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Parenting the Young Child:
Parenting young children is a huge topic and what amazes me is how unprepared most of us are for this most important job in the world.
For every other profession you need degrees, education and experience but for parenting young children, bringing up the next generation, molding our young children, most of us get nada, zip, absolutely no training at all.
Every age child is a different challenge as every kid is different. Different temperaments, different intelligence levels, different levels of energy. How in heavens name are we expected to know how to deal with them all.
Well we often don’t and that’s why we need to turn to the experts to help us learn how to deal with these young people, our children.
Parents don’t realize that children coming into this world are like us going into a new country. We don’t know the language, directions, what is expected of us and what is not. So we either wait for someone to teach us or we go out of our way to learn how to act.
Parents, however often automatically expect children to know exactly how to behave without being taught.
As a parent of 6 and a former preschool teacher and director with a Masters in Early Childhood Education I have had the occasion to see and go through many different parenting and educational books.
For the topic of parenting young children I have have come up with some basic concepts that every parent should be aware of when parenting their children.
#1 The importance of limit setting with Children
#2 The danger of loving too much or smothering our children
#3 Helping them develop a good self esteem to prepare them for life ahead
Though this article can be my no means exhaustive I wanted to share with you some of the resources I have used in the past that I have found to be excellent.
Two of the best books I have read on that is the well known 1,2,3 magic by Thomas Phelan and Setting Limits by Robert Mackenzie.
IThe importance of limit setting when parenting young children:
Setting limits for kids teaches them rules and expectations for acceptable behaviors.
If you have tried yelling, threatening, lecturing, and have want to keep away from power struggles and damaged relationships you need to learn how to set limits from a very young age. Each age changes as the children grow and learn to test you over and over again. You will learn from reading these books
- Why limits are important:
- Children need boundaries and guidance.
- Children are collecting info about what works ad what doesn’t.
- Children are not mind readers
- Children discover whose in charge.
- Limits provide security.
You need to be careful though that the boundaries you give your children should not be over controlling, under controlled or inconsistent. The boundaries need to balance freedom and control.
Good limits will ensure that your rules are not punitive or permissive but democratic which means then they have freedom within limits.
There are soft limits and firm limits and it is very important that children learn what behaviors are allowed and which are not.
Robert Mackenzie in his book Setting Limits discusses the whole dance that parents go through and teaches you how to get off of the dance floor by 3 specify techniques.
- Check in procedure (where you make sure the child knows what you say)
- The cut off technique (when you end the discussion and don’t get pulled into more)
- The cool down to help restore self control to the child
Even though many of McKenzies techniques are great for children of all ages, I clearly remember using them on children that were more in the 9-11 stage and referring to the well known book 1-2-3 magic for my younger children.
1-2-3 magic uses similar techniques as setting limits but breaks it up into 6 tactics that are more speicif for young children. He uses start behaviors, natural consequences, charting and other very simple easy to follow techniques that prove an indispensable guide for the young parent.
The trick to this topic is you must be consistent and follow through.
This point leads us into the topic of parents who love too much.
Parents Who Love Too Much by Jane Nelsen and Cheryl Erwin.
Nelsen and Erwin discuss how parents who love too much think that giving the children too many rules and limits will make their children not love them or they are scared to limit their children’s behaviors which leads to spoiled, entitle. permissive dysfunctional children.
I am going to give you some points that show if you are a parent who loves too much. If so then its something you may want to do something about that.
- Are you overprotective
- Do you often rescue your children from their mistakes, like consistently bringing them their lunch when they leave it home
- Are you overly permissive
- Do you give in to whining and tantrums?
- Do you make too many decisions for your kids?
- Do you overindulge them materially?
- Do you not expect enough contribute to the family?
- Do yo praise excessively?
- Do you fight your kids battles for them?
- Do your kids Rule the house?
None of these behaviors are beneficial for kids, often in the sort term and even more in the long term. Check out “Parents Who Love Too Much” by Nelsen and Erwin to really determine if you are one of those and can do anything about it.
One more point about parenting that I want to bring out is what children learn from you own relationship. What Children Learn From Their Parents Marriages by Judith Siegel.
I think this area is an undeveloped area of importance. One of the most important things I learned when bringing up my own children is how the relationship between the two most important people in the child’s his parents life impacts on the child himself.
When children see how much parents love and value and respect each other this makes them so much more secure and confident and happy and compliant. Judith Siegel talks about this at length in her book “What children learn from their parents marriage”
Some of the points she brings out in her book
- Don’t fight about kids in front of them
- Limit the emotional pitch of your disagreement
- Fight fair
- don’t bring kids into the middle
- Reassure kids when you had a fight with your spouse
- Don’t confide in kids about marital problems
- Do acknowledge in front of kids that the fight is over
- Balance anger with love and humor.
This is a huge topic in itself and I am just bringing it to your attention to make you aware that your relationship is not only important to the relationship itself but is important on how it impacts on your children.
Just remember through all of this. Parenting is huge and complicated and important and we cant’ do it alone. Get as much help as you can get.
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