Parenting is not an easy thing to do. Being a parent means to be extremely responsible in discharging your duties and be vigilant of the behavior of your kids. It takes some real will to become a good parent. Obviously to become the better parent, you need advice, because there are certain aspects of parenting which require support and guidance.
Here are some of the bits and pieces of advice I have collected. Perhaps it will throw some light on certain important but often suppressed parenting issues. Understand these things I wish every parent knew, and resultantly you can observe the rapid changes in your children’s response.
There are certain patterns in parenting which can help you enhance your vision and offer you an insight into parent-children relationship. Understanding these patterns is important, and they provide you the right direction which is approved by parenting experts and pediatricians. Know these things and they will certainly help you better your relationship with your children.
Your parental duties require you to:
- Boost up confidence of your kids
- Spend time with them, it’ll cherish them
- Acknowledge their feelings
- Convince them with love
- Be not authoritative, querulous, obstinate or irritable
- Never bruise their self-esteem
- Console them on their failures and help them to rise
- Keep an on their physical and emotional needs and guide them
- Be a role model for them in practicality and not in words
- Be kind but consistent and firm in your stance
To reach out to your children and to grow the best of relationships, there are certain things which you ought to know and remember at all times. These things should become your method of assessing situations and responding to changes in your children, if you want your bond with them to thrive for longer. You find them here underneath!
20. Let Them Be Little
Being a parent, it is important that you are patient with the children. This is one of the things I wish every parent knew, but sadly very few of the parents follow it. Parents recognize that a crying baby needs some sleep or food. This is even true when the parents are sleep deprived because of the babies. However, expectations begin to change once the babies grow to toddlers, able to walk around. This is the difficult stage when they start drawing on walls, biting siblings or shouting too loud. These habits lead to agitation. These expectations rise even higher when they get of age to start school. Only when the children have grown to teenage, we begin to realize their behavior taking its natural course to maturity. Let them be little when it is the only thing they can be. It is important that parents should not enforce habits on toddlers.
19. Hold Your Child to High Standards
If we allow the children to perform according to their minds, it is most likely that they will turn to shortcuts and less demanding methods to execute their jobs. In these circumstances, they perform to the least of their abilities. If we agree with this level of performance and if we are registering satisfaction, it means we are failing as parents. This sort of satisfaction indicates belief that your kids are less likely to achieve higher. Such sentiments and feelings are destructive. Kill them by promoting hard work and by motivating the growing and learning children to strive for a better performance. Do not confuse it with being a drill sergeant. As a parent you should know how to teach your kids to apply themselves to the tasks and show pride in their achievements more often.
18. Open Your Mouths Less and Arms More
When our children have done something wrong, we usually shout at them and talk about them with everyone. And when they need our help to fix something, we fix it for them not with them. These things lead to a lack of understanding. This is justified by our beliefs that being adults we are wiser and that we see the bigger picture, but because of this belief, our children are left out of it. This is why they often don’t register a positive response to our efforts to better them. Consider saying less and listening more to the children. This is what they need more than a lecture at times when they themselves are feeling down. Children need our understanding. Give it to them and you are a good parent.
17. Children Have a Right to Privacy
A fear of not knowing something is always nagging some parents to inquire into their children’s lives. It is this consistent and constant inquiry which often teaches the children to become experts at hiding certain things from you and that is only the start of a chain of negative habits. However, if we respect their privacy and we give them space to think for themselves and to come to us when they need us, it works wonders on the parent children relationship starting with a stronger trust. This is one of the most important things I wish every parent knew. Don’t confuse this with negligence, which comes from a lack of involvement. Some rare circumstances still do arise, when you are compelled to dig into the children’s lives. Otherwise, you need to learn being at peace with the privacy you have granted your children because it is only for the best.
16. Encouragement is Not the Same as Indulgence
Encouragement is fostering courage into your child’s mentality, which is an important aspect of personality building, but it is in no way the same as indulgence. Latest studies have indicated that indulgence is the cause of weakened surviving abilities owed to a decreased desire to solve one’s own problems. Often, being the encouraging person means you have to stand back for a bit as your child processes the scenario and tries to devise his own solutions. It inspires judgment before action. Encourage your child to improve his innate ingenuity and use it but step in where he needs assistance. On the contrary, indulgence kills creativity and it defeats the purpose of parenting.
15. Never Label a Child
Calling it a “nickname” is the common misconception which often encourages parents to label their children in a strive to achieve better relationship. This is one of the things I wish every parent knew because labeling a child is limiting in the best of circumstances, and damaging and destructive at the worst. These labels can be hard to shed. They not only stick for longer than you would desire, but they also stick to the child’s mind and they become his weakness for the many years to come.
14. Children Should be Encouraged to Pursue their Interests
Make it doesn’t feel suitable for you, swallow it. If a girl wants to fix a car or a boy wants to learn to sew, let them have a go for it. It is important for a good parent children relationship for you to encourage your child’s needs and to support them in the things they love. If the dreams seem odd or unlikely, as a parent you should know, it is necessary to see them through. It boosts the toddler’s mind because it is important for a child to learn through his exploration, and to discover where his interests lie. By supporting their taste, we encourage them to discover more.
13. Forget Punishments, Focus on Teaching
If every parent had one wish, it would be to stop hurting their children, but through generations of adages, old wives tales and orthodox inclinations we tend to take the stricter road. It is necessary that we foster and inculcate the right waves to behave, but using punishments to do the teaching is not just ineffective, it is also destructive. We misunderstand the notion of discipline and too much of our attention is focused on making the children pay for challenging behavior in varying circumstances. Promote good behavior by rewarding because encouragement is the fastest teacher. This solves all challenges in parenting.
12. Encourage the Children to Express themselves through Art, Dance, Music
Everyone needs creative outlets to channelize their thinking through art. Help your child find his channel by introducing him to these habits. A liking developed at this age can be a personality developer to the minimum and a career change in the best of circumstances. Besides, children are inherently creative, which is why this is one of the things I wish every parent knew.
11. Play Hooky
Indulge in a game for the toddler rather than for your own enjoyment. A good game that you can play in the backyard or on a visit to the park not only creates a load of memories for the both of you, but also develops stronger bonds between you and the children. The thrill of stealing times ‘together’ is a miracle doer. It develops powerful memories in the child’s mind, and that’s a great thing to develop healthy relations.
10. Children are Sovereign Beings
By this, I mean that children belong to themselves. They cannot be regarded as your property, and with this belief, your perception of parenting also changes. Your possession on them sometimes results in strangulating their own personalities. It is every child’s right to be able to live life the way he or her wants to rather than the way we want him or her to. Being a parent, you must know that parenting is a pleasure not an investment, and once you understand that, you will begin to indulge in more immersive activities with the children and your bond with them will grow ever stronger.
9. Treat Every Child as Special
Indeed, every child is special. You only need to realize that and express that to the child. This is one of the things I wish every parent knew because it is as important in character building as anything else. If you want your child to achieve bigger goals in the future, the first thing you need to inculcate is self-confidence, and the best source of self confidence is expressing that the child is indeed special. Don’t confuse this with meaningless praise, which can lead to a lot of personality complexes far from pleasant, and which are not good for productive parenting.
8. Say Sorry; Don’t be Reluctant
It’s not always the way we need the children to apologize for any wrong deeds. Rather, saying sorry to the children, when required, is a way to express vulnerability, which consequently conveys that you are in this together. It is one of the basic things I wish every parent knew. As a parenting expert, I believe this is something every parent should remember at all times, and express a slight degree of vulnerability, which is often the thing the children need most from us.
7. Let Go off Excessive Control
It’s is natural to desire control over the children which arises from a deep sense of responsibility for them, and it is well justified, but there come times in parenting, when it is best to simply let it go. Research has indeed proved that ceding control to the little ones and supporting them along the course of their actions leads to a greater chance of positive consequences. Isn’t that what we all want as parents? Careful, don’t give the children unfettered control of everything. Keep an eye on their wants and their needs, and apply restrictions where it is necessary.
6. Help Them to Find the Answers Themselves
Give them all the answers they need, and that’s a shortcut, a quick fix which saves you a lot of trouble. But what you are doing is developing mental dependency in the long run. Instead, inspire the child to discover the answers for himself. It may take long in the star but gradually, the child’s perceptive skills increase, and you begin to see positive changes in their behavior, an inquisitive mind is always a creative one, which is why this is one of the things you must know as a parent.
5. You Get What you Focused On
The more you ponder on the weak points of the child’s personality they get clearer and more vivid they become; but if you remain your focus on the good stuff, you will gradually find the best in them. That will make you feel proud. You get what you focus on, so focus on the good stuff, and you will gradually begin to see the child under a new light.
4. Speak Softly and Get Results
It is one of the most destructive habits. It halts any further improvement in the relationship. A yelling today can still have repercussions a month from now. The children aren’t deaf; there is no point in pointing the finger at innocent brains. Instead, speak softly and allow them to respond to what you are trying to convey. This makes sure they are responding to what you are saying and they are learning from what you have to teach them. This is one of the most important things I wish every parent knew.
3. Children are Our Spiritual Teachers
Don’t search for expensive spiritual retreats; your sage teacher is the toddler around you. Out of their sheer innocence, children watch our moves, observe us and they devise crazy methods to figure out this crazy world. Listen to the child, see what he has to teach you, and you will start to feel a growing respect for the toddler’s activities and you will begin to see cause in everything they do. That is one of the things you must know as a parent, but it takes patience and it takes perseverance above all else.
2. Be Prepared
This is one of the practical things I wish every parent knew. Being prepared for all sorts of circumstances is essential. Children are unpredictable, and you can never be sure that you are taking enough caution for a safe upbringing. If it’s a changing weather, be prepared for an onslaught of sickness, and do everything in your power to prevent it. Try to predict changes in the child’s behavior and health and make sure you are one step ahead if you wish to thrive as parents.
1. Take The Long View
See the bigger picture. Having a nag for the immediacy of things is one of the weaknesses inflicting every parent these days. An action which solves a problem today could have damaging repercussions tomorrow or a week from now or even longer. Predict all probabilities before you take action because one can never be too sure with children. Try to see the bigger picture and you will see the little details which act as game changers in your parenting. Besides, seeing the bigger picture helps us derive compassion and will from our relationship with our children.
Remember, your attention encourages your children to feel themselves important. But to connect with children requires compassion and communicating skills too which are a lot unlike skills that we use to communicate with our peers.
