Are You Using these Five Effective Parenting Tips? Part II

You want your kids to have the best and you’ve only got one chance to create the kind of adult you want them to be: thoughtful, enthusiastic, productive, loving and hardworking. These tips complete last month’s list of effective parenting tips to help you with this challenging task.

6. Be What You Want Them To Be:

Even if you’ve never taken a class in psychology, just about everyone knows that children learn by modeling and the people they model most often are their parents. Everyone says "I want my children to be happy." Well, are you happy? Do you have honor and integrity? Do you treat people the way you want to be treated? Are you overly materialistic? Are you moody? This article is not designed to lay any guilt on you because it won’t make you a better parent. If there are things you want to change about yourself, work on it now. Try to be the best human you can be. There’s a good chance your children will model your good qualities.

7. Exercise Love not Fear:

Don’t belittle anyone - certainly not your children. Don’t be sarcastic. Drop all the negative stuff. Most of us make our decisions based on one or two emotions: fear or love and for most people, they’re driven by fear more often than they are by love. If you want healthy children, teach them to act based on love not fear. In other words, teach them to be in the minority. I can tell you lots of things not to do: don’t be negative, don’t be sarcastic, etc., but what we’re really talking about is don’t cause hurt. Don’t cause pain. Don’t cause fear. Instead, create love. Build self-confidence. Let your children know they are safe and protected.

8. Set Rules and Boundaries:

It’s a law of nature that every action has a consequent reaction. Every action of your children has a consequence. Whatever your rules are, make sure your children understand them and understand the consequences of breaking them. Breaking those rules is bound to happen at some point or another, so be sure you follow through with the consequences - not out of anger or emotion, but just because those are the consequences. Discuss with your child what the consequences could be. Let your child help to establish his own consequences. It makes it a lot easier for you to enforce if he’s participated in their creation.

9. Be Your Children’s Hero:

Keep promises. Say what you mean and mean what you say. If you break your promise, you’re a liar. Let your children inspire you to be the best you can be. Children will do as you do. I wanted to be my kid’s hero - a role model, a guide, the kind of man they would one day look for in a husband, the kind of man they would try to create if they had sons. I found my meaning in life: I would be great dad. What could be more important than that? What about you? Will you ever do anything that is more important than raising your children?

10. Don’t Resist Change:

Have courage. You’ve got no choice. People generally don’t like change. We know that change is inevitable and yet we resist it because we believe it will be painful. But resisting it is, in itself, painful. So we resist the unknown because it might be painful. It all boils down to the fact that we’re afraid of the unknown. Most of our actions are based on fear or love. Divorce was certainly a huge change and it caused all kinds of fear. Have faith. Take courageous risks. Create a stable environment. Don’t make comparisons. Look back from the finish line to move forward. Go out there and really live. You were meant to do this!

Effective parenting isn’t accomplished instantaneously. It will take practice for you to get all of these into your method of operating. Practice still makes perfect, even for you. We’d like to recommend that you re-read this article and keep it at the ready so the next time your children require your practical parenting expertise, you’ll know right where to go for it. These ten effective parenting tips can become your parenting guide to positive discipline so that your children turn out to be successful adults.