Parenting Tips
5 Practical Tips to Enhance Your Parenting Strategies
August 14th 2023
Lets work on some parenting strategies that you can put into action, and refer back to whenever you feel you need a little help.
Label the Behaviour and not the Child
The key here is to tell your child exactly what the behaviour is that is not acceptable, for example, hitting is bad, as opposed to saying that you’ve been naughty, bad, silly or bossy.
A study of nursery workers has revealed that 95% aren’t allowed to use the word ‘naughty’
Labelling a child will hugely affect their self-esteem and will more often than not encourage the child to sub-consciously live up to their label which will cause more of the same behaviour. Labelling the child will also damage the relationship between you over time.
Your child needs to know exactly what it is that was an unacceptable or unkind behaviour, and what they need to do instead, or to put that right, so I know it takes extra time and patience in the moment, but always be sure to explain what the behaviour was that you don’t want to see, and offer an alternative. When you can get into the habit of labelling the behaviours you want to see more of, no-matter how small, you will begin to see more of the desired behaviours coming through, and less of the undesired behaviours.
House Rules & Consistency with Discipline
There are many ways to make clear house rules for your children, depending on their ages, you can make posters together, or sheets of rules in different colours, maybe even draw a house and have a rule in each room, get your children to help you put this together, but having a clear set of house rules, will give your children clarity and consistency over what is expected of them.
Children thrive from clear boundaries, they like to know where they stand, so having some age appropriate visuals around will make it so much easier for you when a house rule has been challenged. You can go back to the rules with your child and ask them to tell you what rule has been broken. It will help their understanding.
Likewise, having consistency around the discipline is also vital, so that the child knows exactly what happens when rules are broken. Behaviour contracts are great for older children, as this is all laid out for them and agreed to, but it shows what will happen if they are doing the things asked of them, and what will happen if they don’t. These will also need to be age appropriate and responsible. For example if two siblings are fighting over a toy, it is put away for 10 minutes. If a teen is late home, they will be expected home half an hour earlier the next time. Make sure your consequences are responsible, and you are prepared to carry them out, for example you may ban social media for a week in a rage, but you may find this really difficult to carry out, however, depending on what house rule has been broken, it may be necessary to ban a games console, or social media for an evening, or a day, this can always be extended if the behaviour continues.
Have your consequences ready in advance, this will make sure you are willing to carry them out if necessary and help you to keep them relevant plus your child knows exactly what will happen if they break the rule, this helps to promote healthy boundaries for them. Equally if house rules are kept really well for an agreed period of time, why not agree a treat in advance, for example a trip out, or a favourite meal.
Routines.
Children thrive with routine, and so can we for that matter.
Routines aid our parenting, because when children know what’s coming next, or have regular habits, for example homework time, or bedtime routines, things become more natural and less forced, meaning you will have less of a job pushing things!
Routines create a calmer household, when your children know what to expect, this cuts down on the stress.
Established expectations can help to save a power struggle when a child becomes accustomed to ‘tidy up time’ or ‘bath time’ or ‘homework time. You become their partner in helping them with this this rather than the one battling with hem.
Prevention
Working out times of the day when your children are tired, and when you are tired, can help you to think about what can you do differently, don’t try to be doing everything at this time of day, juggling housework, cooking and parenting can be fatal when you are all tired. I used to find tea time was the worst time of day for me. What could I put in place to make tea times easier? Pre-prepare meals etc. Forward planning with my food shops. Don’t expect children to amuse themselves at this time. Give them attention when they are tired before they start to play up? Do some gentle activities together such as reading, definitely not a good time to be thinking about homework!
Think about the ‘Observing Behaviours’ module of this course where we fill out the behaviour tracking diaries to show triggers and pre-cursors to behaviours. Review your behaviour diaries, or try using them for another week or so, to see some of your children’s patterns and look at where you can prevent some of the behaviours, by using one of our parenting strategies before the build ups you are noticing. If you need any help with spotting these, and choosing appropriate strategies, please let me know.
Planning.
What can be pre-planned to make your week easier?
Meal planning and online food shopping is a great one, this can save time and stress, especially when taking little ones out to the shops with you. Some online grocery retailers will allow you to book up around 3 weeks worth of deliveries, some of which you can pretty much ‘repeat’ your shopping list and just change a few things on there relevant to that week’s meal planning, preventing you from having to pop to the local corner shop which is great for budgeting too. What else can you plan for? Looking ahead at homework for the week, so it’s not left until the last minute, this can reduce tension in trying to get it done. Making up sandwiches the night before will reduce your morning stress.
Write yourself a list of the things you could plan ahead for this week.