Parenting and Family Education

Archive for the ‘positive parenting tips’ Category

In modern Britain when parents are expecting a baby it is quite natural and almost expected that parents will attend anti-natal courses to prepare them for the birth and maybe the first 6 months of their child’s life. Somehow however there is still a feeling in modern society that once you are through this initial stage of your child’s life the rest come naturally and that parenting is an instinctive skill that we should all have.

If any help was needed then new parents would typically have looked to their parents and wider family for parenting tips and parenting advice. However in more modern fast moving societies like Britain today family units are much more mobile and fragmented and thus often this ‘traditional’ support is no longer available. This has left a vacuum for parents who often are faced with challenges in bringing up their children that they do not know how to deal with no family support to help them.

Faced with this situation many parents would just hope they can muddle through – others would read books or parenting guides for parenting tips which may or may not have helped them resolve the issue.  But as many parents will have found, as their children grow the issues change. Problems with bedtimes or mealtimes get resolved then homework becomes an issue and often the teenage years loom large in the background like a black cloud on the horizon moving ever closer.

In the last decade or so parents have become more aware of ‘Positive Parenting’. Positive Parenting is a broad term that covers a range of life skills. These parenting skills can be learnt in the same way that one might learn the skills associated with any job and when learnt can allow parents to be much more effective in their interactions with their children so that their relationship with them and their whole experience of the years their children are growing up can be enriched.

The Parent Practice is an organisation based in SW London that has been teaching positive parenting skills to parents for the last 10 years.   The Parent Practice produces parenting  guides in the form of short publications, books and CDs but our main work is done face-to-face via parenting courses.

Of  all the positive attitude tips offered on the many self help resources available the best is to change the way you think. And if it was really that simple then this article would end here.

However, knowing what to do is different from figuring out how to do it. You cannot change the way you are thinking if you are not aware of how you are thinking, so any list of positive attitude tips must include suggestions for self analysis and emotional reflection.

Starting at the beginning it becomes self evident that positive attitude tips can only be offered if we first understand what the word attitude really means. In everyday common language the word attitude has many meanings, but it is mostly used to refer to a cognitive construct or in simpler terms a “pattern of thinking”.

Since we cannot see the way a person is thinking, attitude is usually inferred from behaviour. When a person’s cognitive construct or way of thinking is positive their behaviour will reflect what will be interpreted as a positive attitude.

A positive attitude allows a person to create the life they want because they are not afraid to see things as they really are and work to create their own reality. A positive attitude really reflects a lack of fear in moving forward and creating change.

There are many benefits of a positive attitude including:

better health improved relationships with others both at home and at work more opportunities for success improved productivity

How Do You Devleop a Positive Attitude?

It is a partially true statement that we get our attitude from our parents!  It is partially true because what happens to us in life is only part of the equation for developing a positive attitude How we interpret what happens to us is equally if not more important in creating our attitudes.

What is a cognitive distortion?

If you interpret what happens to you in a negative way you develop what are called cognitive distortions.  Cognitive distortions are nothing more that errors in interpretation and those errors can be changed if identified, examined, and re-interpreted in a positive way.

Positive attitutde tips must include the reccommendation to become aware of your own cognitive distortions and change them!  Cgnitive distortions keep you in a pattern of thinking which forms a barrier to creating the life you really want.

The cognitive distortions which would be behind a negative attitude would go something like this:

“I screwed up again.” “I am not smart enough to try that.” “It is not really what I want but it is good enough for me.” “If I ask for help people will think I am stupid and know that I cannot even run my own life”

The cognitive construct behind a positive attitude would go something like this:

“Even though this bad thing happened, I am still a good person.” “I am going to take this opportunity to learn as much about why this happened as I can because I do not want it to happen to me again.” “I think that perhaps I need some help with this because I do not seem to be able to help myself in a way that is helping to resolve this problem.”

The difference between these two ways of thinking is immedaately obvious. Think of it this way:

Developing a positive attitude means interpreting life’s events in a way that is truthful, honest, and self affirming and keeping a positive attitude means continuing with these positive and self affirming interpretations of life’s events, even negative events.

It is possible to change your attitude!  But it does require identification and critical analysis of your own beliefs about yourself and the life you think you deserve.

The best possible of all the positive attitude tips?  Change the way you think!

New parents are often warned that the ages one to three are, perhaps, the busiest time for child rearing, as it is during this phase that the child learns to walk, talk, and do things all by himself or herself. For the experienced, parenting toddlers is the most critical stage as they tend to absorb every bit of information around them and are the best imitators. As parents, we have to be careful about what we say or do in front of our children.

Parenting Tip: Toddler Rearing 101

Children’s minds are like sponges; they absorb everything they see, hear, smell, taste, feel, without knowledge of good and bad. It is during the toddlers activity stage that their brains are totally without filters, making the expression ‘Monkey see, monkey do’ very appropriate. Good parenting skills, therefore, means being extra mindful of our own actions as adults and leaving very little room for lapses in our behavior and habits.

Of course, we can’t always control what our children are exposed to. It would be an ill decision to keep our toddlers locked in a specific environment just because we want them to grow up ‘perfect’. We have to let our children grow — and part of this growth means being acquainted with not so positive elements from their surroundings.

Parenting Tip: Toddler Environments

Television is often the number one enemy of parents looking to raise well-mannered and well-behaved children. Toddlers activity often involve exposure to different kinds of visual media. However, while there is a huge risk that they will get exposed to violence and bad examples, there exists an equally large chance for learning.

Do not deprive your toddler of television; instead, monitor what he or she watches and physically be there to immediately explain things he or she might not be able to understand. Having other avenues for learning, like toys and books, around also introduces variety to toddlers activity, so they don’t just focus on one medium.

Overall, good parenting skills and making sure your toddlers get more of the positive than of the negative out of their environment means you have to be there to provide guidance and love. Absentee parenting no doubt increases the child’s predisposition to ill behavior. By setting a positive example and building a relationship that encourages questions, you can better guide your toddler toward a positive demeanor.