Parenting with dignity… how do we keep our integrity and our dignity while parenting our children? You have snotty tissues in your pocket, poo under your finger nails, you're running a vomiting child to the bathroom and you slip on a peanut butter sandwich. You scream like a banshee hen, yelling obscene insults at anyone near enough to hear, and perhaps even at one or two people who are not currently in the house! At what point, exactly, did you stop parenting with dignity?
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Well, some might say it was the day you uncovered your nakedness, opening your legs in a public hospital to deliver your baby. And even if your had a caesar with a screen up to cover what was happening, I assure you the other side of the screen was not a very dignified scene.
To our children we always teach that to behave like a prince or princess in a situation means handling hard work or difficulty with grace and a good attitude. As we say to our girls, being a princess doesn't mean sitting on your bottom being served. It means holding your head high in all circumstances, being courageous and willing to do whatever is required. So parenting with dignity absolutely includes snotty tissues and all manner of bodily fluids, it absolutely includes hard dirty work of the most menial degree, and it obviously includes the raw beauty of childbirth. But it does not include losing your head, your temper, or your name.
Parenting With Dignity
Our dignity remains intact when we respond to trying circumstances well.
Parenting will take us to the end of ourselves. It has done so for every parent who has ever existed. It will try us and test us to the utmost degree. Our dignity remains intact when we respond to trying circumstances well.
Our children are watching our example for appropriate responses to situations. When crazy, difficult moments happen in our lives, they watch to learn how to correctly express frustration, anger or even pain. It is at moments like these that our children most need us to be the adults that can lead by example so that everything we have taught them is confirmed in their developing minds.
We need to be strong with ourselves, and our self-discipline, understanding the ramifications that losing our integrity has on the formation of our children's characters. Hold a high standard of dignity for yourself (which gives you the right to hold a high standard for your children), and when you fail, apologise and keep trying. That, too, is dignity.
It is inevitable that life, and children, will throw us at least one thing more than we can handle with dignity. Your children are privileged if they see you responding with self-controlled dignity to most things, and with dignified humility to failure.