The process of raising children and educating them from birth till they reach adulthood and even beyond at times falls under the domain of parenting. Sometimes, parents are unable or unwilling to provide such care and the care is thus entrusted to close relatives. There are also cases when it is performed by adoptive parents, foster parents as well as institutions and even godparents. The most important function an individual may have in life is often the one function least prepared for.  Parenting is the hardest job a person may ever have.  The most training people receive for this job is simply the experience of being raised by their own parents. 

The most basic parenting tip for the new parent is ‘Do not panic’.  This may seem humorous but is actually quite a practical parenting tip.  Babies respond to the environment and attitude around them.  As a parent, remaining relaxed and calm will help the infant to be relaxed and calm.  This can be hard to do as a new parent but must be achieved to keep the home more peaceful for everyone. 

It is good if the new parent can have help, for a short time, from an older experienced parent who is calm and self-assured.  Most of the time, one of the grandmothers of the infant will stay with the family to offer parenting tips and support.  New parents need to be ready to accept this help.  If the grandparents are not available, other support can be found from a neighbor or perhaps an older person in ones church.  Some hospitals may have a list of volunteer “grandparents” that will help new parents. 

Parenting Tips for the Future

The most important parenting tip for the lifetime of the parent is to realize that the child is going to make mistakes.  This is easily said but often harder to deal with in reality.  Being a parent is about helping the child avoid the most dangerous mistakes and handling failures and successes.  This begins with teaching a child the stove is hot and continues into their adulthood with career and family decisions.  Many small children, after told the stove is hot, will reach up and touch it.  As a parent, be ready with cold water for the burn and then reinforce the teaching.

A parent shouldn’t berate the child for doing what is a natural response.  A parent just needs to begin to teach the child that a parent has instruction which is valid for life.  This experience may help the child to realize that when given instruction about more dangerous things such as drugs, alcohol, and premarital sex the instruction is probably worth listening to.  No one enjoys a burnt finger and the child will want to prevent further pain. Nevertheless, there is still plenty of information available that provides age-appropriate parenting tips and which helps parents take care of their children. Some of the frequently mentioned topics include nutrition, safety, common problems and what to expect at the pediatrician.

Moms and Dads often need parenting advice that will help them deal with common problems such as sibling rivalry, potty training, getting the child to sleep at night as well as managing behavior problems and temper tantrums. There are many qualified experts out there that deal with such topics and who will be best suited to get parenting advice from for all manner of child rearing issues. Using the RPM3 guidelines and the different parenting advice available should help parents sift the useful from the not-so-useful advice to become sensible and loving parents.

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If you spend any time in the parenting section of the library or your local bookstore, you will find hundreds of books on disciplining and raising your children. All the leading experts have their own ideas about what works and what doesn’t. As a parent, you have your philosophy that you bring to the table. Most of your thoughts come from what you learned as a child. You either liked the way your parents raised you, agreed with some of it and disagreed with the rest, or didn’t like any part of your parents’ ideas. Then you talk to or watch other mothers you know and these ideas get added to the mix. You take the best from all these sources and you set off to be the best mom you can be.

And then something happens that interrupts your plan for raising your children. Dad has a whole other set of ideas and plans for raising his children. Most of the time, dad’s ideas have not come from the many books on parenting he reads or the oodles of fathers he brainstorms with. His ideas, too, come from the way in which he was raised as a boy, but sometimes Dad operates on auto pilot when raising and disciplining his kids. Even the best and most agreeable parents sometimes disagree. So what do you do when your two philosophies clash?

1. Talk it out when the children are not around. You’re in the middle of dinner, and the children are refusing to eat. They are crabby and testing your every nerve. Dad can see that you are stressed so he decides to take matters into his own hands. He yells with his loud, booming voice, “Eat your food right now or you will go straight to bed.” The kids start crying. You are even angrier now because you can’t stand yelling. You feel it is an ineffective way to discipline the children, and you believe it scares them. Wait until the children go to bed and have a talk with your husband. Explain to him exactly how you feel about yelling. Listen to his side of the story and why he chose to do what he did. Do your very best to understand him and acknowledge his feelings. Then decide together what would work better for everyone in the future.

2. Decide how important an issue is to you. My friend’s husband takes his little girl to swimming lessons every Saturday morning. After swimming, the little girl is starving. Dad’s way of ending their fun time together in the pool is to let his daughter pick something to eat from the vending machine. My friend does not want her daughter associating fun time with Dad and junk food. She believes they should come home so her daughter can eat something healthy. Sometimes each parent needs to decide how important an issue really is to them. If Dad rates his need to buy his daughter a junk food treat after swimming at an 8, and Mom rates her need for her daughter to eat healthy at a 6, then Dad wins. You learn to give in on issues that aren’t extremely important to you.

3. Understand that differences can be good. Believe it or not, children can benefit from differences in our parenting styles. As long as children are being loved and treated with respect and fairness, it can be good for children to learn to adapt to different childrearing approaches. No two people in this world are exactly alike. Some parents are very flexible and some are quite structured. Some parents are playful and others are more serious. There are quiet and mild-mannered parents and loud and boisterous parents as well. Step back and appreciate your differences. Children who are exposed to diversity have a tendency to be better rounded and adaptable.

4. Combine your viewpoints and get on the same page. The single most important thing you can do for your children and for your marriage is to get on the same page when raising and disciplining your children. Being on the same page does not mean you necessarily agree on everything. It means you support one another as parents. If Mom says there are no privileges until homework is done, the rules are the same with Dad. If Dad says curfew is at 11:30 PM, then Mom enforces this curfew. Take the time to work through your differences and put together a plan that both of you can be happy with. Decide what the house rules are going to be and how the children will be disciplined when the rules are broken. Then stick together and provide a united front for the benefit of your children.

Lori Radun, certified life coach for moms. Get her FREE monthly ezine for moms who want healthier and happier lives at http://www.true2youlifecoaching.com.

� 2005 True to You Life Coaching, LLC

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When I finally decided to get married, it was the greatest moment in my life. My wife had two children from a previous marriage. We dated for a entire year before getting married and I never questioned her style of parenting. I had no children at the time. My thoughts at the were, if a person has small children, obviously they knew much more about parent than I did. A few months into the marriage, I long discovered that my wife’s children needed a new direction very badly.

Her children took advantage of our different styles of parenting. If I said no, my wife would tell them yes. And they would actually be laughing at the both of us. Because to them, the adults could not find common ground. My wife would award her children for not doing their school work, she would reward them for not cleaning their rooms, she would reward them for bringing home bad grades from school,and she would reward them for being disrespectful.

I was very different from my wife, I would not reward them for doing wrong when I knew they were both capable of doing the right thing. Therefore, I implimented an discipline regiment into the household. For the kids and sometimes, even my wife.I found out that is was not their fault, it was their mother’s.I wanted them to start cleaning up their rooms, keeping their hands of things that didn’t belong to them, and to respect adults.

As mentioned, I would tell them the right things that they should do and she would tell them not to do it. Everything that I would try to do for those kids, my wife would undercut it. It almost seemed like that she wanted her own children to fail. They were not bad children at all, they were not getting the upbringing they needed to function in society. And when I tried to help her kids with everything they needed to be helped with, she got angry with me.

The children were starting to play me against their mother. And she knew that and accepted it. We soon separated and she filed for divorced. Our different parenting styles ended a marriage. All because my wife wanted her children to fail with no intervention from anyone.

By having complete different parenting styles, we were sending mix messages to the children, and in my opinion it had proved destructive to the kids. I did not check out my wife’s parenting style before I had married her. So Therefore, I might blame myself for some of this.

I have learned that parents should be on the same page when it comes to their children. In traditional times, the mother was always seemed at the one time to be the most lenient when it came to discipline and the dad was a bit tougher. And that was reason to why most young children always ran to their mother more than dad when they got into trouble.

Children can become confused, to which adult to look up too, especially in a time of emotional meltdowns. There should be an equal ground when it comes to young children, They must learn real responibility. And as they grow older and enter society, they will look back on the parent who told them to study hard and you will make something out of yourself, than the parent who rewarded them for doing the wrong thing.

copyright 2006

contact me: Gwilder40@hotmail.com
www.freewebs.com/gwilder

I live in chicage with my six year old son. I have written several articles, some short stories, and I have a book that has been published. I wrote for the Chicago Defender for a time. I’m a stay-at-home dad at the writing of this.

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