The Most Powerful Way to Earn Trust With Your Kids

Hey, everybody! I'm just in a great mood. Golly! I apologize, first of all, for living where I live, considering some of you living where you live right now but it is just beautiful out here. I like to walk in my neighborhood and often pass by Orangewood Elementary School. All three of my kids went here. That's not important, but what is important is talking about parenting and kids. Nice segue, John. 

How do you get to make a giant influence into their hearts, into their choices? I know when we all started out as young parents, all of us had this fear or concern of wanting to protect them from making some of the mistakes we did. And we want to nip it in the bud, and we want to control their behavior. If we are not careful, we end up finding ourselves turning into this cop who watches out to make sure that they toe the line and are not hiding things. Then we can become someone we don't want to be. And we can become someone they don't want us to be. 

The major factor in whether your kids will let you love them, teach them truth, and guide their hearts, is whether you are trusted by them. 

It's everything. I made this statement a while ago: We didn't get this privilege by powering up or demanding respect or guilting them into obedience. That only ever gains disrespect, mistrust, and hiding.

So I want to earn trust. If I earn their trust, they'll let me in and they won't hide from me or have a double life. Yes, it's constant. In the new edition of my book, On My Worst Day, I talk about my relationship with Carly and how it is not static. I'm still having to learn this. It's beautiful, but it is how we get to protect our kids. So I learn to tell them what I can and cannot be trusted for. I get to tell them when I fail, I get to tell them stories of my childhood and my youth. I get to tell them of decisions I wish I had not made but did make, and I want to let them know my assessment of the wrong behavior I did.

I don't want to power up. I want to convince them that the real me can be known by them. I want to be convinced that no amount of me telling them ways I have done it wrong will lose their respect. But what will lose their respect is when I try to use my authority as a weapon, when I try to win each time, and I don't own my stuff. 

Well, you guys, that's enough for right now. I think next time we're together I'd like to speak more on parenting, but right now it's just too nice a day for me to talk any longer. I'm John Lynch and this is John Lynch Speaks.

Want to watch instead of read? Click the video above.