Hi parents,
I hope that you have taken some of the first five rules on board and made a conscious effort to implement at least one rule into your family unit. The next five rules look at taking charge of your family and keeping your values alive, regardless of what everyone else is doing. This is something that is quite difficult to achieve, particularly when the media and our children’s social groups play such an influential role on our children’s lives.
Happy reading,
Ms Jodie
Five golden rules for parenting success
Here are five more golden rules to guide you along your parenting journey this year:
- Build developmental knowledge
Many challenges parents experience with their children are due to a developmental mismatch. That is, parents raising their ten year old as if they are eight. The nuances of parenting are age-related, yet due to inexperience we so often don’t read the cues. Recently, I witnessed a mum and dad tearing their hair out trying to communicate with their nine year old son. For the first time he was saying no to them. They thought him stubborn and disobedient. I thought him normal, as nine can be a problematic age, where usually malleable children suddenly start changing. Puberty is stirring. When this couple’s second child turns nine she will experience the benefits of her elder brother paving the way and breaking her parents in for her.
- Practice problem-ownership
Please, please, please allow children to own their own problems. Children of all ages can be creative when they have problems to solve. Everything is a potential problem to kids and they need opportunities to resolve them themselves. By all means, coach, guide, give hints but give them a chance to sort out relationship issues; challenges with teachers and academic challenges themselves.
8. Swim against the tide
Listen to talkback radio, read the headlines of a newspaper or watch a current affairs TV program and you will realise that, right now, we live in an incredibly judgemental society. Parents are harshly judged as well. Allow your kids to walk to school and you risk being judged as negligent. Drive your kids to school and you risk being told that you are spoiling them and neglecting their physical wellbeing. It takes a strong parent to swim against the tide of popular opinion. It also takes a strong parent to deny her child say a mobile phone when every other child has one. It helps to say “This is the way we do it in our family.”
9. Be brave
Perhaps the biggest challenge facing parents, and their children, is the ability to let go of their parental reigns and give kids the freedom they need to develop autonomy. It’s relatively easy to develop children’s independence at home as the stakes aren’t as high. If they can’t cook a meal then you just have to do it for them. However, developing children’s independence outside the home is a different story. Many parents feel decidedly wary about granting children and young people more freedom. There is the perception that the world is a dangerous place. Granting kids freedom has an element of risk; that’s why parents need to be brave. Having the courage to let go is a basic requirement of parenting. It won’t stop you worrying, but that’s part of the game.
10.Add emotional intelligence to your parenting mix
With kids experiencing mental health challenges at a depressingly high rate it’s time to add some emotional intelligence to the parenting mix. It is important that parents develop a deep understanding of how emotions work: how emotions can be recognised; how they can work for us and against us; how we can regulate our emotions so they do not overwhelm us; and how to recognise and respond to the emotions of others. These sound like life-changing skills that if learned, are capable of impacting significantly and positively on future generations.
Published by M. Grose.
