One of the best bits of parenting advice I’ve heard is, “Start with the end in mind.” For example, if you don’t want to have to break a soda habit in your kids, don’t start giving them soda. But many of us approach parenting as a day-to-day task without considering what kinds of people we want our kids to be and without making a parenting game plan.
The unintended consequences are that we’re easily distracted and stressed out by things that don’t matter. So how do you map out what you want to instill in your children’s hearts and minds as they grow? Here are 4 steps to make a parenting game plan that will guide you in the nonnegotiables you want your child to embrace above everything else.
1. Determine your hierarchy.
You can get a good start on this process by deciding what’s most important in life. Do you think your spiritual life or relationship with God is the fundamental thing that drives your other values? If so, this would be number one on the list. Just under that would likely be character, integrity, and valuing family relationships. Why is it important to rank these things—all good—in a particular order? Because that order will provide clarity in the moments when things seem to conflict or collide.
2. Make a training plan. 
It’s not enough for you to believe these things are important for your child to learn. You need a plan for how they are going to learn them. If spiritual values are at the top of your list, the plan might include church attendance and family devotions. If it’s character traits like honesty or kindness, the training plan will include lots of modeling of these values by you, along with other practical methods of practicing them with your child, like iMOM’s Good Character Traits printables and calendar.
3. Execute and evaluate.
Just like a plan at work, you need to evaluate your parenting game plan periodically. Talk to your husband about where you are with each child in the areas at the top of your list and evaluate which methods seem to be working. Is using timeouts for tantrums not teaching self-control? Is practicing taking turns not producing more patience?
While your core values won’t change, the ways of teaching them may need to change as your kids grow. That’s a great feature of our character trait builder content. You can do it over and over again as your kids mature. The lessons won’t ever be the same, because the way your child experiences each trait evolves.
While your core values won’t change, the ways of teaching them may need to change as your kids grow. Click To Tweet4. Seek advice from veterans.
Is there a mom whose older children exhibit the character traits you’d like to see in your own one day? Don’t be afraid to ask her how she did it. She might give you ideas you couldn’t think of alone. And chances are, she’ll share some struggles she experienced, which will help you give yourself and your kids grace on this journey.
What priorities top your parenting game plan?
