What makes a great parent?
A good parent is someone who strives to make choices in the most effective interest of the child.
What makes a fantastic parent isn't only identified by the parent 's actions, but also their intention.
A good parent does not need to be perfect. Nobody is perfect. No child is perfect either … keeping this in your mind is important when we set the expectations of ours.
Successful parenting isn't about achieving perfection. But it doesn't imply that we shouldn't work to that goal. Set very high standards for ourselves first and then the children of ours next. We function as role models that are important for them.
Top Ten Parenting Tips
The following are ten tips that will help you be a much better parent, learn great parenting skills, and avoid bad parenting.
Some people are not simple or quick.
It's unlikely that any person can do them on a regular basis.
However, even in case you only do part of these tips in this parenting guide, you'll be moving in the correct direction if you continue working on them.
#1 BE A good Role MODEL
Walk the walk. Don't just tell your child what you want them to do.
The best way to teach is to show them.
Human is a special species in part because we can learn by imitation. We're programmed to imitate others' actions, comprehend them, and integrate them in to our own. Children, in particular, watch everything their parents do very carefully.
So, be the person you would like the child of yours to be - respect your kid, demonstrate to them good attitude and behavior, have empathy towards your child's emotion - and your child will follow suit.
#2: Love THEM And Show Through ACTION
Demonstrate the love of yours.
There is no such thing as loving your child a lot of. To love them cannot spoil them.
Only what you choose to do (or give) in the title of love may - things like material indulgence, leniency, low expectation, and over-protection. When these items are provided in place of love that is real, that's when you will have a spoiled kid.
Loving your child may be as easy as giving them hugs, spending quality time with them, having family meals together, and hearing your child's problems seriously.
Showing these actions of love is able to trigger the release of feel good hormones like oxytocin. These neurochemicals can bring us a full sense of calm, emotional warmth, and contentment; from these, the child, will acquire resilience and never to point out a closer relationship with you.
#3: Practice Kind And Firm POSITIVE PARENTING
Infants are born with around 100 billion brain cells (neurons) with relatively few connections. These connections create the thoughts of ours, drive our actions, shape our personalities, and essentially determine who we are. They're "sculpted", strengthened, and created through life experiences.
Give your child positive family interaction, particularly in the early years. They'll then be able to see positive experiences themselves and also offer them to others.
But if you give the child of yours negative experiences, they will not have the kind of development needed for them to thrive.
Sing that silly song. Have a tickle marathon. Go on the park. Laugh with your child. Allow them to have positive attention. Drive through an emotional tantrum with them. Solve a problem together with an optimistic mind-set.
These positive experiences produce good neural connections into your child's brain and form the memories individuals that your child carries for life.
When it comes to discipline, it appears to be hard to remain positive, especially when dealing with behavior issues. But it's possible by using positive discipline and avoiding strong discipline.
Being a good parent means you have to teach your child the morals of what's right and what's wrong.
Setting limits and being constant will be the golden rule to good discipline. Be kind and firm when you set rules and implement them. Concentrate on the reason behind the child's misbehavior. And allow it to be a chance for them to learn for the future in a positive manner, instead of to get penalized for the past.
#4: Be a Safe HAVEN FOR The CHILD of yours
Let your child know that you'll remain there for them if it is responsive to your child's signals and sensitive to their needs. Support and accept the child of yours as a person. Be a warm and safe place for your child to explore from and go back to.
Kids raised by parents who are consistently responsive tend to have much better psychological regulation development, interpersonal skills development, along with mental health outcomes.
#5: Talk with The CHILD of yours And Help THEIR BRAINS INTEGRATE
Most of us already know the importance of communication. Talk to your child as well as listen to them thoroughly. By maintaining an open line of communication, you will have a better relationship with your child as well as your kid may come to you when there is a problem.
But there's an additional reason for communication. You help your child integrate various parts of the brain of theirs, a crucial process in a kid's development.
Integration is similar to our body, in which different organs must coordinate and work together to maintain a healthy body. When different parts of the brain are integrated, they can function harmoniously as a whole, which means less tantrums, much more good behavior, much more empathy, and better mental well-being.
To do that, talk through troubling experiences. Ask your child to describe what happened and how they felt developing attuned communication.
You do not need to offer solutions. You do not have to have all the answers to be a good parent. Just paying attention to them talk. Ask clarifying questions using simple words are going to help them make sense of their experiences and integrate the memories of theirs.
#6: Reflect on Your own personal CHILDHOOD
A lot of us wish to parent differently from our parents. Even those who had a good upbringing and a thankful childhood might want to change some elements of the way they were brought up.
But very often, when we open the mouths of ours, we speak the same as the own parents of ours did.
Reflecting on our own childhood is a step towards understanding the reason we parent how we do. Make note of things you'd like changing and think of how you would do it differently in a real scenario. Attempt to be mindful and change the behavior of yours next time those issues come up.
Don't quit if you do not succeed at first. It takes practice, lots of practice to consciously change one 's child-rearing strategies.
#7: Focus on Your own WELL-BEING
Parents need relief also.
Pay attention to your own well being to avoid parental burnout.
Oftentimes, things including the own needs of yours or the overall health of your marriage are placed on the back burner when a child is born. If you do not pay attention to them, they will become bigger issues down the road. Make time to enhance the relationship of yours with the spouse of yours.
Stressed-out parents are more prone to fighting. Do not be afraid to request parenting help. To have some "me time" for self-care and stress management is crucial to rejuvenate the brain.
How parents take care of the child of theirs physically and mentally can make a big difference in the parenting of theirs and family life. If these two areas fail, the child of yours will suffer, also.
#8: Do not SPANK, NO MATTER WHAT
Undoubtedly, to some parents, spanking is able to bring about short term compliance which occasionally is a much-needed help for the parents.
However, this method does not teach the kid right from wrong. It only teaches the kid to fear outside consequences. The child will be motivated to stay away from getting caught with behavior that is inappropriate.
Spanking the child of yours is modeling to your kid that he/she can resolve issues by violence. A child who is spanked, smacked, or hit is much more prone to fighting with other children. They're much more likely to become bullies and also to use verbal/physical aggression to solve disputes.
Later in daily life, they're also more apt to lead to delinquency and oppositional behavior, even worse parent child relationships, mental health issues, and domestic violence victims or even abusers.
There are an assortment of more effective alternatives to discipline that have been shown to be much more effective, such as positive discipline (Tip #3 above ) and positive reinforcement.
#9: Keep Things In Perspective And remember YOUR PARENTING GOAL
What's the goal of yours in increasing a child?
If you're like most parents, you want your child to do well in school, be productive, be responsible and independent, be respectful, enjoy good associations along with you and some, be to care and compassionate, plus have a happy, healthy and satisfying life.
But how much time do you spend working towards those goals?
When you're like the majority of parents, you most likely spend most of the time simply attempting getting through the day. As authors, Bryson and Siegel, point out in the book of theirs, The Whole Brain child, instead of helping your kid thrive, spent most of time simply attempting to survive!
To not allow the survival mode dominate the life of yours, next time you're feeling angry or frustrated, step back. Consider what anger and frustration will do for you or the child of yours.
Rather, find ways to switch every negative experience right into a learning opportunity for them. Even epic tantrums can be transformed into priceless brain-sculpting moments if you concentrate on teaching your child, not attempting to control them.
#10: Take a SHORTCUT By utilizing Findings In Latest PSYCHOLOGY And NEUROSCIENCE RESEARCH
By shortcuts, I don't mean shortchanging the child of yours with tricks. What I mean is taking advantage of what is currently known by scientists.
To parent is one of the most researched fields in psychology. Lots of parenting techniques, traditions, or practices were scientifically researched, verified, refined, or refuted.
For optimum parenting advice for increasing a child and information that are supported by science, here's one of my favorite science-based parenting guides, The Science of Parenting.
Making use of medical knowledge is of course not a one-size-fits-all strategy. Every child is different. Quite possibly within the very best parenting style, there can be many different effective parenting practices you could choose based on your child's temperament.
A good example is employing spanking to discipline. You will find numerous better alternatives, time-in, reasoning, e.g. redirection, etc. You can choose a non-punitive discipline method that actually works ideal for the child of yours.
Naturally, you can additionally choose to utilize "traditional" or "old school" parenting https://parentinghowto.com/ styles (e.g. punishing or maybe spanking) and might still get a "similar" outcome.
Differential susceptibility has found us that children with different temperaments respond to the quality of parenting differently.
Those who are more vulnerable to parenting quality will have much better outcomes under great parenting but worse outcomes under poor parenting.
Those who are much less prone may "turn out fine" regardless of how tough their parents treat them. Though it does not imply those practices are good. These children are simply lucky. They can thrive despite bad parenting, not due to it.
Why take a possibility with sub par parenting practices if you can use well-researched, better ones?
The value of parenting can't be underestimated. Taking science based parental advice might not be the simplest way to parent. It may require much more work on the part of yours in the short term but can help you save lots of time and agony in the long term.
Final Thoughts On Parenting
The good point is, that although parenting is difficult, it is additionally really rewarding. The bad part is the rewards typically come much later than the hard work. But in case we try our best now, we'll ultimately reap the rewards and also have nothing to regret.
To Happy Parenting!