Mom’s. What if you’re asking the wrong question?
With all due respect, let me share with you something that may make you a bit uncomfortable.
It’s something my wife Shelly (who passed away suddenly in 2021) taught me as she raised our 6 kids.
All too often, we as parents are asking the wrong question.
We’ve all become so obsessed with with getting our kids to behave, or listen, or comply, or stop arguing that we’ve missed what we’re really trying to do as we raise our kids.
We’re not trying to simply get our kids to behave today, rather we’re raising tomorrow’s adults. And those are two different jobs completely.
Think about it.
Just because you can force a child to obey today doesn’t mean they’re learning how to make good decisions. Just because you can punish a child for making a mistake doesn’t mean they are understanding how to learn from it.
As a matter of fact we’ve all seen kids that look perfectly behaved on the outside but have no idea how to regulate their emotions… or solve their own problems… or make good decisions when noone is around to guide them.
And that how the “Shelly Method” is different. Shelly didn’t see parenting as a battle to win… rather she used challenges as an opportunity to learn and teach.
She understood something far too many parenting approaches completely overlook.
Our kids aren’t best served by being controlled. They are little scientists… experimenting… testing boundaries… gathering feedback… watching to see what happens next.
Sometimes those experiments were exhausting for Shelly. Sometimes they frustrated her. Sometimes she even wanted to pull her hair out.
So she stopped looking at their challenges as something she needed to remove and started asking what she could teach through it.
And that was a completely different way of looking at parenting. And it changed everything for our family. F O R E V E R.
Let’s look at some common approaches to parenting. And we’ll start with punishment based parenting.
Punishment based parenting can become so focused on consequences that the consequence IS the lesson. Little billy gets in trouble… Mom or Dad handles it and everybody moves on.
But did Billy learn anything?
Did little Billy learn self-control or empathy or regret or responsibility or how to handle frustration. Or maybe just how to keep from getting caught?
Don’t get me wrong. Kids need consequences. They need boundaries. But if you’re just trying to make the behavior stop, you may be missing the opportunity to teach a skill that could prevent the behavior in the future.
Then there’s permissive parenting.
Sometimes in our need to be loving we can get more concerned with upsetting our children and we hold off on boundaries that they really need.
But love isn’t the removal of boundaries. Love is caring ENOUGH to help a child learn how to live WITH them.
A child can still feel loved and hear the word “no.” A child can feel loved and understood and still be held accountable. And a child can be upset with you even if you haven’t done anything wrong.
Shelly’s method… the “Shelly Method” doesn’t make you choose between love and accountability. You just learn to use them together.
Then there’s parenting “hacks.” Or tricks. Or shortcuts.
The perfect reply or phrase or consequence. The perfect reward system or”script” for a childs meltdown.
I’m not saying they can’t be useful. But here’s the problem. If you need a new technique or trick for every situation, it can be like an exhausting game of whack-a-mole.
You solve a problem? And here’s another… and another. Kids are smart. They adjust.
Shelly’s approach was different. She focused on principles that could apply across many challenges. Instead of reacting, she looked for the lesson that she could teach. And even more important… that the child could learn.
And instead of treating love as something that had to be earned, she PARENTED in a spirit of love.
And that’s VITALLY important.
Remember, the goal isn’t to get a child to simply cooperate. It’s to help them develop the emotional skills and character to make better decisions as they grow.
That’s the difference between managing a childs behavior and developing a good human.
And here’s another thing that makes the Shelly Method different.
The Shelly Method is about changing how YOU, the parent, sees the child and their behavior.
Kids are learning how the world works. And you are teaching them… by how you respond. When they argue… what if the objective isn’t just to win the arguement… rather it’s to teach them how to disagree with respect?
When they make a mistake, what if the goal isn’t to make them feel bad… rather, to help them understand what happened, take responsibility and make a better choice next time?
And no, it doesn’t mean every behavior is acceptable. Quite the contrary. You don’t ignore disrespect, or remove consequences or let them run the house.
You just stop confusing immediate results with the long-term objective. Sure the immediate objective might stop the behavior but the ultimate objective is to teach the child.
And many times, the Shelly Method approach ends up accomplishing both.
Of course, I need to be clear, here.
I’m not claiming other ways of parenting are wrong. Other ways can offer valuable tools and some of their ideas overlap with Shelly’s.
But Shelly’s brings all the pieces together in a way that prevents overreactions and helps mantain boundaries with love… and looking beyong today’s behavior towards tomorrows adult.
It’s a easy to follow, step-by-step way to face the typical challenging, frustrating moments of family life.
And that’s important because parenting DOES NOT happen in a textbook.
It happens when you’re exhausted, when your late, when your child is screaming of fighting with their siblings. It happens when they refuse to do homework or are pushing a boundary or whining over and over and over.
That’s NOT when you need a philosophy that makes you feel like your failing because you can’t remember a technique.
You need a way to think that helps you know what to do when all hell breaks loose.
And here’s what’s cool. You might be reading this and thinking, “this sounds great but it also sounds hard. I’m already worn out. I don’t have the time or energy to become a parenting expert.”
To that I would say, “I get it.” Shelly had to simplify it for me, too.
The good news is… simple, step by step and easy to apply is how she shared it with me. Listen… I’m no genius, so if I can learn it so can you. You don’t have to memorize a bunch of theories or become a child psychologist, or change who you are. Just use your moms intuition and Shelly’s map and you’ll be shocked how easy it is.
Oh, and if you’re wondering, you don’t have to be a perfect mom, either. Shelly wasn’t. Even though when I speak of her it seems it’s in a glorified way, she was a typical mom and wife. She had just learned some extraordinary things.
The same things I wrote about in the “Shelly Method” book.
I’ve taken her framework and map and made it easy to learn, practice and begin using with your kids. Even when they’re testing your limits (you know… the things that can send you over the edge) you’ll have a practical way to approach the challenges with a clear idea of what to do.
And you don’t have to do it overnight. Just learn the steps and build from there. The goal is to make it a part of everyday life, until responding with greater purpose and teaching in a spirit of love become more natural.
Listen, the reality is that a parenting method is of no use if it sounds good in a book ut falls apart in the middle of a real0life meltdown. The Shelly Method is designed to help you take what you’ve learned and use it… right when you need it.
That’s what I want parents to discover in the Shelly Method. It’s what Shelly wanted for Moms.
Shelly spent her life raising our kids with an approach rooted in a spirit of love, patience and intentional teaching. And that’s what is shared in the Shelly Method book.
I LOST Shelly. But I refuse to let her work and glory be lost with her.
And I believe it can help moms see their kids differently, give them more confidence and create happier families and long term… help those kids become wonderful adults who love and cherish their moms. Just like my kids do with Shelly.
So the next time your kiddo tests you, I want you to consider a different question.
What is my child learning in this moment? What do I WANT them to learn. And how can I teach that lesson in a spirit of love?
Because your child isn’t giving you a problem to be solved. They’re giving you an opportunity to teach.
That is the heart of the Shelly Method.
Not just raising kids that know how to behive when someone is watching… rather kids that learn how to think, how to choose goodness, how to treat people with kindness and how to navigate a tricky world when nobody is watching.
That’s a much bigger mission than simple obedience.
That’s parenting with purpose.
And that’s how Shelly did it.