Parenting Tips

Some people may find parenting easy, while others struggle to handle their constantly developing kids as they grow older each year. With this progression, their children change, and parenting styles are forced to adapt as well in order to incorporate new challenges. This blog will cover several different parenting tips that will be beneficial to the parent, child, and relationship.

The first thing this blog will focus on is parent and child boundaries which are an important aspect of parenting. Children often feel the need to push boundaries in order to get what they want, so having the right one’s will limit the amount of time’s that they decide to push them. It is important to be a trustworthy parent so that your child can count on you and notice your honesty, allowing them to feel like you will keep your word when making promises. It is also important to keep your rules/boundaries short, crisp, and clear so that your child can focus on the few and understand them, rather than having too many to handle or remember. Recognizing your child’s appropriate behavior and giving them praise will often reinforce the behavior and you will notice them performing it again in the future. Also, attempt “natural consequences” which provides the child with less punishment and more disappointment such as missing a fun activity to clean their room, rather than forcing them to partake in an unpleasant punishment like spanking or time-outs.

These boundaries are important to establish a clear parent-child relationship, however it is also important for your child to respect and look up to you, to uphold these boundaries. This applies to both the positive and negative behavior of the parent, as the child will take that behavior and use it as a method of learning. If a parent is setting a bad example by performing inappropriate behaviors around the child such as smoking, abusing alcohol, yelling, or using violence then the child will most likely respect the parent less, listen to them less, and copy these behaviors. On the other hand, those parents who set a positive example such as those who have confidence, academic success, and other healthy behaviors will encourage their children to follow in their footsteps, as well as look up to them. This applies not only to how the adult speaks to others, but how they speak to the child themselves which can make or break their relationship and role model figure. It is more important to show the children with their own actions, then to simply tell the children through words as actions tend to speak louder than words.