must continually be working to instill that in ourselves.
“The goal of parenting is to create self-sufficient virtues in children. Applying external pressure and punishments tends to teach them fear-based compliance rather than the internalization of moral standards.”
― Stefan Molyneux
Parenting with kindness and empathy will not make your child weak. Instead, it will help show them what a healthy relationship should look like. By having high standards with how we treat our children, we set them up to accept nothing less in their own lives.
Too many people nowadays care what total strangers think about them and adjust their behaviors to accommodate others’ needs. If men could once again be certain of their role, they can start to build themselves into a man who no longer desires others’ acceptance and focuses this attention on his kids.
We began to ask ourselves what is good parenting?
Why should we peaceful parent?
You can move away from physical abuse, you can stop yelling and screaming at your child, and you no longer need to be harmful to be heard. Instead of facilitating destruction in your home, you become a beacon of light.
You create a place your kids can find comfort and acceptance in a sometimes cruel world.
This is how we start to build healthy families—raising children who are happy to be apart of that family and believe their fathers’ actions have good intentions.
A stable family structure only happens through peaceful and principled parenting.
We have learned to accept words like discipline and punishment as normal about how we treat our children. In today’s world, kids are under constant bombardment from parents who fail to adhere to moral principles.
Don’t hit others, be polite and kind, and listen when spoken to, all become redundant when we don’t apply these same principles to our children. How can we be clear about fatherhood when we don’t live by our words?
We need fathers to be great thinkers once again. To acknowledge that punishments are ineffective and have lasting negative consequences to their child’s growth into adulthood.
The worst and most often abuse of a parent’s power is physically hitting their child. There have been numerous studies on how damaging it is to a child’s development when they are spanked or physically abused.
You don’t need to physically hit your child to get them to listen. There are better ways you can get compliance, but they demand you do some work. Developing your patience and improving connections will allow you to communicate better and become the dad who solves problems.
“I’m doing this for your own good” needs to be permanently eliminated.
You will never have to resort back to hurting your child to teach them a lesson. Once hitting is removed, you can work on improving the conversations to get your kids to listen.
Once you remove aggression and physical force from your parenting, you open yourself up to think freely about how else could these problems be solved?
You can never get your child’s respect from inflicting physical abuse on them, especially if fear is instilled in them when insignificant things like toys are not cleaned up.
How much time have you wasted constantly arguing and yelling at your child about brushing their teeth?
If you take away the threats, screaming, and hitting to make them listen, you now can start to negotiate and teach important life skills. You have to be creative and explain things in a way that influences them positively. When they become older and real problems arise, you want your child to come to you for support, not to avoid you from fear of punishment.
These are the times you want your kids close to you. This is when you build trust and respect. Showing your kids, you care more about them than their mistakes.
You now start to encourage learning with your children by actually taking steps to learn yourself. Teaching these lessons is not easy, but they are worth it and build a strong foundation in your family on how things should look.
When problems or conflicts arise, you have the tools to handle them peacefully.
You show your kids that people who care about them do not cause them harm. When life gets complicated, and your kids are struggling, you want them to come to dad.
We never want to raise our kids where they believe they are helpless and weak. A benefit to raising your kids peacefully is they learn to believe in themselves because they have a father who believes in them.
The end goal is to create a healthy and happy family environment, but that is not the only benefit. What starts to take shape is unlocking your children’s abilities.
Life becomes something to conquer rather than endure.
You teach your kids that when life becomes difficult, you find a way to figure it out. Instead of keeping them down, you share in their growth. You build a mindset within that speaks o never give up. You have the chance to be close to them when they go after life’s possibilities.
The time and attention you give to your kids is worth it.
There is a great benefit to sharing your life with another person in a peaceful way. It creates a relationship that is mutually enjoyable for both of you.
Your responsibility as a father is to build strength through devotion and loyalty.
If you need help with creating more peace in your home, schedule a meeting with me.
