The key to achieving the Three Objectives: 1) replacing misbehavior with cooperation, 2) increasing the odds your children will make good choices when you are not around, and 3) building a strong family, is to meet the four emotional needs that each of your children have:

1. A sense of belonging
2. A sense of personal power
3. To be heard and understood
4. Limits and boundaries

The way to meet these needs is to follow the the 5-Step Parenting Formula:

1. Constantly work on improving the kind of man you are
2. Enhance your relationship with MOM (the mother of your children)
3. Build a strong relationship with your children
4. Teach them life-skills, good values, and desirable behavior
5. Skillfully correct them when their behavior is displeasing

The power of these five steps lies in the way they relate to each other as illustrated in the following pyramid.

The key to effective Correcting is effective Teaching.

The key to effective Teaching is a strong relationship with your children.

The area in the pyramid containing “Relationship with children” is larger than the area containing “Correcting”. That is to remind us that if we focus most of our time and attention on building relationships, we won’t have to focus so much time and attention on correcting.

The pyramid illustrates that relationship is the foundation of Teaching and Correcting.

If you have a good relationship with your children, they will be more receptive to your teaching and more responsive to your correcting.

The purpose of this post is to help you see the importance of building a strong relationship with each of your children.

There is something else the pyramid teaches.

If correcting isn’t working, in other words the child is slow to respond, or worse, doesn’t respond at all, rather than intensifying correcting by trying to “control” the child with threats, punishment, lectures, screaming, time-outs, and counting to three, look to the level below Correcting: Teaching.

Is the child receptive to being taught life-skills, values, and expected behavior? Does he even care? If not, look to the level below teaching: Relationship with children. THAT is where you need to focus. You need to work on your relationships to make teaching and correcting work.

Until you have a better relationship, teaching and correcting will be futile – kids just won’t care.

A good relationship leads to other good things. When your children feel connected to their dad, they develop higher self-esteem, get along better with siblings, do better in school, and handle stress better. They will also be better prepared to withstand all the negative influences they will face when they are not under your watchful eye.

They will be happy. You will build a happier, stronger family.

I hope I’ve convinced you how important it is to constantly work on building good relationships with your children. That’s right. It isn’t a one-time deal. It requires constant attention. But the benefits are so worth it.

It is said that, if you don’t spend time building relationships, you will spend even more time correcting misbehavior. How’s that for incentive?

So, before you dig into the posts regarding Teaching and Correcting, spend some time learning relationship-building skills, because

No amount of teaching-skills or correcting-skills can make up for a weak relationship.