The Role of Parents

In her book, Start With the Heart, Kathy Cook shares 4 roles that parents have and must play in a child's life to boost them to success.

The first role is to be their teacher. This is a role you have whether you want it or not. They learn from you from the way you talk, act and react. So we have to be on our toes as teachers everyday for our own children.

The second role we have is to be their coach. We coach them through life with encouragement, teaching them skills, and letting them know when they have lost their way and guide them to better choices.

The third role is to be their cheerleader. This is a fun role as long as all is going well. But we may need to change the cheer if there are differences we need to address specifically. If we are saying," You can do it, yes you can", but they really can't do it, then we need to adapt to what fits for them.

The last role is to be their referee. We need to call a foul a foul and if they are out of bounds, we need to let them know and guide them back to stay within the boundaries.

Sometimes we want to just be the cheerleader, but all the roles are equally important. So let's embrace our role as parents and move to victory.