Ideas for Successful Parenting
© 1998 Dick Wulf, MSW, LCSW

Wanting to be the best parent possible says something great about you! We wish more parents wanted to be effective with their children. None of us can be a perfect parent, but we can try to improve.

Not everything we try will work out well the first time - sometimes a thing has to be tried a few times to be successful. And once in a while something doesn't work at all. People are so complicated that there can be no guarantees for 100% success. Therefore, some of these ideas may not work to your satisfaction. Keep in mind that none of the contents of this tape can be guaranteed to produce any specific results.

But many of the ideas, if not most, will produce some positive effects. So use your best judgment in deciding what to do and when -- and you will most likely see progress pretty soon.

Don't feel bad about not knowing everything about parenting. When you find yourself in a situation with your children and don't know what to do, tell your kids you want to get advice from friends before you decide. We're not all five-star generals who can always make decisions in a flash! And raising kids in this society is one of the biggest challenges an adult can face.

So remember that, in most situations, you don't have to act immediately. Deal with things later, after you understand at least a little about what is going on and what is the reason. Then, when you're calm and your relationship with your child isn't strained, you'll be able to say what needs to be said without being rejecting or being perceived as rejecting. Your child will really be able to hear what you have to say, and you'll be able to deal calmly with any negative response.

Successful parenting is helping your children grow up so they can be successful adults. You have about 18 years to instill in your children principles, beliefs, moral habits, and living skills. During these years you help your children learn about life and its responsibilities. At first they won’t know much of anything. At the end of childhood and adolescence they still won’t know everything. So nothing is more natural than mistakes, accidents and misbehavior. You need to learn to take these things in stride. Expect mistakes and misbehavior. Look forward to them as challenges that will make you into a better and more skillful parent and as opportunities to teach your youngster something he or she doesn’t yet understand or know.

Nothing - I repeat, nothing - is as important as building a loving relationship with each of your children. It's the backbone of your effectiveness in raising your child. Build a strong one. Fill it with respect and trust. Guard it. Cherish it. It will be this relationship that earns you the right to be an influence in his or her life. And if, God forbid, things do go wrong with your child and rebellion sets in, only this relationship will rescue your child in time.

Denying yourself for the good of your children means you take time to relate to your kids and help them, rather than always being busy with your own affairs. That's love. Parenting can't be done in a hurry.

Loving your kids means putting up with them, too! Parents who dream of everything going smoothly, with few mistakes and little misbehavior, are living on the wrong planet. Be patient. Be tolerant. Count on it - your kids will be silly, get in your way, misbehave, and not act sensibly, but they're usually just living their lives in the normal childish way. Putting up with your children means not getting angry at these inevitable, childish behaviors. Successful parents put up with these things to the best of their ability, instead of screaming, arguing, threatening, punishing out of anger, demeaning, or making their kids feel bad or stupid or unloved. Successful parenting, as well as successful anything else, means staying clam and solving problems rather than becoming upset and "getting after" people.

Love your children unconditionally. This is crucial! It doesn't mean anything Susie does is okay with you. It simply means Susie does not have to do anything to earn your love. You love your child just because he or she is your child. That's the kind of loving parent you want to be.

Tell your kids you love them. Words won't communicate all your love, but the words are necessary. Say out loud, "I love you!" Say it often! Say it personally, looking your child in the eyes and using an affectionate tone of voice.

You don't need to give your kids every opportunity or every good, fun thing. As part of your love for them, you help them to focus their interests and activities. You help them also to learn the importance of other just-as-important activities like family times, baby-sitting younger siblings occasionally, and helping other members of the family.

Handle your grievances, and your child's grievances, calmly - and don't be hasty or preoccupied. Loving means taking time to listen, to probe, to think, to explain, to resolve confusion, to teach, to encourage, and to solve problems. Set aside time each week for each child. While during the week you respond to some needs, many requests can be put off until this reserved time.

If you want your kids to respect other people, treat them with respect. Talk to them gently and politely, even when you're disciplining, and expect the same in return. Know the difference between being firm and being harsh!

When you come home, are you so tired you just want to be left alone? Can you see that your children have missed you, and want to be with you? Your kids don't appreciate the hardness of your job (maybe you knew that!). They don't care if you enjoy your work or not. They don't care if you've had a good day or a bad day. They're thinking, "Good - Dad or Mom is going to be home, and everything's going to be wonderful." If you're not excited at seeing them, they're really disappointed inside.

It's better to stop your car in a parking lot or under some tree, and do some kind of relaxing in order to leave your work behind and get some peace and energy, before you get home. Then you can greet your spouse and kids in a way that reveals how much you treasure them. Seek each person out when you first come home, and give them the kind of greeting that shows you are very happy to be with them again. Once reassured of your love, they'll more likely let you take time for yourself. Otherwise, they'll keep bothering you all night long to get some sign that they are cherished and valued. Failing all else, they'll misbehave, just to get you to pay attention to them! Then they may think, at least subconsciously, that you love them best when they're naughty.

There are some times when showing love is really powerful - like getting triple value on your grocery coupons. Bedtime is a great time for you to show caring. Even with rebellious teens, this caring will be received (even if it doesn't show on the surface). The care and security of those last waking moments are cherished unconsciously through the night. Bedtime is not the time for reminding kids of their misbehavior. At bedtime, let them hear that they're loved and capable.

In a safe family, every member can say what he or she thinks and feels without fear. Family is where each member tries to understand one another - and where they help each other understand everyone else.

Let your children have feelings. I can remember being told, "Don't cry! If you want to cry, I'll give you something to cry about!" What utter nonsense! All children have a reason to cry when they cry. Even the little child who cries because she must go to bed just doesn't understand yet how to stop playing and look forward to future fun times. Or maybe you’ve given in to the crying too often and your son or daughter thinks that crying is a good way to be able to stay up to play a little longer.

A close, loving relationship isn't all give on your part and all take on your child's. Don't hide your own reasonable needs from your children. After you've poured some attention into them, tell them when you're tired and need to rest. Give them a chance to give to you. Otherwise, they may think they're useless to you – or that only their needs count and other people's needs don't have much importance.

Spend time just talking together - about trivial as well as important things. Listen to what your kids have to say, and what they think. It'll surprise you. Treat their feelings as facts. Let them feel the way they feel. Ask "why" to learn more about your children. It will show that you are interested and want to understand them. Learn to dialogue.

And remember to make fun times. Lots of fun, non-stressful times – even ones that don't cost a lot of money - are necessary to build relationships of love, comfort and trust.

TEACH. If you don't teach, they won't learn. You're preparing your children for adulthood. You must see that they know how to work. You must see they know how to behave respectfully, even how to disagree with other people. You must see they know how to learn, how to study, how to receive instruction, how to handle criticism, and how to learn from failure. They need to know how to get along with all kinds of people, how to accept responsibility for their actions, how to contribute to society, how to be helpful, and how to be men and women of honor. And they need to learn a lot of things I haven’t mentioned.

Remember, though, that your kids are presently children, not adults. They haven't learned much about life, and they haven't often put their knowledge into practice. So your children do wrong things, because either they haven't learned what is right in certain situations, or they haven't yet learned how to do the right things. They need teaching.

Don't try to "win arguments" with your kids, either. What does it accomplish? It doesn't make you bigger and smarter in their eyes. It only makes them feel inferior and stupid. If you're right and they're wrong, just acknowledge that they were mistaken because they didn't have enough information.

Teach the simple things first. You can't learn to sew well unless you start with the easy patterns and work up to the hard ones. You learn the basics of fishing before the complicated techniques. Lots of kids get in trouble with their parents for not knowing what to do in a complex situation, when Mom or Dad haven't taught them how to handle that situation, even situations that are less demanding. When it's time to teach your child, think to yourself: "What is the simplest lesson that my child doesn't yet know? That is where I have to begin."

For example, if your two toddlers don't know how to play together without fighting over toys, the simplest thing to teach - and this will have to be taught over and over - is what it means that a thing belongs to another person. You can't start with a lesson on conflict resolution! Start with property rights.

Good parents learn what each child needs at his or her age level. Little children need a parent to make them a lunch. Teenagers don't. They may want it - and a parent may do it, but, hopefully, not always, because the teen needs to develop his or her own skills.

Teaching is more than telling, of course. It takes more time to teach Bill how to clean the kitchen well than just to say, "Do it." But it's so foolish to get after Bill later and bark orders and say, "You didn't do the job right," when you didn't teach him the specifics of the job in the first place. Patient instruction and encouragement work much better than criticism. Remember what a manager does with a new employee. And be smart about managing your time, so you can offer good instruction with patience.

One tip that can help is this: Usually, don't do things for your children that they can do for themselves (once they've been taught). You teach confidence when you let your kids do things - even if they don't always do them successfully. You build dependency when you do too much for them that they can do.

Remember that raising good kids requires a constant repetition of basic moral messages. Some parents want their kids to have values higher than they themselves care to live out. That won't work. Live the values you want your children and grandchildren to have. Live them "out in the open" where everyone can see them. And you'd better look like you're enjoying it - or you'll teach your children to avoid those good values! If you want your kids to be helpful to people, both parents should be helpful to people, and act as if helping others is really living well. If you want your kids to "fess up when they screw up," you be quick to admit your faults, to apologize, and to make things right.

Since kids learn what you teach, good parenting means giving more explanations than punishments. Yes, once in a while you have to punish, but if you emphasize that, you raise fearful children who may underachieve just so they won't make mistakes and get in trouble. Or you'll raise angry children, who rebel against authority and reject the good things teachers and other authority figures want to give them. If, on the other hand, you emphasize teaching the whats and hows and whys of things - and if you emphasize a "you can do it" mentality - you'll more likely raise children who believe they can succeed!

Children need chores - jobs that teach them both to work and to contribute to the common good. Doing chores teaches them skills they'll need as adults, too. So let your pre-schooler put some of the non-fragile groceries away, and have your high school senior write the checks for the family bills and balance the checkbook. Teach your older children to look at their homework as one of their chores or jobs that they must always do.

Tell your kids when they've done things right! They also need to know why it's right. You can say, "You handled your brother's pestering very well. You didn't get angry or hit him, but you told him clearly you wouldn't share your toys with him if he didn't leave you alone. That was a good job!" For your kids to develop confidence, a desire to be good, and positive self-image, they need a lot of affirmation and only a little criticism.

When you criticize, try to lend a vision of what good behavior would produce. Instead of, "What's the matter with you? You did a terrible job cleaning the kitchen!" you can say, "You forgot some things on the kitchen job. I guess you had your mind on something else. If you concentrate on the job as you do it, it'll be good enough the first time. In fact, you'll get real good and fast at it. Sorry, but today you'll need to go back and do one of your good jobs on it." He may not like doing the job over, but you've given a "you can do it" message, rather than a "you're a loser" one. Never let your criticism be rejecting - unless you want bitter, rude, rebellious teenagers.

Start by finding something about the job your kid has done right. Then, if she doesn't know what was done incorrectly, teach. If she does know, just ask her to do it over again. If she says something like, "I don't know what's wrong with what I did," give the instructions again - but this time, require her to write them down, as you go through, item by item, how the kitchen is to be cleaned. Be sure to point out that writing everything down is the way people handle poor memory.

Some of the things your kids feel and think will baffle you - but that doesn't mean your kids are bad or you're stupid. Even a genius wouldn't understand everything that came out of your child! So relax. Think. Talk to your friends, or your other children. Successful parents learn (and it's not easy!) to understand what their children mean by what they say and feel.

You see, behavior, thoughts, and feelings always have a purpose. Search for the why of any behavior -- because that's what really needs to be dealt with. Behavior may be inappropriate, dysfunctional, or just plain rotten, but it's never meaningless.

Sometimes the same behavior has different meanings. I told you parenting was one of life's greatest challenges! A child who steals may be angry and want to get even, or asking for attention and love, or victimized by peer pressure. A teen who lies might be shielding someone else, or fearful of punishment, or fearful of losing your love, or just plain selfish. A child who always hogs the spotlight may not be getting much notice and needs more regular attention - or has been overindulged and needs to learn how to cope with having less attention. You have to find out what the real problem is before you can start to work on it!

Dick Wulf, MSW, LCSW
Colorado Springs, Colorado