Parenting Tips That Guide Children to Behave

With great parenting tips, effective discipline has much more to do with communication than control.  Many parents feel that to control their children is to be a good parent.  However, studies have shown that parenting that provides less coercive discipline can be related to better outcomes for children.  If the coercive parenting is replaced with a firm and kind style, communication that relates to the child at his or her level, and discipline that builds the child’s self-esteem, then the child will tend to do better.

With great parenting tips and practice, true parental control is developed over time. This becomes more of an influential control than a physical control. 

This is true parental power—to be able to influence the child to behave better, while building self-esteem, and teaching long range life skills.

Here are five of the best communication ideas i.e. parenting tips that will contribute to creating this result:

Write to your child

Beginning at a very young age, parents can incorporate written communication into the parenting style.  This is an especially effective form of communication for parents and kids that seems to have trouble communicating verbally. Also for all parents that want to be more effective and more of an influence in the child’s thoughts and actions.

This idea can begin young, as early as three or four. 

At this time, since the child cannot yet read, the parent should write in pictures that communicate the meaning.  A happy face to say “good for you!” Or a cartoon of parents sleeping on their bedroom door to remind the kids if there was an agreement not to wake parents early on Saturday (personal favorite)!  When the child is school age, the notes can be placed in lunch boxes, or handed to kids on their way to school.  The notes should be generally positive, acknowledging and heartfelt statements and requests.  Only use this idea for concerns if you regularly submit encouraging notes to your child.

Parents that write notes to their children report that the children also begin to use this method of communication with their parents.

Wouldn’t it be nice to receive a request or complaint in writing so you have time to think over your response?  My middle daughter, Michelle, would usually have a request imbedded in the note with a check box for yes or no.  It’s really difficult not to be supportive of such creative and respectful requests! On her seventeenth birthday my daughter Briana gave me a “mother-daughter daughter diary”.  In it she wrote to me what the diary was for and how we could share with each other through this medium.  She had been keeping these diaries with several of her best friends at school, and I was certainly honored to get one!  It was a most wonderful avenue of sharing for us her senior year in high school.  The diary has allowed us to connect on matters we don’t usually talk about and has given me a special appreciation for my daughter and her world.  So write, write, write!

Think It over.

Give your child’s ideas and opinions a great deal of credence.  Whenever possible, verbalize your thought processes in mulling over a particular situation.  When your child understands that you are giving weight and consideration to his or her concern, you are more likely to have a better outcome if you need to deny the request.  Look at the situation from the child’s perspective with understanding and detail.

Lead the child to the answer.

Often, the parent knows the best answer to any given situation.  The age and experience of the parent create no competition with a child that is just beginning to learn about and understand the world and how it works.  Therefore, it is often of little value to tell the child the “answer”.

The most effective and beneficial manner in which to handle these situations with the child is through leading that child to come up with the answer his or her self. 

The parent makes this happen through asking leading questions such as, “What would happen if…” or “What will the result of that be?”   Help the child work through the pros and cons of an issue, while maintaining a neutral stance.  While it may seem backwards, the parent is more influential to and more respected by the child when communication is handled in this way.  The child begins to trust that you have faith in his or her ability to work out problems and will begin to ask your opinion and advice.  As long as the parent constantly tells the child what to do about everything, the child see the parent as an adversary.  There are times where the parent needs to “tell it like it is”, but there are far more opportunities to take this other approach as well.

Parenting Tips to Maintain integrity.

What does integrity mean to you?  Each person has a different sense of personal integrity.  What are your standards of conduct?  Do you place value in honesty, kindness, contribution?  After taking some time to think about your personal standards, begin to pay special attention to behaving in a way that expresses those standards.

Parents are notorious for bending and breaking the truth with children! 

Our intentions are innocent enough, yet the results are confusion and lack of trust with our children.  If you believe in truthfulness, do not lie to your kids, ask them to lie for you or make excuses for lying.  We begin this “fuzziness” with the truth with our children at a very young age.  Before they are able to tell the time, we tell them “Just a minute” or “later” and this allows us the freedom to enjoy refraining from commitment.  However, this undermines the children’s respect for us as parents over time.  Kids will begin to beg, plead and pester.  It is better to be honest and clear in an up front as possible manner.  Tell them exactly when you will respond.  Tell them exactly how much time, and follow through to the minute, even if your child does not yet tell time, he soon will!

Maintain physical closeness and connection.

With concern about molestation and child sexual abuse, many parents are afraid to be physically close to their children.  Sometimes this discomfort can also be caused by abuse when the parent was a child.  However, children and all of us need physical closeness!  Hugging, cuddling, playful fighting, rocking, stroking hair, massages, and bear hugs are just a few ways to be physical with kids.

Also doggie piles, steam rollers and other funny family ways to physically bond should be explored. 

When you speak to a child, how about placing a gentle hand on their shoulder?  Or touching their cheek?  Maintaining this physical connection takes work, particularly as the children become teens and may go through stages of resisting touch.  Usually they are testing their boundaries, so be respectful.  Since my kids were small, I have given them back and leg massages at night as part of our bedtime routine.  This has been one of the best ways I can think of to maintain physical closeness, and my kids give great back rubs back!

So many Great Parenting Tips...

There are many other parenting tips for effectively communicating with children.  Tips that can build mutual respect, self-esteem and help kids learn to be great problem solvers.  These are my top five parenting tips and should be included on a regular basis in every home.  As with most of the effective parenting tools, the results come through time and repetition.

The above ideas should also take the child’s age and ability into consideration. 

It would be unproductive to get into some of the above conversations with a tired, cranky two-year-old!  The times of parental frustration should be used as times to re-group, re-think, and re-evaluate.  Attempting any form of thoughtful discipline takes time, thought and a relaxed environment.  If you’re stressed out, give yourself and your child a cooling off period.  Often the answers will come during the break.

Discipline does not need to be punitive, coercive, manipulative or negative.  Children can learn in a positive, upbeat, firm and kind environment much better than a negative one. My Dial-A-Discipline Wheel can give you more parenting tips that build self-esteem.  The parents set the tone for the family environment and so parents have great influence over the nature of that environment.  Dream big, children are capable of so much more and so much better than we give them the chance to express!  While I do not believe in “parent bashing” with problematic kids, I do believe that we parents have so much more influence in our families than we realize.  We need to take this influence to heart and strive to do and be our very best and to never give up on our kids!

Happy Parenting!

Deb

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