Thankfully My Child Is Strong Willed

When it comes to describing our strong willed child, I often hear of the struggles and not much of the praises. 

In the trenches of struggling to homeschool them we tend to overlook how great of an asset it is for them to be strong, courageous, outspoken, supportive, self motivated, and protective. 

Praise them for their own uniqueness.  Give your child the security and self confidence they deserve. 

Sometimes they are bold, taking charge, and initiating a goal themselves.  This can make us nervous for them yet watch in awe and admiration as they tackle the goal.

When my younger son was 9 years old he said that he wanted to be a YouTuber, along with 75% of other kids his age.

We let him know that hardly anybody makes a living as a YouTuber and that so many others want to be one too and not many make it.

I watched in amazement while he started a YouTube channel, switched to a smaller niche, and has been posting almost every day for about 10 months. 

At the time of writing this one of his videos had 4.6 k views, 71,089 total views, and has 500 subscribers! 

I was blown away, how dare I limit his dreams?

He was such an inspiration to me that I started this website that I have been wanting to do for years but was too afraid to try.

Your strong willed child is an amazing individual, so don’t look longingly at kids sitting with hands folded, looking on with rapt attention. 

The strong willed child is going to be a leader of tomorrow, by being the boss today.  They will stand up for others and what they believe in.

Guide them and love their individuality so that they will be good strong leaders.

Help them learn by using their strengths

• Put their strengths to good use by giving them ways to take charge and plan things.

Let them choose the time period to explore in history, the poems and snacks for poetry tea time, or the next field trip.

Have your child teach something that they have learned or how to something. Teaching imprints in their mind what they have learned.

• Give them choices so they have some sense of control over their learning path.

They have a feeling of ownership over a topic of their choosing.

When it is a topic they are interested in, the resistance over learning melts away and they want to know about it.

When your child is not given a choice of what to learn about and only go over what a certain curriculum has they start to loose the excitement of learning.

We need to guide them back to being fired up over learning, and that happens when they get to choose what interests them.

My eyes glass over when my husband talked about racing and race cars but he was animated when talking about it. 

My husband also learned everything about that topic on his own by taking the initiative to find out all he could about it from others. He had raced, worked in race tracks, and visited any dirt track he could all because he learned about a topic that set a blaze of excitement over learning all he could.

We want to give our child the gift of loving learning and it starts with what interests him.

• Support your child in their choices of interests.

Your child may choose a topic that is not anything you are interested in.

Maybe they choose to learn about castles and knights but you think it is a waste of time.

They will be motivated by an interest and will learn about more that just castles and knights.

Their reading time will be increased, strategies for looking up information will be learned, interest in the time periods before and after this era may be peaked. 

Reading comprehension will be increased by your child telling you all about what they learned from the books, and that fire about learning being started will spill over to other topics they are interested in learning more about.

• Let your child know that you are proud of them and love them just as they are.

They do not just know this, tell them exactly what they did that makes you feel this way.

Kids long to know that they are ok and loved.

With such a negative slant on strong willed kids they need that confirmation that they are great just as they are.

My son has asked me before, “am I weird?”

I smiled and gave him a hug saying “Everyone is weird in one way or another.”

I wanted to let him know that even though we all have at least one weird thing about us, we are all unique and that is ok. 

Nobody is perfect…even if they think they are.

I want him to be proud of himself and his individuality.

So take your strong willed child in your arms, let them know how thankful you are that they are your child.

Be supportive and thankful for your child’s personality, they have great strength and unique gifts.

Hope these suggestions will help you guide them to be amazing leaders of tomorrow as well as today.