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Servant leadership is a term that David introduced to me. He has taken many leadership classes and always shares what he has learned, along with being a supervisor of an Information Technology Branch with over 27 employees. A servant leader is described as a leader who is concerned with their followers or, in this case, children. They aren’t simply concerned with achieving some goal (Northouse, 2013, p. 219).
However, a slave parent gets taken for granted. We have seen them shopping, and the kid throws a temper tantrum. There are some subtle ways that this can manifest.
I have been trying to do my best to raise my kids to be happy, healthy, and hopefully responsible. As a mother, I cannot tell you how often I have gotten upset about cleaning my children’s room during the weekdays when they are at school only for one if not both, turning it into a disaster area within the first 5 minutes of coming home.
I try to have them maintain a clean environment throughout the week and do big chores like laundry, changing their sheets, etc., on weekends. I would have to say it is a cultural thing and a mindset I grew up with. If it isn’t perfectly clean, it isn’t enough, and I HAVE TO MAKE IT NICE!
Yeah, the reality is that it doesn’t work that way. Moms, I don’t know about you, but just trying to keep the house perfectly clutter-free is stressful and can lead to unnecessary arguments. Is it that serious to focus so much energy on that? The answer (at least mine) is NO, it isn’t. Hubby had a big role in pointing that out, and I am happier and saner for it. 🙂
I came across something a while back (I don’t remember if it is a book/article, etc.), but the biggest thing I remember was they kept saying, “Don’t clean the toilet.” As in, don’t keep hounding your kids and repeating yourself. It becomes expected and only aggravates you, which is so true! I had to share the following article because she talks about parents being servants and how that can negatively impact your children in the future.
Happy Kids, Happy Parents
By Winsome Coutts
As a grandmother and self-help writer, I’m often asked by readers, “How do you raise happy kids?” This is a question near and dear to every loving parent’s heart. No matter what we teach them, if we haven’t taught them how to be happy or can’t parent in a way that makes them feel happy, it’s rather all for naught, isn’t it? So it’s a very pertinent question.
I’ve been blessed with having two happy children and two happy grandchildren. I applied certain principles in raising my kids and see my son and daughter-in-law apply the same in raising their adorable daughters, Klara and Stina. In this article, I’ll share two tips I’ve learned.
The first is the importance of modeling happiness. You can’t give something you don’t have. How can you teach kids happiness if you don’t have it yourself? Some parents think loving their family means living only for them, driving them everywhere, cleaning up after them, and putting their kids’ needs and desires ahead of their own. Parenting shouldn’t turn us into a short-order restaurant or a cleaning or taxi service. It does for some parents. That teaches kids a bad lesson.
A child who perceives his parent as a servant, someone whose life has meaning only through catering to his whims, learns to be selfish. He comes to believe others exist to do his bidding. I have a friend who was raised like that, and she tells me when she grew up, she kept having a strange feeling, “Where are all the servants?” Being catered to was such an ingrained part of her childhood that adjusting to adulthood was difficult because “the servants” were missing.
Kids raised this way tend to feel the world owes them a living. So breaking out of the “doormat” mode, if you’re in one, is pretty central to giving your kid a chance at a smooth transition to happy adulthood.
When you take care of yourself, make time for yourself, and do things that make you happy, your child learns those behaviors from you. If she sees you going for your dreams and making decisions based on your inner truth, she learns that doing those things is good. On the other hand, if you model dropping everything to fulfill her latest dictate, she learns that parenting means self-denial and victimization. She may become a self-effacing parent or go the other extreme and forego parenting entirely because it looks like such a sacrifice.
So, to raise happy kids, be good to yourself. Treat yourself with respect and dignity the same as you treat your child. Don’t allow disrespect toward you any more than you’d allow someone to be rude to your kids. Make time for your creative desires and dreams. Plan in some scheduled personal time each week (or day), and ensure you take it.
Let your kids see you’re doing this, and tell them the reason: “Mommy needs to have some fun, too,” or “Moms need time every day to relax.” This shows your child that you value yourself and that personal time is important to everyone’s happiness.
The second tip I’ve learned for raising happy kids is the tremendous value of focused attention. The best form this can take is uninterrupted, one-on-one personal time with your child. Think back to your own childhood and some of your happiest memories. Chances are they include that hike you took with Dad or when you and Mom went to the restaurant for dessert.
When we set aside an hour or two to be with our child, away from distractions and interruptions, we tell him he is important and loved. Giving focused attention is much more powerful than the diffused attention kids get while we cook dinner, drive them somewhere, or break up conversations to take calls on our cell phones.
Children thrive on loving, focused, personal attention like plants thrive on sunshine. Structure in some focused attention daily, even for only five or ten minutes. Look at your child when he talks to you, so he knows you’re complete with him. In love, it’s the subtle things that count.
Giving focused attention teaches self-worth: your child knows she’s valuable because you value her enough to carve out time for you and her, uninterrupted by the world, for those moments. That spells love, and when she knows you love her by your actions, not your words, that brings security and heart fulfillment, essential foundations of happiness.
In this busy world where parents work two jobs and where kids’ social calendars can rival those of debutants, it isn’t easy to make time to take care of yourself and uninterrupted time for you and your child. But for happiness, nothing could be more important. Think about your schedule, what is nonessential that you can cut out, or wasted moments that you can eliminate. Use that harvested time to be good to you and your kid. Your child’s happiness, and yours, depends on it.
Winsome Coutts holds a teacher’s certificate in education and has written hundreds of articles on self-development. She has studied with Bob Proctor and John Demartini, popular teachers featured on “The Secret” DVD. She is the passion behind www.4lifehappykids.com and is a parent and grandparent.
Winsome is the author of “Go for Your Goals” for Kids – a set of downloadable e-books that guide your child through the joyful steps of learning visualization, goal-setting, and the Law of Attraction. Simple language enhanced with beautiful illustrations and worksheets makes these books appealing and motivating. To learn more, visit www.4lifehappykids.com
What Servant Parenting Looks Like in Practice
The distinction between a servant parent and a slave parent sounds philosophical until you watch it play out in the grocery store, at bedtime, or in the middle of a homework argument. A servant parent is intentional. They lead with the long-term development of the child in mind, not the immediate comfort of the moment. A slave parent responds to each demand reactively, often out of guilt, exhaustion, or a deep desire to be liked by their own children. The difference in outcomes, compounded over years, is significant.
In our family, Mary has worked to build age-appropriate responsibility into the daily routine. Not because she does not love helping the kids, but precisely because she does. A 10-year-old who cannot make a sandwich, clean their own room, or manage a simple schedule is not a happy child — they are an anxious one who has never been shown how to trust their own competence. Building competence requires letting children do things imperfectly, fail occasionally, and experience the natural consequences of their choices. None of that happens in a household where the parent anticipates and absorbs every difficulty before the child encounters it.
Practical Ways to Lead as a Servant Parent
- Assign real chores with real stakes. Not symbolic chores that get quietly redone by a parent afterward, but tasks that matter to the household and that children are expected to complete to an acceptable standard. The bar can be adjusted for age; the expectation of genuine contribution should not be.
- Let natural consequences do the teaching. If a child forgets their lunch, the consequence is being hungry at school. If they leave their bike outside and it gets rained on, the consequence is a wet bike. Shielding children from all consequences is not protection — it is deprivation of the feedback loop they need to develop judgment.
- Model self-care and personal time. As Winsome Coutts notes above, a parent who never prioritizes their own wellbeing teaches children that parenthood means self-erasure. Taking time for yourself, naming it clearly to your children, and returning to the family refreshed is a parenting act, not a selfish one.
- Require respect, not obedience. There is a difference between a child who is compliant out of fear and a child who treats parents with genuine respect because they have been treated with respect themselves. Servant leadership builds the second kind of child.
The goal of servant parenting is not to produce children who are easy to parent right now. It is to produce adults who are capable of taking care of themselves, contributing to the people around them, and building a life that does not depend on someone else absorbing all of their consequences. That outcome requires parents who are willing to play the long game, even when the short game — the quick yes, the prevented meltdown, the absorbed chore — is so much easier in the moment.
The Long View on Servant Parenting
The return on servant parenting is not measured in compliant children who are easy to manage today. It is measured in the adults those children become — people who take responsibility for their own lives, show up for others without needing to be asked, and navigate difficulty without looking for someone else to absorb the consequences. That is a long investment horizon, and the dividends are not always visible in the short term. There will be moments where the slave parent path looks easier and more immediately rewarding. In those moments, the servant leader parent makes the harder choice and trusts the process. That is what servant leadership means in any context, and parenting is no exception to that truth.
Start today. Pick one chore, one responsibility, one expectation to hold consistently. The compound interest on parenting decisions made repeatedly over years is the same as financial compound interest: the earlier you start and the more consistently you apply it, the more dramatic the outcome becomes over time.
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