Welcome back, dear readers! It’s been a while since I felt like sitting down and committing to a longer blog post. At the moment, the July weather here in Austria is truly autumnal, and I feel myself thriving. So, this post reaches you from a cosy spot on my sofa, wedged between pillows, an autumnal vibe video on in the background, while rain splatters against my windows.

This blog post has been rummaging in my head for a while now, and today I want to write it. When pressed to say what I think is one of the most important things I have learnt as a parent or a teacher, it’s giving purpose to your method – whatever your method is. Leading with purpose generates trust, respect and cooperation, regardless with whom you’re working, but especially if you’re working with vulnerable people, like children.

The number one question I ask myself as a teacher or as a parent is: Is what I am doing here serving a purpose? And what is that purpose?

Sadly, whenever you find yourself in classrooms or in a group of parents, you will still hear the familiar phrases “Because I say so”, “just do as you’re told” and similar thinly veiled threats and unsatisfactory half-sentences. I myself use them occasionally. I get it, they slip out, but imagine you were being talked to like this. Imagine your manager told you, you had to do something. You ask “why?”, and he or she would say, “just do as you’re told” or “because I said so.” Wouldn’t you feel shamed and humiliated? Would you feel cooperative? Probably not. You’d probably seethe inwardly, the relationship to your manager would take a hit, and perhaps you’d even sabotage the request to execute said task, simply out of spite.

Given in a grown-up example, most adults would see the problem. Yet, I still hear: “Well, it’s a child, I don’t have to explain myself to a child.”

I say: Yes, you’re dealing with a child. A person who can manage and control their emotions far worse than you, the adult. So your decisions and actions should be even clearer than for or an adult, who can self-regulate (ideally), and has a choice of how to interact with the offending party (like quitting. It’s rather hard to quit your parents when you’re four).

Does that mean you always have to explain yourself to your child? Answer them the fourteenth time they’ve asked? Only have rules they will understand? Of course not. You’re the adult and you make the rules in your home, BUT they have to serve a purpose, and here we circle back to the topic of today’s blog post.

THE PILLARS OF PURPOSEFUL LEADERSHIP

Intent

Especially in our times, we are confronted with the word “intentional” a lot. It has become part of trend vocabulary equally to mindfulness and journaling. Intentional parenting or teaching is basically another word for purposeful parenting or teaching. When I have an intent with what I want to achieve, I will have to set out a least a few rules or parameters to even vocalise that intent. Simply by thinking about the purpose of each rule you establish, your parenting (or teaching) becomes more intentional. Why is it important to me that my children get dressed before they have breakfast? Why are they not allowed to eat in the living room? Why am I setting this homework today?

Observing other parents, I have noticed (also within myself) that many rules are ambivalent or simply don’t make sense. I’ve once been to a household where children were allowed to have Nutella for breakfast, but chocolate cornflakes were not allowed – why? It doesn’t make any sense. In this example, the children were small and simply abided the rules, but once your kids get to an age where they realise the stupidity of that rule and question you about it, you will be hard pressed to answer.

On the other hand, if you decide you don’t want excessive sugar for breakfast because the children will get hyper first thing in the morning, or because they will have their treat after lunch, or simply because you don’t want them to have an unhealthy start and you ban all chocolatey things from the breakfast table, you have led with intent and can explain your purpose.

In a teaching environment, I tend to find even more illogical half-rules that don’t make sense: homework for homework’s sake, testing that doesn’t prove anything, rules that don’t serve a purpose. Every test, every homework, every assignment you give has to serve a purpose and be intentional. The students may not always understand or see what the purpose is immediately, but you as the teacher will still have to know it – very much like an author knows where the story will go, even if the reader doesn’t yet.

Generating Trust

A good leader or guide generates trust in the people following him or her. If you had to rely on someone and realised they didn’t really know what they were doing, it would probably not feel very elevating. Only when children and students feel secure and safe, can they fully unfold their potential. As the parent or teacher, it is your job to provide an environment in which your protegees can do so.

In French parenting culture, there is firm belief in “le cadre” – the square. In this parenting philosophy, parents establish a firmly held square of boundaries which is strictly enforced. However, within “le cadre”, the children are free to roam and explore, safely supported by the boundaries. Where those boundaries lie is in close connection with the purpose. It is also in context with age, environment (home or away), as well as relation to the child.

In order to establish “le cadre”, I will have to have established an intent of what I want the boundaries to be. Therefore, as a parent or teacher, I must have some purpose to achieve. The purpose could be to establish said “cadre” with the intent to give children a secure but free environment.

Once I have established such an environment and the children feel that I am in charge, that I have reflected upon my boundaries and am certain that I am setting them for their best interests, the children can start to trust. When they are not exposed to haphazard rule-giving, ambivalence which leads to unfairness, or a constant note of overwhelm in their leader, they can feel safe and let go to concentrate on their individual journey – as children at home, or students at school.

Trust, in my experience, is the number one key to work successfully with children – especially students, and especially students who have already mentally checked out from school. When I lived in Vienna, I worked on a tutoring program in conjunction with the city to give free tutoring to children, especially in poorer districts. As you can imagine, the students were not the “crème-de-la-crème” of teacher fantasies. Noisy, provocative, sometimes aggressive. But also, deeply misunderstood, bored, and already written off by the system.

While it may seem like a waste of time to some teachers to spend a a quarter of an hour or so on bonding and generating trust, I think it is the key to establishing a harmonious and efficient classroom. I only had these children once a week, so it was harder, but therefore even more necessary. I would listen to their stories before I took out my folder, make jokes with them, emphasise that they were stuck in school with me. There was one particularly disruptive student, but he wasn’t malicious, simply bored and overwhelmed at the same time. He was so disruptive, I took him to the side after one class and told him it couldn’t continue this way. I was kind, not accusatory. I emphasised with him being bored, I asked HIM what he thought we could do to improve the situation. He seemed very perplexed to be asked his opinion, but then said it was hard to concentrate, so we decided he was allowed to wear headphones while he worked in a corner. It worked. He became quieter, his work ethic stronger, his homework finished.

A week later, he asked me, if I could tutor him privately, but I had to decline as we weren’t allowed to take private students. I told him though we could continue to work in the classroom. Eventually, a few weeks on, he told me he would do football instead of my class, and I told him I thought that was wonderful – he needed the physical exertion more than my English class. But he thanked me and said he wished more teachers worked like me. Funnily enough, I then talked to my colleagues, and one pointed out this student and told me how awful he was and unable to concentrate. I had to smile sadly and told her it wasn’t my experience with him at all.

What I had done by purposefully taking time to connect with my students was turn one “awful student” into a child you could work and have fun with. Did I have to sacrifice a little of my academic time? Yes and no. Because I first generated trust and a bond with the class, I could work far more efficiently afterwards.

Confidence in your Rules

Haphazard parenting or teaching is exhausting for everyone. If you have to re-negotiate your parameters every single day, it can be gruelling, and your children don’t get the structure and security they crave. Parenting with intent and purpose helps you be more confident in your boundaries and be able to explain them calmly and firmly when asked. Of course your children will not always be happy with a boundary or a rule, but if you have a purpose behind your rules, it will be much easier to uphold them.

In teaching, leading with purpose and intent is inasmuch important because the students don’t necessarily want to please you (as opposed to your own offspring). A class of students will smell “weakness” in a heartbeat. And by weakness I don’t mean not being strict and mean to your students, but the inability to establish clear boundaries, a guideline and – as you can guess – a purpose.

As outlined in the previous section, a safety net, so to speak, generates trust towards you as the teacher, and your rules. When the students notice that what you do has intent and a purpose, they will follow you more likely, even if they don’t yet understand or know what this purpose is.

Finally, clear boundaries help you be more firm but kind in executing them. Parenting with intent and purpose also helps to avoid permissive parenting – which is often a sad side effect when parents try to do gentle parenting (click to read my related posts The (Gentle) Parent Trap and The Misconceptions of Gentle Parenting). From the idea of wanting to cater to your children’s needs and be gentle and affirmative, some parents sadly slip into a mindset of boundary-less “freedom” in which children can just do what they want and the “cadre” is simply missing, as is the purpose. Where there are no boundaries, there is lacking intent and purpose, which leads to children feeling stranded and insecure. Therefore, purposeful leadership makes you as a parent and teacher both more relatable and trustworthy, which improves your relationship with your protegees; and also more affirmed in your beliefs and boundaries.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN IN PRACTICE

You might be nodding your head in agreement (or shaking it in disagreement), but still wonder what does that mean in practice. In the section on trust, I have already stated an example, but below are a few more examples on how to find purpose and intent, which questions to ask, and how to continuously reflect on your progress.

Why and What?

Any parent of a toddler is familiar with Why-questions. Why is the sky blue? Why do I have to put my shoes on? Why can’t I just eat ice cream all day? Etc.

To establish purpose and intent in your parenting or teaching, “why” and “what” become pivotal questions to ask – almost as relentlessly as a toddler. Many stalemates and arguments between children and their caregivers could be easily resolved if the caregiver asked themselves “why” or “why not?”, reflected on what the purpose is and decided accordingly.

For example, my son recently got some new summer pyjamas. He was, obviously, in love with them and wanted to wear only them. One morning we were getting ready to go somewhere and he insisted on wearing his pyjamas. I said no. You can’t wear your pyjamas in public, we only wear our pyjamas in bed, I know you want to wear them because they’re so cool, I get you’re disappointed now, etc. etc. He looked at me and asked me, “Why can’t I just wear them, just for today?” And I stopped and asked myself, “Why actually not?” He’s three, his pyjamas were cotton, children’s clothes generally mostly look like pyjamas, and, honestly, if someone judged a three-year-old for wearing a chill pair of shorts with a T-shirt that happens to be labelled as pyjamas, it’s really their problem. The purpose of clothing is to be covered in public, but a pyjama does that as well as clothes.

So, in the end, I let him wear it. My no was simply because in the quickness of things and with my adult brain, I figured you can’t wear pyjamas in public (which isn’t even true anymore, have you paid attention to what some people are wearing outside?). Did I “give in”? No, not in my opinion. I just reasoned with myself and realised that this issue was just in my head, so I let it go.

In a different scenario, however, he wanted to wear his new sandals. It was pouring down. Hard. I insisted he wear wellies. He asked why he couldn’t wear his sandals when he could wear his pyjamas last time. Someone less reflected might now say: “See, this is what you get for letting him have his way this one time.” I said to him: “You’re right, but today it is a rainy day and the purpose of your shoes is to keep you dry. The sandals won’t do that, but the wellies will.” He accepted it reluctantly and we went splashing in the puddles.

Intentional and purposeful teaching also starts with asking yourself why. Why am I setting this homework, which purpose does it serve? Why is this test important now? What is the purpose of this test? Why do all the students have to raise their hand before they speak? What is the purpose of this? (For example, that the general noise doesn’t get too loud, and there is a fair system on when who can speak).

If you struggle to find a purpose for a rule or a test or homework, don’t do it. Then it most likely doesn’t serve any purpose. I think that many students feel frustrated because they can sense their teacher doesn’t question the purpose of what they’re teaching or setting the students to do. Feeling like you’re doing tasks just for the sake of tasks is very frustrating – whether at school, home or at a job.

The Purpose of me Wanting it

As you can glean from the beginning of this blog post, I am not a fan of “Because I said so”. I think it is disrespectful and frustrating for the receiving end. However, you also don’t always have to explain your purpose to your students or your child. The purpose can also simply be: Because I want it this way. This should not be a simple cop-out to explain your reasoning. First, even if you simply “want it this way”, you need to do some reflecting on why you want it this way. For example, I am quite particular with my kids’ eating behaviour. My daughter once said, “Dad doesn’t mind if we eat with hands and squiggle on the chair.” To which I responded, “Then you can do that when Dad is in charge, but when I am here, I want us to sit properly at the table, use our cutlery as good as we can and not play with the food. To me, this is important, so I enforce this dinner rule for when I am present. The purpose in this scenario would be to make dinner a comfortable and enjoyable affair for everybody – including me (and, yes, you can and must include yourself in the comfort of your family).

Which rules work for your home or classroom, is for you to determine. You are a different person than the mother next door or the teacher in the next class. Perhaps other mums don’t mind a massive mess in their house while it makes you squeamish, maybe going out in the courtyard with the class works for one teacher, but no the other. Leading with purpose and intent means establishing YOUR purpose and intent within the context of your classroom and family – but it also means continuously reflecting and thinking whether your rules still uphold.

Reflection

Let’s use this last phrase as a segue to the final point, which I have already discussed in some context previously. Reflection. Purpose and intent require reflection on your part. Self-reflection, situational reflection, as well as reflecting on behalf of your students or children.

Reflection is the beginning of purposeful leadership. What kind of leader/parent/teacher do I want to be? What do I want to achieve? How to I want to achieve it and why are these the rules I want to lay out? What is the desired outcome and what is the purpose of it all?

These questions catapult you into the realm of purposeful parenting and teaching, where you and your protegees can thrive in a conducive environment, free and yet fenced off to protect the space you have created. In continuation, you would ask yourself: Do these rules still serve a purpose? What provoked me to change a rule? Why does this not work anymore? What is lacking? How can I infuse purpose into this task/routine/day?

I tend to take five minutes at the end of each day and reflect on what went well and what didn’t. I try to be without judgement, simply taking minutes, if you will. Why, do I think, did what went well work and what lacked where it didn’t. Could I improve it? Or was it simply how it was today? If this is a repeated instance, is the purpose still working there, or do I need to change it? Just a few moments of reflection. Maybe you can even discuss it with someone else to get another pair of ears and thoughts.

Finally, you can try to emphasise with your protegees. How might they have felt in this situation? Did I ask too much? Was the purpose too inconceivable? And to remind yourself (which I often have to do) that you’re dealing with children. They might be cocky, they might pretend to know everything, but they are very vulnerable parties to work with – and very often misbehaviour is just a misplaced cry for help. In this situation, resetting the button and returning to the clarity and structure of your initial intents and purposes can really help.

Final Thoughts

I want to end this post by also pointing out that leading with purpose and intent does not mean everything is your fault or you should seek blame for a challenging situation in only yourself.

It isn’t about blame, it’s about responsibility. As the adult who has chosen to interact with children, it is your job to create a safe environment in which they – and YOU – can thrive. However, you’re just human and a “bad” day isn’t always a bad thing. We learn from bad situations, children certainly do. We cannot avoid them, and neither should we want to. Teachers and parents are complex human beings, just like anyone else, and we carry emotions within us that also sometimes overwhelm us and take their toll. And that’s OK. But let me tell you this: By infusing your methods with intent, they become easier to execute, and you feel more in control and less overwhelmed. With a structure in place, you can enjoy your work or day as a parent more instead of just hassling through the day, tossed around in this river of haphazardness.

If you have any thoughts, comments or criticism, please feel free to reach out to me.