Raising a happy, healthy
child is one of the most challenging jobs a parent can
have -- and
also one of the most rewarding. Yet many of us don't approach parenting
with the same focus we would use for a job. We may act on our gut
reactions or just use the same parenting techniques our own parents
used, whether or not these were effective parenting skills.
Parenting is one of the most researched areas in the field of social
science. No matter what your parenting style or what your parenting
questions or concerns may be, from helping your child avoid becoming
part of America's
child obesity epidemic to dealing with behavior problems, experts can help.
In his book,
The Ten Basic Principles of Good Parenting, Laurence
Steinberg, PhD, provides tips and guidelines based on some 75 years of
social science research. Follow them and you can avert all sorts of
child behavior problems, he says.
Good parenting helps foster empathy, honesty, self-reliance,
self-control, kindness, cooperation, and cheerfulness, says Steinberg, a
distinguished professor of psychology at Temple University in
Philadelphia. It also promotes intellectual curiosity, motivation, and
encourages a desire to achieve. Good parenting also helps protect
children from developing
anxiety,
depression,
eating disorders,
antisocial behavior, and
alcohol and
drug abuse.
What are the 10 principles
of good parenting?
1. What you do matters. Whether it's your own health behaviors
or the way you treat other people, your children are learning from what
you do. "This is one of the most important principles," Steinberg
explains. "What you do makes a difference...Don't just react on the spur
of the moment. Ask yourself, What do I want to accomplish, and is this
likely to produce that result?"
2. You cannot be too loving. "It is simply not possible to
spoil a child with love," Steinberg writes. "What we often think of as
the product of spoiling a child is never the result of showing a child
too much love. It is usually the consequence of giving a child things in
place of
love -- things like leniency, lowered expectations, or material possessions."
3. Be involved in your child's life. "Being an involved parent
takes time and is hard work, and it often means rethinking and
rearranging your priorities. It frequently means sacrificing what you
want to do for what your child needs to do. Be there mentally as well as
physically."
Being involved does not mean doing a child's
homework -- or
correcting it. "Homework is a tool for teachers to know whether the
child is learning or not," Steinberg says. "If you do the homework,
you're not letting the teacher know what the child is learning."
4. Adapt your parenting to fit your child. Keep pace with your child's development. Your child is growing up. Consider how age is affecting the child's behavior.
"The same drive for independence that is making your 3-year-old say
'no' all the time is what's motivating him to be toilet trained," writes
Steinberg. "The same intellectual growth spurt that is making your
13-year-old curious and inquisitive in the classroom also is making her
argumentative at the dinner table."
5. Establish and set rules. "If you don't manage your child's
behavior when he is young, he will have a hard time learning how to
manage himself when he is older and you aren't around. Any time of the
day or night, you should always be able to answer these three questions:
Where is my child? Who is with my child? What is my child doing? The
rules your child has learned from you are going to shape the rules he
applies to himself.
"But you can't micromanage your child," Steinberg notes. "Once
they're in middle school, you need to let the child do their own
homework, make their own choices and not intervene."
6. Foster your child's independence. "Setting limits helps
your child develop a sense of self-control. Encouraging independence
helps her develop a sense of self-direction. To be successful in life,
she's going to need both."
It's normal for children to push for autonomy, says Steinberg. "Many
parents mistakenly equate their child's independence with rebelliousness
or disobedience. Children push for independence because it is part of
human nature to want to feel in control rather than to feel controlled
by someone else."
7. Be consistent. "If your rules vary from day to day in an
unpredictable fashion or if you enforce them only intermittently, your
child's misbehavior is your fault, not his. Your most important
disciplinary tool is consistency. Identify your non-negotiables. The
more your authority is based on wisdom and not on power, the less your
child will challenge it."
8. Avoid harsh discipline. Parents should never hit a child,
under any circumstances, Steinberg says. "Children who are spanked, hit,
or slapped are more prone to fighting with other children," he writes.
"They are more likely to be bullies and more likely to use aggression to
solve disputes with others."
"There are many other ways to discipline a
child -- including 'time
out' -- which work better and do not involve aggression."
9. Explain your rules and decisions. "Good parents have
expectations they want their child to live up to," he writes.
"Generally, parents overexplain to young children and underexplain to
adolescents. What is obvious to you may not be evident to a 12-year-old.
He doesn't have the priorities, judgment, or experience that you have."
10. Treat your child with respect. "The best way to get
respectful treatment from your child is to treat him respectfully,"
Steinberg writes. "You should give your child the same courtesies you
would give to anyone else. Speak to him politely. Respect his opinion.
Pay attention when he is speaking to you. Treat him kindly. Try to
please him when you can. Children treat others the way their parents
treat them. Your relationship with your child is the foundation for her
relationships with others."
For example, if your child is a picky eater: "I personally don't
think parents should make a big deal about eating," Steinberg says.
"Children develop food preferences. They often go through them in
stages. You don't want to turn mealtimes into unpleasant occasions. Just
don't make the mistake of substituting unhealthy foods. If you don't
keep junk food in the house, they won't eat it."
How can parents avoid the dinnertime battle with their children?
Still, there are some gentle ways parents can nudge their kids toward
more healthful eating habits. Here are a few thoughts from nationally
known
nutrition experts on how to get kids to go from
being picky eaters to people with sound, varied diets:
- Avoid a mealtime power struggle. One of the surest ways to
win the battle but lose the war is to engage in a power struggle with
your child over food, says Jody Johnston Pawel, LSW, CFLE, author of The Parent's Toolshop.
With power struggles, you're saying, "Do it because I'm the parent" and
that's a rationale that won't work for long, she says. But if your
child understands the
why behind the rules, those values can lay the groundwork for a lifetime of sound food choices.
- Let kids participate. Get a stepstool and ask your kids to lend a hand with easy tasks in the kitchen, says Sal Severe, PhD, author of How to Behave So Your Children Will, Too. "If they participate in helping to make the meal, they are more likely to want to try it," he says. Older children and teens
can begin to prepare special meals or dishes by themselves. Get teens
started learning to prepare healthy foods before it's time to live on
their own.
- Don't label. Severe reminds parents that, more often than
not, kids under 5 are going to be selective eaters. "Being selective is
actually normal," says Elizabeth Ward, MS, RD. She prefers the term
"limited eater" to the more negative
term "picky."
- Build on the positives. "When I sit down with parents, we'll
often find that their child actually does eat two or three things from
each food group," says Ward. Just as children can get comfort from
reading the same story over and over, they enjoy having a set of
"predictable" foods. "Even though they aren't getting a wide variety of
foods, they are actually doing OK nutritionally," says Ward. When the
child goes through a growth spurt and has a bigger appetite, use that
opportunity to introduce new foods, she
recommends.
- Expose, expose, expose. Ward says a child needs to be exposed
to a new food 10 to 15 times before he or she will accept it. But many
parents give up long before that. So, even if your child only plays with
the strawberry on her plate, don't give up. One day, she just may
surprise you by taking a bite. But don't go overboard, says Severe.
Limit exposure to one or two new foods a week.
- Don't bribe. Avoid using sweets as a bribe to get kids to eat
something else, says Pawel. That can send the message that doing the
right thing should involve an external reward as well as reinforces the
pattern that eating unhealthy foods is a good way to reward yourself .
The real reward of sound nutrition is a healthy body, not a chocolate
cupcake.
- Beware of oversnacking. Sometimes the problem isn't that the
child doesn't like new foods but that they are already full, says Ward.
"Kids can consume a lot of their calories as milk and juice." Encourage
the kids to drink water rather than juice when they're thirsty. You can
also create flavored waters by adding a splash of their favorite juice
to sparkling or still water. The same goes for snacks that provide
little more than calories, such as chips, sweets, and sodas. "If you are
going to offer snacks, make sure they are supplementing meals, not
sabotaging them," she says.
- Establish limits. Having a set of bottom-line limits can help
a parent provide some consistency, says Pawel. For example, parents may
require that kids eat nutritious foods before snack food. Or that they
must at least try a new food before rejecting it. "Consistency only
works if what you are doing in the first place is reasonable," she says.
So, avoid overly controlling or overly permissive
eating rules. If bottom-line limits are healthy, effective, and
balanced, they'll pay off.
- Examine your role model. Make sure you aren't asking kids to
"do as I say, not as I do," says Pawel. If your own diet is based mainly
on fat, sugar, and salt, you can hardly expect your child to embrace a
dinner salad over
French fries.
- Defuse mealtimes. Don't make your child's eating habits part
of the mealtime discussion, says Ward. Otherwise every meal becomes a
stressful event, centered on what the child does and does not eat. Ward
suggests
that parents reserve talks about the importance of good eating for
later, perhaps at bedtime or story time.
- Give it time. "I find that children become much more open to
trying new foods after the age of 5," says Ward. "Most of the time, kids
will simply grow out of limited eating."
How can parents fit in family fitness?
Children need at least an hour of moderate to strenuous physical
activity every day to stay healthy, according to experts. But many kids
just aren't getting that much exercise.
And most groups are unanimous on the prime culprit: sedentary
entertainment, meaning the temptations of the TV, computer, and video
games.
So, your first step toward encouraging a healthy level of physical
exercise should be to limit your children's TV and screen time. Beyond
that, here are some tips from the experts on how to help your children
(and yourself) stay active:
- Make an exercise schedule. Exercise doesn't have to involve a
rigid routine. But it's a good idea to schedule a regular time for
exercise each day. You and your kids will be more likely to get up and
get moving if you've set aside a specific time for physical activity.
Many parents find that participation in after-school sports brings some
needed relaxation and socialization time as well as fulfills the
physical fitness requirement.
- Support physical-education programs in the schools, which may
be reduced or receive less emphasis in some school systems. Communicate
to your child's teachers and administrators your belief that physical
education (PE) is an important part of the curriculum.
- Plan your vacations, weekends, and days off around fitness fun. Plan a bike ride, take an invigorating hike along nature trails, or pack a picnic lunch and head for the park for a family game of Frisbee.
- Make use of community resources. When it comes to finding fitness opportunities, take advantage of what your community has to offer. Join the local YMCA or sign up for tennis
or other lessons through your Parks and Recreation Department. Look for water aerobics classes and golf lessons at local swimming pools and golf courses.
- Get the whole neighborhood involved. Organize neighborhood
fitness activities for children and their parents. Softball games,
soccer matches, and jump-rope contests are fun for kids and adults.
- Dance! Children of all ages love to dance. Crank up the
music, show your kids the dances that were popular when you were a teen,
and let them teach you their favorite dance moves.
- Expose your child to a variety of physical fitness activities and sports.
Your child will likely find the combination of activities or sports
that are most enjoyable for him or her and will not become bored of one
activity.
- Let your kids take turns being the fitness director for your family.
They'll have more fun when they're allowed to choose the activity, and
they'll enjoy putting their parents and siblings through their paces.
- Good parenting helps foster empathy, honesty, self-reliance,
self-control, kindness, cooperation, and cheerfulness, says Steinberg, a
distinguished professor of psychology at Temple University in
Philadelphia. It also promotes intellectual curiosity, motivation, and
desire to achieve. It helps protect children from developing anxiety,
depression, eating disorders, antisocial behavior, and alcohol and drug
abuse.
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