From the outside looking in, parenting doesn’t seem all that difficult. You just need patience, clear boundaries, and everything else should sort itself out, right?
However, when you become a parent, and you’re dealing with a full-blast temper tantrum, a headstrong toddler who doesn’t listen to reason, or a screaming child who just won’t eat unless it’s from their special, favorite plate, your patience can quickly run out. Before long, you’re likely to start yelling, counting to three, and threatening with every punishment imaginable just for your child to do one small thing you’ve asked them to a million times.
In these instances, you and your child need positive parenting the most.
Positive parenting techniques can improve your child’s mental and emotional well-being, diminish potential behavioral issues, and even help them boost academic performance. Not to mention that they can help you enjoy some peace of mind.
Learn what positive parenting is and how you can introduce it to your household.
First things first – what is positive parenting? According to UNICEF, it’s a violence-free parenting style where children are treated with respect and care. It’s a unique approach to parenting wherein the focus is on affection and learning in a positive, stimulating, and nurturing environment.
It’s based on the idea that negative reinforcement, such as strict punishments for misbehavior, can rarely yield desired results. Therefore, instead of parents using threats and punishments to get children to “behave”, they should focus on positive discipline.
In a nutshell, that means rewarding good behaviors instead of punishing bad ones.
Since it’s considered a much gentler approach than the traditional parenting style, positive parenting is often confused with permissive parenting – wherein parents are exceptionally enabling and impose no limitations or rules.
However, while the positive parenting program prefers positive reinforcement, similar to permissive parenting, that doesn’t mean that there are no limitations or consequences for bad behavior.
In theory, using positive parenting solutions, you can solve any issue or confrontation with your child without resorting to angry yelling, punishments, and other types of violence. But what does that look like in practice?
Here are the best positive parenting tips you can apply to virtually any situation you and your child find yourselves in.
Let’s say that your children are playing, then all of a sudden, they start fighting. At first, they’re just yelling, but the argument turns physical, and one child hits another. How do you react?
Most parents immediately yell angrily, “Stop hitting your sibling.” Some would opt for a “suitable” punishment – sending the child to their room or taking away some privileges like ice cream after dinner. Some would even take things to the extreme and hit the child back.
None of these responses teach the child that hitting their sibling is not okay. Yelling teaches them that verbal outbursts are an acceptable way to handle emotions such as anger. Sending them to their room teaches them to suppress their feelings. Hitting them back teaches that hitting someone is okay if the adults are doing it.
Therefore, instead of focusing on the punishments, you should focus on discipline. You should teach them how to behave appropriately, even when emotions are high.
In the incident with hitting a sibling, don’t go straight for punishment. Acknowledge the emotions your child is feeling, in this case – anger, then guide them to choose more acceptable ways of dealing with it – talking through the anger, taking a moment to collect themselves, or breathing deeply, for example.
Most parents would love nothing more than to have an obedient child who follows all rules perfectly, never gets into trouble, and listens the first time they say anything – and most parents can only dream of having such a child.
While your children certainly look to you for guidance, you must understand that they’re not under your complete control. They’re their own people who make their own decisions and have their own free will. That means they’ll sometimes decide not to listen to you.
Despite how often you tell them to, they might decide they don’t want to clean their room, for instance.
If you’re like most parents, you’ll yell until they listen to you. Maybe you’ll eventually cave and clean their room for them, or when they come to you complaining that they can’t find their favorite toy in their room, you’ll search for it instead of them.
All of those are easy, short-term fixes that will only guarantee that the behavior continues. If you want a long-term solution, you must learn to control yourself and your responses.
In the case of a messy room, consider what you would be willing to do about it. If you’re ready to vacuum for them, inform them that you will, but only if no items are left on the floor. If there’s a mess on the floor, you can introduce a natural consequence – some of their items might end up in the vacuum/trash can.
Tell them this when you’re both calm and not actively arguing about the messy room.
As mentioned, one of the premises of positive parenting is that you must create a positive, stimulating, and nurturing environment. You can only do that if you’re always present. Not simply present when they approach you with questions or when you have scheduled parent-teacher conferences. Not simply in the same room, staring at your phone while they’re playing on their own.
You must be there for your child and spend quality time with them daily. For toddlers, that can mean playing and interacting with them. For young kids, it could be having a couple of family game nights a week. For teens, it could be just sitting and chatting about life – both yours and theirs.
You need to be interested in their interests and be actively involved in their lives, regardless of their age.
Of course, that doesn’t mean turning into a helicopter parent, trying to micromanage everything they do and pry into their privacy.
Parents are likely to overreact when children behave poorly for no apparent reason, making the situation worse for everyone involved.
If you want to be one of the positive parents, the first thing you need to understand is that young children cannot control their emotions well. With their prefrontal cortex still developing, any emotion they experience can quickly become extreme.
Annoyance can turn to anger, happiness to euphoria. Often, their emotions can feel much bigger than they are, and they need your help learning to manage them.
The second thing you need to understand is that children often do have a reason for overreacting or misbehaving, even when you don’t see it. You need to get to the root of the problem, engage in active listening, and support your child.
For instance, if you’re arguing with your child over cleaning their room, you might simply see your child as lazy and disinterested. Though that’s certainly a possibility, it could simply be that they don’t see why they should clean their room – it will get messy again, anyway.
Talk with them to solve the root of the issue and shed light on why it’s important to clean the room – dirt is going to attract insects and maybe even rodents – they could get sick from the germs and dust, or their friends might not want to come over again.
Most parents think that if they’re not using punishments, they should use rewards in positive parenting. Most parents would be wrong in this regard.
Rewards aren’t positive reinforcements. While they can motivate your child to choose to behave well, they can easily backfire.
Let’s say that your kid never wants to eat their veggies. You could incentivize them by telling them you would give them ice cream for dessert after dinner if they ate everything on their plate.
It could work. Your child might be more willing to eat their veggies just to get the reward. Then, they learn to expect something every time they eat dinner. When they’re not offered anything in return, they’ll learn not to eat their veggies since there’s seemingly no point.
So, steer clear of using rewards in exchange for good behavior. Instead, praise the child when they do something good, take notice of it, and simply reward them with your attention and support.
As mentioned, positive parenting isn’t the same as permissive parenting. You can’t simply let a child do anything they want whenever they want. Not only can it be dangerous at times, but it can also slow down their development and make them spoiled and entitled.
As a positive parent, you’ll need to set clear boundaries, explain why they’re important, and explain what the consequences will be if those boundaries are disrespected.
For instance, you don’t want your child staring at their phone for hours, absorbing all kinds of potentially harmful content, and disregarding their responsibilities, such as homework.
You’ll want to sit your child down, explain why it’s bad to spend so much time on their phone, and tell them what you’ll do if they don’t correct their behavior – install parental control apps like FamiSafe to keep an eye on their phone usage or take away WiFi privileges during certain times of the day.
Mistakes will happen, regardless of how dedicated you are to the positive parenting style or how hard you and your child work to be the best that you can be. A well-behaved child will break a toy. A good-mannered teen will have an emotional outburst. They’ll break the rules by accident or on purpose, disrespect boundaries, and test your limits.
Whenever you can, you should use each mistake as a learning opportunity. Not to shame your child for misbehaving but to help them learn to do better next time.
If your child breaks their favorite toy, yelling at them or punishing them for it will do no good. Instead, use natural consequences and teach them to pay more attention next time. Now that the toy is broken, they can no longer play with it. They won’t get a replacement for it (at least not immediately). They’ll need to learn what to do without it.
Finally, to be a true positive parent who respects their children and creates nurturing environments for their development, you’ll need to be consistent. Consistency and repetition are the keys to helping your child understand the importance of good behavior.
If you explain to your child that there will be consequences for poor behavior, be ready to enforce those consequences. Don’t just make empty threats or choose randomly when you carry out the punishment and when you’ll ignore it.
For instance, if you tell them you will take away their WiFi privileges if they stay on their phone too long, you have to do it. If you tell them that any items they leave on the floor of their room will be thrown in the trashcan when you’re vacuuming, make sure to throw them in the trash.
Inconsistency will only be confusing, and it will encourage your kids to test your boundaries just to see what happens.
Being a positive parent isn’t easy. It takes a lot of hard work, dedication, patience, and understanding. However, staying consistent with your positive parenting approach will be well worth it. You’ll help your children’s emotional development, encourage good behavior, and create a stronger bond between you than you’d imagined.