Hi, Justin Caldrick coming to you from Calabasas, CA. Today's topic, anticipation and expectations, why are these things important with our middle school children? Well, first thing anticipation, this one can both be so helpful for us as parents but it can also be a pitfall for us as parents.
It can be extremely helpful to be able to anticipate our child's behaviors in terms of their patterns. We start to know our children really well and can anticipate when they're about to make a good choice, when they're about to feel a certain thing or act in a way that is good for them or can be against our rules.
So through anticipation, we want to be expert observers of our children's behaviors, so that we can help them be successful. That's where this could be extremely helpful for us. It can also be a pitfall for us if we turn it into indirectly anticipating their future behaviors and parenting through guilt.
Sometimes we find ourselves saying, you always do this or how many times do I have to tell you? Well, the answer of that question is, you are going to have to tell them as many times as you choose to tell them. You can use your ability to anticipate your child's behaviors to stop that thing that you are always having to tell them, before they even do it, and that's where we lead to expectations.
If we allow our children to know what our expectations are of them, before they get to doing that thing that we always got to tell them, to remind them to either do or not do like flush the toilet or turn the lights off or get their homework done, or to not hit their brother, sister or clean up after themselves.
We can use our anticipation to set our expectations and through our expectations, it takes us back to something that Joe has talked about quite a few times and I have mentioned a few times in the clips that we've been on here is, we can use those expectations to set routine and structure for our children again helping them be set up to be successful.
Anticipate your children's behaviors, be expert observers, and use that to help them be successful. Set high expectations, having expectations that are clearly defined and laid out for your children before things happen, again will help them be successful and how great and how good do our children get to feel when they are successful, and as a result, how good do we feel? Anticipate your children, set high expectations, get them ready for the middle school this year.
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