The only reason we were able to figure any of this out is because we know what kind of people we want our children to be. We have a vision in our heads of the kinds of adults we hope they will be and our parenting efforts are aimed at helping them get to that point. Without making these guiding principles something that my wife and I both agree on, she and I would fight about how to deal with these types of situations on a daily basis. There are so many battles we as parents can fight with our kids; having these guiding principles helps us be aware of which ones are worth fighting and which ones are not worth the anger, frustration and energy.
It is important to understand that these guiding principles are exactly that - principles, ideas to help guide us as parents through the day-to-day challenges. We all want the best for our children and we all know this is the biggest and most important job we will ever have. As with any job - especially one involving a team - you need a plan for how you will meet your goals for your children. This is way too important to sit back and hope for the best - these are our children after all. We need something to help us give them the best chance to be the best they can be. This is why having a conversation with your partner about guiding principles is so important. You'd hate to wake up in ten years and realize that the way you have been parenting was actually pushing them in a direction you didn't want them to go. I hear from many parents about how they never set limits on their children when they were young, because they didn't want to hurt them or discipline them. It just didn't seem right to them and felt it would only harm their child. Unfortunately, they find out a few years later that their child is uncontrollable. They try to place limits on their child's behaviors now, but can't because their child doesn't understand limits and the fights are terrible.
I think this is another advantage of developing your guiding principles; those things that are hard as parents, that cause short-term pain for your child (and yourself) become slightly easier to do and understand within the framework of guiding principles. It's always easier to avoid the difficult situations with our children than to face them head on. But your guiding principles will help you see how what you do now will help them in the future. Whether it is setting limits or giving them medicine or making sure they take their vitamins every day, with guiding principles it becomes easier to see how even though they don't want these things or it seems to cause them harm, the long-term benefits more than outweigh the short-term suffering, making your children more likely to be healthy, happy and secure.
Our children were born almost 2.5 months premature. One of the complications they developed from being born so early was something called Reactive Airway Disease - essentially the precursor to asthma. Because of this we had to nebulize them every night with special medicine. When they got sick we often were nebulizing them three times a day. In the beginning it took an hour to nebulize both of our children and at three times a day, well, you can do the math. That is a lot of time forcing your children to do something they don't want to do and it was certainly something we didn't want to do to them, but obviously one of our guiding principles is promotion of their physical health. We want them to eat right, drink right, take their vitamins and be as healthy as they can be. So we had to nebulize them because they needed it to be healthy.
