Parenthood

“Sometimes as parents - we just need to take three deep breaths, rewind and press play again.” (Author Unknown)
“Our children need our love the most when they least deserve it.”(NaturalParentsNetwork.com)

Parents, children don’t belong to us. We are only caregivers. They are God’s possession, not ours. He has temporarily placed them under our care. For some years they are under our roof. We have to understand this truth. If we don’t raise  our children in a  positive environment, then it can have a devastating impact on the self image and development of our kids. It is important to be loving and positive parents.

Many parents see discipline and punishment as a key to successful parenting. Although punishment sometimes is appropriate, a nurturing and supportive relationship is the key to positive parenting. These are some ways to be positive parents:

Look for and comment on the positive. Many parents use instructing, ordering , nagging, criticizing, threatening and punishing techniques. In my opinion, these techniques don’t work in the long run, or change the environment. Since you can find lots of excuses to criticize, look at what the one author said about it: “ Correction does much, but encouragement does more.”(Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe)

In the Bible it says,” The tongue has a power of life and death and those who love it will eat its fruit.” (Proverbs 18:21) So as  parents we have to use  words of praise daily.

Do not expect perfection!  If you do, your kids will think they are never  good enough and will experience  a sense of inadequacy.

Be Respectful!  As parents we should not use sentences and words like “where are your brains”, “you dummy”, “baby”, “stupid”, “liar”, “loser” and so on.

Establish friendly positive atmosphere during special times of the day! Examples:

• When your kids wake up, greet them with friendly words.
• Eat together as a family.
• Turn off the TV and visit friends and relatives as a family.
• Before and after school send your kids off  with friendly words and greet them warmly when they come  home from school.
• At bedtime develop routines, spend time with your children before they go to bed. Have a friendly talk, tell a story, pray together, sing a song. 

Our kids need our presence; nothing  else can fill up our presence- not our money, not our status. Please spend time with your kids. Be there to talk to them, help them, attend their events, and cheer them on in different  activities.

Lastly, I would like to say that neither parents nor child is perfect, so we should not be too hard on ourselves or on our children. However, we should strive to be the best parents and do our best to achieve the best in our children.