Some Tips for Healthy Parenting
Looking back through my files I've come across several great tips for Parents. Here are just a few that I hope will be helpful to you as you invest your day in raising our next generation.
1) Know the difference between big things and little things.
2) Know the difference between incompetence and rebelliousness. If you child does something out of incompetence, then take the time to teach your child how to do it right. If your child acts out of rebellion toward your authority as a parent, then this behavior needs to be disciplined or punished, but cannot be tolerated or accepted.
3) The word "discipline" means "to teach, to shape, to mold, or to perfect." Remember this.
4) Be firm, be consistent, and build a personal relationship with your child.
5) Be careful not to become overly performance oriented with your children. They are more than just homework, reports, and chores. There is a real person there who has hopes, dreams, fears, likes and dislikes. Get to personally know your child.
6) Quality time is no substitute for quantity time. The average father in America spends only 47 seconds a day in conversation with his children. But I am sure that it is quality time.
7) Be a positive person, and a positive role model for your child. The best predictor of how your child will be when he is 30-40 years old is how YOU are as a person today. Be a positive influence on your child socially, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.
8) Make the effort to catch your child doing something right every day.
9) Teach your child how to be successful. First, take the time to figure out in your own life what it means to be "successful." Is it just having more money or stuff? Or is there more to your life than that?
10) Teach your child self-control and respect for others.
Douglas Cowan, Psy.D., is a family therapist who has been working with ADHD children and their families since 1986. He is the clinical director of the ADHD Information Library's family of seven web sites, including http://www.newideas.net, helping over 350,000 parents and teachers learn more about ADHD each year. Dr. Cowan also serves on the Medical Advisory Board of VAXA International of Tampa, FL., is President of the Board of Directors for KAXL 88.3 FM in central California, and is President of NewIdeas.net Incorporated.
Related News
|
 |
|
|
RELATED ARTICLES
Cooking With Your Kids Helps Develop Motor Skills for Preschoolers
Did you know that cooking with your kids is a natural way for them to develop motor skills? If you've never looked at cooking that way before, think again. There's a reason why kids have a universal love for cooking - just like for stacking blocks and banging!
Parenting Your Teenager: The Trust Issue
Q. How do we decide what our teens should be able to do? How do they earn trust and responsibility?
Children and Mom and Paper
Memorabilia ? Children can create enough artwork for an entire gallery in a few short weeks. The key here is choices; establish a particular place-e.g., basket, drawer, or shelf ? for each child to put artwork. When that space is full, have one-on-one time with Mom and select your "three favorites". This is a lesson in life, which is continually full of choices. Then create a Memorabilia Box for each child where the favorites are kept. Keep the box in a convenient place, with the lid off, so it's easy to add new items. Use the same approach for photographs. A great parent-child activity is "scrap booking" ? have your child help make a family album, or get double prints, and let the children make their own. If you're not into albums, use attractive boxes. If you're on a tight budget you can use shoeboxes. Label the outside of each packet with the contents (e.g., Lee's 5th birthday, Mary's soccer outfit, etc.) with the date. At the end of the year, store your calendar with the photos in case you decide you want to create albums when the children are grown and you need to retrieve more specific dates. The key here is "Less is more." A few great photos are far superior to boxes of unidentified ones! One of the biggest causes of clutter ? and family disagreements -- is paper. Create a filing system for important papers. Create one file for each child for each area. For example, Medical Records ? Mary, St. John's High School ? Tom. Children can begin their own filing systems as soon as they start school. The key to any effective filing system is a File Index. This can be a handwritten list, a word processing document, a spreadsheet, or you can use Taming the Paper Tiger software (see below). A File Index will help you avoid making a file for "Summer Camp" when you already have one for "Camp Wesley." Here's a sample of some other file headings for information that children might like to file: Cartoons I like English Homework Family Information Friends Fun Things to Keep Gift Ideas for me Gift Ideas for others Hairstyles I like Math Homework New Year's Resolutions Phone Numbers/Addresses Recipes I can make Savings Account Scouting Information Summer Camp Information
The Courage to Be a Loving Parent
Most of us really don't like it when someone is angry at us. We don't like it when people go into resistance to helping us when we need help, instead of caring about us. We don't like it when people withdraw from us, disconnecting from us and shutting us out. We don't like it when people make demands on us and do not respect our right or need to say no. Many of us will do almost anything to avoid the soul loneliness and pain we feel when people treat us in angry, resistant, demanding and uncaring ways.
Parents --- Homeschooling Can Take a Lot Less Time Than You Think
The time you will need to teach your children the essentials - reading, writing, and arithmetic - is much less than you think. Let me quote author and former public-school teacher John Gatto from his wonderful book, Dumbing Us Down:
Kids: Channeling Mania Towards Productivity
More and more kids these days are diagnosed ADD, ADHD, or Bipolar. There are biological reasons for this, and there are environmental elements which can soothe or aggravate the symptoms. It becomes increasingly easy to "react" to each mood swing rather than to develop a plan for different positions on the pendulum swing. Yet, preplanning is the best chance at teaching our children coping skills that will serve them throughout life. A child will learn better during a manic or hyper state-if the parent is able to stay strong and kick into a preplanned directed goal.
Wholism and Materialism
Perhaps I could make a lot of money by founding a Thinker's Anonymous organization. It surely is the rage to eschew thinking.
Three Sure-Fire Ways to Teach Your Child About Safety
Levels of Safety
Learning Responsibility is a Lifelong Process
Learning responsibility is an ever widening and lifelong
process.
Introduction to the Medications Used in the Treatment of Attention Deficit Disorder
There are several treatment options available to help improve the symptoms of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Since there is no prescription medicine that can "cure" for ADHD, the various medical interventions seek to improve symptoms. The most commonly used medicines are stimulants, such as Ritalin, Dexedrine, Cylert, and ADDerall. Stimulants have been around for about 50 years. Overall, they work very well. Ritalin and Dexedrine are moderately beneficial, or very beneficial, for about 70% to 75% of those who try them.
Five Ways To Build Super-Strong Relationships With Your Children
One of the questions I ask in parenting presentations is "How do you show your children you love them?"
Trip, Trip, Trip... Here Is Your Night Visitor Again!
Night Visits From Your Child
Should We Apologize To Our Children?
An apology is a sign of strength, not weakness. Sometimes we may believe that if we apologize to our children we weaken ourselves and the rules we are trying to keep. We may also believe it will make our children think their behavior was okay. It is important to understand that this is not the case. I have found myself at times reacting negatively to my daughter's occasional inattention to her daily diabetes care. Not just negatively but loudly. What I discovered was that I could apologize for how I responded to her behavior, without condoning what she did. (Or didn't do) Apologizing in this manner makes it clear that I am not relaxing the rules. It does not undermine my authority or my ability to make the rules and expect compliance. I found it does set a good example and encourages her to be open and apologize when she has done wrong. Apologizing shows empathy for what I may have done to her feelings and respect for her right to be treated fairly.
Helping Your Children Develop Their Self-Discipline
We want our children to do the right thing, especially when they are out with their friends. We want to believe in them, but somehow, we don't feel certain that they would.
My Dads Secrets
From the book Spider's Night on the Boom
Developing a Fantastic Relationship with Your Child
Here's a scene: A parent "might suddenly grab a happliy playing child and shower him with excited hugs and kisses without warning." What's wrong with this picture?
Are You Frustrated With Public Schools?
Join a growing number of parents and teachers!
An Overview of Alternative Treatments for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder
Since so many would rather avoid the use of stimulant medications for the treatment of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder if possible, a growing need for the development of alternative treatments for ADD ADHD has developed over the past twenty years. Although there are many products that claim to help any child with ADD ADHD, the truth is that there are only a few non-medication treatments for attention deficit disorder that have actually undergone even the simplest of clinical trials. Most alternative treatments have never been carefully studied to determine their effectiveness in the real world.
Growing Good People
At age seven months in the womb, humans begin language coordination in response to what they hear through the mother's belly wall. Some 52 muscles learn to respond to the various phonemes (a basic language sound like 'b' in boy and 'm' in man) of the language surrounding that belly. There are also studies showing that the emotional state of the parent imprints as do things like music and other environmental conditions. Nutrition, drug use and pollution spill right through directly to the fetus via the placenta and umbilical cord. Parenting begins way before the bassinet.
Thirteen Values You Can Teach Through Homework
Are you a parent concerned about passing values on to your kids?
Do you worry that you can't find the time, or don't know how?
You don't need thirty-minute multi-media presentations!
You can do it with homework.
In those precious moments you spend supervising your child's
homework, here are thirteen values you can subtly pass on:
|
.jpg)
