Raising Kids to Have a Voice of Their Own

Times have changed since my youth. Some for the better and others not so much. I woke up recently stuck with the phrase, “children should be seen and not heard”, running through my head. I heard this a few times growing up. We chose a different route when raising our kids. We are raising kids to have a voice of their own while still being respectful.

The parenting style that I grew up with, was not the parenting style that I intentionally chose to follow. While I love my parents deeply, I also know the thoughts I struggled with growing up. Ones that I never expressed openly, but ones that would have helped my parents understand what I was going through. Instead, they had to guess and that really wasn’t fair to them.

There are many times over the years that I have thought about our own parenting journey and wondered if we were doing the right thing. I wanted more for my children. I wanted them to feel comfortable coming to us, good or bad. Most of all, I wanted to be able to discuss any topic with them if they asked or if it came up in discussion. Each decision we made raising our kids has been intentional, even before we knew what intentional parenting is.

Most of our decisions revolve around two life goals:

Having a strong relationship with each of our children.
Raising independent, strong, loving, compassionate humans that love the life they create.

Raising Kids to Have a Voice of Their Own

Making the intentional decision to raise our kids to have a voice of their own started out with our oldest and his learning difference, Dyslexia. For many years, I was his advocate in the school and he needed me to be that for him because he struggled to understand all of the facets of his learning difference.

As he grew up and progressed in school, he wanted more independence and needed to become an advocate for himself. Letting the rope loosen was hard to do.

What if he struggled and didn’t speak up?

What if he was left behind because the teachers didn’t understand his needs?

Would he be able to get the education he needed to graduate?

How can I do this?

Will this make me a bad mother?

All.of.the.thoughts.

Did he struggle? Yes, at times. Was he left behind? No, he was one of the successful graduates in a class of over 1000 students. To put this into perspective, my entire town growing up was less than half the size of his graduation class!

The fact that he wasn’t lost and left behind brought tears to my eyes. He did it! He learned to advocate for himself and get the help he needed. A big part of that success was us making the decision to coach him in finding his voice.

The Benefits of Raising Kids with a Voice of Their Own

Over the years, we’ve seen each child grow into their own person. How they handled situations were very different from one another. Will they be the youth we see on television or across social media that are “changing the world” on huge platforms? Maybe, but maybe not and I’m okay with that.

Over the years we’ve had many discussions in our home about mental health, drug use, unplanned pregnancy, suicide, learning differences, bullying, puberty, money management, life skills, sexual orientation, politics, and many more topics that weren’t a regular home topic when I was growing up. We made our home open enough to make these topics easier for our children to bring to us and ask when they needed to ask.

When kids learn to have a voice of their own and they know how to use it in a positive way they are able to:

advocate for themselves when they don’t understand something
advocate for others when they feel the situation requires another voice
know that they are loved at home enough to ask for help
know that there will be no judgments but we will be able to talk through any situation so they can learn from it
learn that being there for others makes a huge impact within their own small community

When parents are raising kids to have a voice of their own, while still showing respect:

they open the door to healthy discussions that are honest and true
they are raising children that are learning independence
their children are learning how to communicate
create a home that feels safe, among the crazy culture teens endure today

Life in Retrospective

The choice to start coaching our son to advocate for himself changed our parenting journey forever. With each child, we learned how to be more mindful of their needs and how to help them communicate how they were feeling.

It hasn’t been easy and each child didn’t always like to admit that they were struggling with something. However being aware of subtle changes in them, or how they were reacting to something was imperative to being able to start critical discussions throughout the years.

I’m both scared and empowered by the changes in today’s culture for kids today. The taboo topics of my time are discussed more openly, but with that, the negative thoughts and opinions are also free to voice.

While I’m proud that girls today are free to admit openly that it is “that time of the month” (that certainly wasn’t the case when I grew up), I’m saddened to field discussions around cyberbullying, suicide attempts, how to support friends and what to do if this is happening to you.

Bullies are not new in this world. However with the world at your fingertips, coaching children how to use their voice for good is imperative today. Both the pressures and conflicting messages teens have to filter daily are truly enough to shatter one’s soul. Having a safe haven to go home to, which will help them feel free to use their voice is the first step to helping them change their world bit by bit.

We may not be raising the kids that you see on social media making huge positive impacts in the world and that is fine with me. We are raising kids to have a voice of their own and to use it to help themselves and those they love in their life. They’ve helped their friends through very challenging times, helped advocate for groups that needed a safe place at school, and all three learned to advocate for themselves with teachers and their peers with healthy communication. In their way, they are changing their world one positive action at a time.