Trust is an extremely powerful concept. It takes time to build but can be broken in seconds. Once broken, it takes much longer to rebuild than to establish in the first place. An honest relationship with open communication is imperative between parents and children, with trust probably being the most difficult to establish. Apart from love, trust is the most important and strongest element that you can establish with your children. If they can trust and believe in you, they will model you and become trustworthy. However, if they cannot trust and believe in you, they lose all faith in humanity and come to have no respect for the bonds of trust.
Before writing this article, I asked my own children, “Do you trust me? I mean, do you really trust me?” What I learned from their responses and reasoning is that what builds trust from a parent’s perspective is different than a child’s perspective. Parents have a hard time trusting children due to their sometimes dishonest and cunning nature. However, if children are raised to value honesty, they will speak openly with parents and not feel the need to sneak or lie. This allows parents to be informed and make informed decisions as they guide their children down the path of life. But I can guarantee you that if kids don’t trust their parents for whatever reason, they will do everything they can to keep mom and dad in the dark. If you want to know what your children are doing, they need to be able to trust you enough to tell you. With that in mind, from a child’s perspective (which is the most important because it’s the one we as parents are trying to establish), here are the 5 most effective ways for a parent to gain a child’s trust. :
1. Keep your words. Keeping your word about everything possible, however small, is imperative. When parents tell a child they are going to do something, they need to make sure they follow through and do it. A pattern of keeping promises lets children know that when mom or dad says something, they can take it to the bank. They trust that your word is worth gold. In our home, we try to abide by the old principle: “Your word is your bond.” If you say you’re going to do something, do it. If you say something is going to happen, it has to happen. But if you say something will be and repeatedly fail to keep your promises, your children will quickly learn that they can’t trust a word you say. Broken promises are a good way to lose valuable trust.
2. Be honest. Sure, parents sometimes have to tell a little “white lie” to protect their children. But when it comes to big, meaningful questions, the best policy is to be honest, even if you have to sugarcoat it a bit. Being honest does two things: it lets the child know that their answers are true, which allows them to act on them with confidence, and it sends the child the message that honesty, no matter how hard it can be at times, is the way to go. It is right. Believing in honesty by seeing her example, children grow to be honest in return, letting her know that they are where they say they are and are doing what they said they would do. Honesty without distorted repercussions establishes a child’s confidence that she can talk to parents about anything.
3. Stay calm. Parents who are accessible about sensitive topics build trust with the child. If a child knows that he can come to you and that you won’t “freak out” over something that deserves attention, he will trust you to help him find solutions and trust your guidance through the situation. Parents who lose control over one issue after another quickly send the message that they cannot be trusted to listen to the child because the child is afraid to yell, yell, hit, and punish. Parents who lose their cool and are judgmental teach the child never to come back with a problem. When the boy can’t trust the father to listen calmly, he turns to his inexperienced friends, and those are the last people he wants to guide his son.
4. Be there for them. When children know that mom and dad will be there for them, supporting them through one crisis after another, they develop a bond of trust that is critical to open communication. My daughter said, “You were always there for me. Right or wrong, I knew you would be there.” Knowing that I was on her team, even if we had private conversations pointing out what she did wrong, she trusted that I was trustworthy. She knew that even when no one else was there, I was there, allowing her to place her full faith and trust in me. And because she trusted me, she shared much more with me than other girls with her father.
5. Be a role model. Don’t do anything sneaky or wrong that you wouldn’t raise your children to do. Cheating, stealing, and disrespecting authority are behaviors your child will emulate. When a child hears you talk about trustworthy behavior, then sees you doing things that are completely contradictory to what you preach, they learn that if YOU can’t be trusted as a good person, it’s okay for them to abandon the endeavors they set out to do. trust, too. Exemplary behavior teaches lessons and establishes trust in your integrity. Poor and unacceptable behavior teaches a double standard, which is the same as being two-faced, and that is the best way to lose your integrity and your children’s trust.
Children watch how parents behave. If we keep our word, are honest, remain calm, firm, and behave as we ask, they will learn that we can be trusted in all circumstances. And this level of trust, while difficult to establish, is critical to raising children through the confusing teen years. If you lay the foundation for trust early on, keep it strong through adolescence, and continue to respect it well into adulthood, your children will never take anything you say or do with a grain of salt. Establish trust and you will be well on your way to raising respectful, honest and moral human beings. If you’re not trustworthy, you can bet your kids are doing a lot more than you think. As for me, I’d rather be confident and know what’s going on than be a lying dictator and stay in the dark. Aside from love, which is inherent, trust is the most difficult, yet most valuable bond available when guiding children through the smoke and mirrors of life.
