Guide: University of Maine Cooperative Extension Center for Parents

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Guide

"Guidance lays the foundation for self-responsibility in children. Children learn by doing, not by having parents do for them. Guiding conveys walking along beside them, showing them the way." Dorothy E. James, Human Development Specialist, Texas A & M.

To GUIDE your children means to give them kind but firm direction. This helps them grow into strong people. Parents are faced with a hard balancing act in guiding. You must use your power to set and enforce reasonable limits, while gradually allowing your children to make age-appropriate choices for themselves. Parents know more about life and the world. You must use this wisdom to set limits that protect your children while showing concern for others. You can teach your children how get along by being polite, kind and helpful instead of hitting, throwing tantrums or being mean.

Children, on the other hand, seek freedom from such control even though they need guidance and structure. In order to mature, they also need to be allowed make choices and face the results of their own decisions.

Many parents look for help with this difficult task of teaching values, nurturing self-control, and responding to misbehavior.

Practices for GUIDING

Behave the way you’d like your children to behave.
Set and maintain reasonable limits.
Give children age-appropriate ways to learn responsibility.
Convey basic values of human decency.
Teach problem-solving skills.
Pay attention to your children’s activities and monitor their friendships with other children and adults.

What We Know About GUIDING

Guiding is a delicate balance between parental warmth/acceptance, and parental control/strictness.
Children who make good decisions have parents who are firm and demanding, yet also loving and sensitive to their children’s needs.
Children do better when they know what to expect. It’s important to guide in a consistent way.
Children cooperate more when parents are clear about what they want, yet listen to and respect their child’s needs. Guiding is part of a relationship in which each person affects and is affected by the other.
Single parents, parents without access to family and friends, parents who were abused as children, and parents who have a hard-to-manage children face greater challenges. They are more likely to make poor parenting choices, especially when they are under stress.
Physical punishment, such as spanking or slapping, is not as accepted as it used to be.

Guide Publications

This material is adapted with permission. Smith, C. A., Cudaback, D., Goddard, H. W., & Myers-Walls, J. A. (1994). National Extension Parent Education Model. Manhattan, KS: Kansas Cooperative Extension System.

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