Most of us would agree that being a good parent is the most important, and least appreciated, of all jrole will take on in life. To raise children who are loving, respectful, and confident requires a lot of patience and understanding. With such busy lives, finding time and being patient is not easy and we end up reacting to our children by using time outs, yelling, or spanking. Often it seems that there’s nowhere for stressed-out parents to turn to learn better ways of raising our children.
The reality is, parenting does take time and patience but keeping a few things in mind can make it work well for everyone.
Positive discipline starts with thinking about the kind of person you hope your child will become as an adult – and what kind of relationship you hope to have with him or her. Our children learn to be adults from us and what they learn early has life-long effects.
If we want our children to be loving, we must be loving even when they do something wrong), comforting them when they are sick, hurt or afraid, playing with them, laughing with them, and supporting them when they are facing challenges.
If we want our children to be respectful, we must also be respectful… listening to them, looking at the situation from their point of view, understanding they don’t have all the information or experience we do and realizing that we need to anticipate what they need to know in order to deal with situations successfully.
If we want our children to be confident, we must give them opportunities to try new things without fear of making a mistake. We must set reasonable expectations for them based on their age and skills and then help them learn new things through teaching and practice – by trying things over and over again.
To see a list of organizations in Alberta with staff trained in Positive Discipline click here.