“While wanting to teach our children about life, our children teach us what life is all about”  (Angela Schmidt)

10 Tips for Positive Parenting

1)         BE THERE TO LISTEN – it’s sometimes hard to let our children be themselves without judgement .  Listen more than you speak. Get comfortable with pauses. It’s that moment when no one speaks that allows deeper communication. ! LISTEN to yourself , do you remember your childhood, what hurt you, what supported you.

2)         NURTURE YOUR  OTHER RELATIONSHIPS -  No man is an island ! How are your support networks, can you improve them ? We are their role model, we must try to be as we want them to be.

3)         BE GRATEFUL/SHOW APPRECIATION –  Notice the positive .Praise is a powerful thing - Not every little thing needs to be corrected. Things don’t have to be done perfectly, especially by a four year old ! Good enough is  a great yardstick. Constant drawing attention to the negative, undermines confidence and self esteem .

4)         TEACH RESPONSIBILITY/DON’T DO TOO MUCH – natural consequences are part of life, if we try and protect our children over the small things how will they cope in the real world.  We often “rescue” our children. Instead of telling them what to do ask questions. Feel the pressure roll off your shoulders as your children take responsibility for themselves. Allow them to experience the consequences of their behaviour , if clothes are not in the wash basket don’t wash them, if she forgets her pencil case she will have to borrow if she does not revise she will get low marks. These are every parents struggle. To stand back and let her make her choices .This is not, not caring but in the long term it teaches personal responsibility, which is more and more lacking in our society.

5)         RESPECT - If I were to ask you  ‘do you love and respect your children ?’ I’m sure you would all say of course. But do they know you do ? Do you show it in your behaviour towards them? How do you speak to them ? Our children’s self esteem lies in our hands, the way we talk to our children reveals  a lot about how much we respect them

6)         SAY NO WISELY – the  most helpful thing I was ever told was ‘pick your battles carefully and don’t overuse the word no at any age’. Boundaries not rules, negotiate don’t dictate The more flexible you are the easy things will be. Look at why you say no, are you being reasonable, taking a pause before you answer can help, Seek win/win in conflicts, as this nurtures self-esteem. Allowing choice empowers your child, a child who feels powerless is not a happy child.

7)        BE CONSISTANT- say what you mean, mean what you say . This can be one of the hardest things to do but boundaries provide stability in a child’s life whatever their age consequences and sanctions for unacceptable behaviour must always be clear and fair. Children hate injustice more than anything.

8)         LET GO-  from the moment they are born, we are preparing our children for independence. From crawling to walking, to school to their first job. Each age has a letting go stage , when we need to take a leap of faith. We have to learn to let go of being in control, of being right and of needing stuff  from our kids like appreciation and smiles and happiness. If we are really honest much of what we do for our kids comes from our needs not theirs ! Parenting is not about controlling our offspring it is about guiding them .  

9)         BE KIND TO YOURSELF – you are not alone. Look after yourself, don’t waste energy beating yourself  up over mistakes made, move on.

10)       REMEMBER ‘THIS TOO SHALL PASS’  -The biggest trap we fall into as parents is thinking that we are in control. Like it or not we do not have that much control over another persons life and although we want so much to protect our children from the hurts that life can bring the truth is that they need to make mistakes just as we all did No matter how bad it gets, remember have fun, they are  too soon gone!

‘It never rains, but it pours’ has taken on new meaning in the last week ! As people struggle to come to terms with the losses and difficulties that the November rains have caused to businesses and homes around West Cork it may seem as though the country is beset by problem after problem.

When bad things happen to us it can induce a fearful pattern of thinking that is a struggle to get out of. Worse still, when several things happen together,  we can feel overwhelmed,  that there is no room to breathe and that no sooner have we come up for air than another wave hits us.

We all encounter events in our lives that are beyond our control, yet it is our attitude to these events more than the event itself,  that can make or break us. One reaction is to close down, to stop reaching out but the tragedy is that the more closed we become the more life shrinks from us and so the cycle continues. Another way is to pretend everything is fine. Sometimes we make such a good job of this, we even believe ourselves ! As human beings it is our natural tendency to look around and see others doing well. To assume that everyone else is getting a smooth ride! This is in part due to the game we all play. The I’m fine game !

I fight regular battles with my inner fears. When things happen to us or our loved ones that we could never have predicted, it haunts us forever. Lurking in the corners of my mind, all manner of dangers, fears and anxieties seem all too real. What I have found is that speaking them takes away their power. Allowing the fear, frees me far more than fighting it.

No-one wants to be constantly be-moaning their lot but a little honesty about how we feel and what we are experiencing can break down a lot of barriers and help us to feel less isolated and more grounded. The cycle of fear can be broken, by sharing our emotions and fears we become vulnerable and it is precisely this vulnerability that draws people to us. In order to receive help, we first need to reveal that we need help. It’s hard to feel empathy or compassion for someone whose veneer never cracks ! Some of my closest friendships have been formed in times of crisis and that tells me, that what we seek from each other is a real, deeper heart connection. As human beings we can so easily lose trust .So my questions to you today are these :

‘How do you live your life, in a closed or an open fashion?’

‘How can you be more real in your life?’

‘How present are you in your life ?

We can grow to be closed or even shutdown through our experience of life. Yet it is important to realize that often that experience is  long gone and by clinging to it we are tainting our possibilities for our present and the future.

Published in the West Cork People Dec 2009