Young children need consistency and predictability. This allows them to feel sure of you. After a while though, a bit of unpredictability can go a long way. To many children, most parents are about as predictable as a washing machine cycle. It is important to have structure and consistency, but it is also useful to act in ways that your children wouldn’t expect. This keeps them interested in learning from you or at least wondering what you are up to.
Perhaps the most important feature of parents in healthy families is that they realise that all of the above is desirable but not always possible and so they look at how to promote good functioning while not wasting energy on blaming themselves for the times when things don’t quite work out as they had planned.
