Do you ever find yourself unable to understand your child’s emotional state? Do you find it hard to comprehend your child’s feelings appropriately, leading to a rift between you two? Only positive parenting can solve this issue.
Positive parenting is the only approach for improving a child’s personal growth and emotional development. But you may be wondering, “What exactly is positive parenting?”
Positive parenting is a parenting style where you deal with your child’s emotions by putting yourself in their shoes. You calmly determine the cause behind their mischievousness and tantrums, and instead of resorting to harsh punishments, you try to instill in them values for growth and development.
Let’s be fair and not hide behind any pretense of perfection because parenting is hard! Doing the right thing often becomes an uphill task. However, understanding how children feel and why they feel that way is the way forward for a positive parent.
This article will prove to be the ultimate mini-guide to positive parenting for you.
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What Are The Benefits of Positive Parenting?
Positive parenting focuses on building problem-solving skills in children and preparing them for the world while creating a lasting parent-child relationship. None of these things can be left out when raising a child. Parenting is not just about controlling bad behavior or making your child obedient to your will, but rather making them understand the importance of achieving goals and performing duties as a human being.
Your child’s emotional well-being will help them develop into a socially conscious and emotionally healthy adult. Positive parenting encourages personal development in kids and is also empowering for the new parents.
It helps you, as a parent, to become a better human being for the sake of your children. It generates a sense of selflessness in your child and the urge to think beyond themselves and their problems.
Positive parenting encourages children’s personal, moral, and psychological development and gives them a view of the world that helps them fit in.
What Are The 5 Positive Parenting Skills?
Positive parenting encourages personal development.
It may be mistaken as a concept where a parent consents to every whim of their child. This is a misconception. Rather, positive parenting is more about building confidence in your child so that they develop important life skills.
While every parent-child relationship is different, following positive parenting techniques has been repeatedly tested and recommended by doctors for raising emotionally healthy children. These techniques stem from the major principles of the positive parenting approach.
By recognizing these facts, the following five positive parenting skills are a must for any parent:
- Set Clear Parental Expectations
It is crucial that you set clear parental expectations. What exactly do you want from your child? How are you going to achieve that? These are a few of the simple questions you must ask yourself.
Once you have decided on a course to follow, understand that you are not going to change your child’s behavior. Rather, you must focus on changing yourself. This will make you feel empowered and more in control of the situation. Also, the child won’t feel that you are trying to set them right by bossing him/her and will eventually give in to your ways.
- Dig Deeper
You must seek to find the reason behind your child’s behavior. If you are only going to label his/her conduct as good or bad behavior, you will never be able to find out why your child is acting a certain way.
So dig deeper. Sometimes there are things that may appear very trivial to us as adults, but to kids, they mean the world. Try to understand how they feel and what causes it. Why do they throw tantrums every time you mention something? What is the real issue bothering them?
Many times, when your child is throwing a tantrum, they will not be able to label the emotion or the cause right away. As a parent, it is your responsibility to help them figure out the issue and label their emotions.
Only after careful analysis of your child’s true feelings will you be able to help them overcome their issues. Having straightforward talks helps.
It is important to understand that if your child is not comfortable talking to you honestly, the problem lies with you. You also need to provide an environment in which your child feels safe to confide in you. Do a self-analysis and try to gain their trust.
- Empathize
Once you understand your child’s problem, try to empathize with him. Tell yourself repeatedly that your child is having a hard time and that he/she needs your support and empathy to overcome the emotional woes. If you sound judgmental to your child or you try to trivialize their problems instead of considering the big issues, your child will close up and will probably never share again.
This is why empathy is one of the most crucial positive parenting skills that is needed for earning your child’s confidence in you. Especially in the early years, children require as much empathy as they can get.
Remain calm and be kind when dealing with your children’s feelings. Give them their due share of your time in order to show your love for them. Also, empathizing with them will teach them the lesson of empathy that they will be able to practice with other people around them.
- Be Firm, Not Harsh
Harsh punishments only breed resentment in your kids. Don’t get harsh every time your child throws a tantrum. However, this does not mean you can’t be firm. Instead, you have to be firm so that your child does not get into bad habits.
Talk to them and set boundaries. Use logic to make them understand why some things are off-limits. Getting harsh will not do either of you any good.
- Be Consistent
Lastly, consistency should remain in any parenting strategy you adopt. It is the most important parenting skill that decides whether your parenting strategy is going to work or not. You have to make a routine for your child and stick to your skills if you want good results.
How Can Positive Parenting Help a Child’s Self Growth?
Positive parenting can encourage a child’s growth in more than one way.
- Responsibility
Behavioral psychologists advocate for the idea that positive parenting encourages children to become more involved in day-to-day activities and become responsible and active human beings.
- Building of Confidence
Positive parenting increases a child’s self-esteem and gives them the confidence that they have their family’s support all the time.
According to Adler’s theory, the sole purpose of a child is to perform his/her duty toward the family. This makes him/her feel worthy, so the child keeps the family’s happiness as an important goal and strives hard to achieve it. Once a child is able to achieve goals related to his/her family, he/she will be better able to focus on personal development.
Other than this, it is evident that families that back their children for achieving and contributing toward bigger things raise children who are confident and strong in the face of problems. This also helps their problem-solving skills.
- Emotional Control
Positive parenting not only helps kids to develop resilience but also provides parents with lifelong skills such as patience, empathy, and dealing with problems in a constructive way. The most important thing that positive parenting teaches is emotional control.
Emotional control is significant for any person’s growth, as acting on a whim can lead to disastrous consequences. Throughout life, we need to manage our emotions according to different circumstances, and that can only work if we have sufficient emotional training. Positive parenting teaches this important life skill, not just to kids, but also to parents.
How Can Parents Encourage Social Development?
Parents can encourage social development using positive parenting skills. They can make children understand the importance of socialization early on. Taking children to school and parks are the first step in their social development.
School is the first place where a child socializes outside of his family. The school not only provides academic education but grooms children in the area of social development. Parents should also encourage children to participate in social and extra-curricular activities like sports and clubs.
Similarly, taking children to parks helps them enjoy the outdoor activities and eliminates the fear of the unknown. Parents should encourage children in public speaking as well if the child has difficulty talking to other children of his age group. Such measures help to improve a child’s social development.
How Parents Influence Your Development as a Person?
A parent has a deep influence on a child’s development. Children are quite vulnerable, especially in front of their parents. They direct pure love towards their parents and fail to consider them humans. This kind of thinking leads them to think that their parents never make mistakes!
When you do make a mistake, it can be devastating for the child. Often the child is unable to understand or forgive. This is the sole reason why parents need to be extra cautious when it comes to raising their children. Very small measures can influence their development, for better or worse.
In this regard, positive parenting appears to be the best approach for gaining a deeper understanding of a child’s mind and behaving in a way that prepares them for the future without becoming a nuisance. Scientific research shows that academic success and the emotional health of a child are directly related to positive parenting. This shows the influence a parenting style can have on a child.
Positive parenting principles, as discovered by researchers, regard a family as a child’s center of the universe. These principles acknowledge that children, in essence, want a place of belonging. Once they know they have a place where they are important, their actions are focused on the goal to contribute towards the well-being of the family.
Therefore, giving them a good family environment and allowing them to contribute to the family prepares them to be contributing members of society.
Quick Review
If you have skipped to the end, we will give you a sneak peek into positive parenting as the parenting approach you must adopt for your child.
Positive parenting requires that you try to understand your child’s behavior and decide on a course of parenting that doesn’t involve harsh punishments. This is because negative disciplinary approaches only lead to emotional damage.
Instead, rely on positive reinforcement to encourage good behavior. This results in increased confidence and improves your child’s self-esteem. Children will also learn essential skills that help them achieve greater heights of success later in life.
If your child lacks emotional support and is afraid to talk to you, you may be raising an obedient child but also someone who will have a hard time understanding and making his/her way in life. You have to be supportive and sympathetic towards the changes occurring in your child’s bodies and minds and give them due attention. Follow through with this and they will be able to trust you, and you will be able to parent effectively.
If asked how positive parenting is mutually beneficial, reply with the answer that it makes children and parents better human beings for each other and society as a whole.
