Who said parenting was meant to be easy…It isn’t! Truth is parenting can be hard, challenging, heart wrenching, difficult, demoralizing, overwhelming and tiring…… But also wonderful, heart warming, joyous, awe-inspiring, satisfying and enlightening. The art of positive parenting is to foster a positive family environment where we spend more time feeling buoyant rather than demoralized, and where we can empower our children to be self-sufficient, independent and responsible. Why not tip the family balance toward wonderful and satisfying and away from difficult and demoralizing.

Sure there will be plenty of difficult moments, but when we choose to parent with love, respect, positive reinforcement, and yes, positive discipline, we can help guide our children in their choices and their patterns of behavior. Parenting should never be about making kids feel bad about themselves, but rather about allowing our kids to do good…to do right…to make mistakes without fear of ridicule or retribution…and to feel good about themselves and the choices they make.

The base concept of positive parenting

• Children will ultimately respond better to positive consequences.
• Behavior is either strengthened or weakened by it’s consequences.

Having an understanding of these proven and measurable behavioral principles allows parents to shape behavior positively, to encourage better behavior and choices, and to lessen inappropriate behavior.

Isn’t positive parenting just a cliché?

No. It’s a very real parenting choice we make that can better our children, improve their outlook and behavior, enhance our relationships with our children, and can make us feel better and more confident in our role as parents. And remember, positive parenting isn’t about raising perfect children – that just won’t happen. I like to think about it as percolating our kids in a nurturing and supportive environment, to raise good kids to become good adults.

There are many principles, strategies and tools to help guide us in our positive parenting endeavors, many of which can be found throughout this website. The concepts are simple, the practice quickly becomes natural, and the benefits for you and your children can be amazing. All that is required is the desire to be a better parent, and the consistency to make it work.

Here are some tips for praising children which may be useful:

• Most importantly avoid the opposite of praise – criticism. Criticism, particularly hurtful criticism, is no help to your child and damages your relationship.

• Try to praise the behavior, not the child – children tend to think in definite terms rather than abstract, so a child might readily think of themselves as “good” or “bad” depending on whether they have behaved well or behaved poorly. This can contribute to lowering a child’s self-esteem

• Praise is very rewarding in itself and can be a valuable behavior shaping tool.

• When praising children try to make it specific – it shows that you are taking notice.

• Children need praise and it is very important to acknowledge a child’s efforts, but try not to overdo it. You don’t want your child seeking your approval and applause for every little thing they do.

• Praise genuinely – praising children can lose its power if you constantly shower acclaim on usual and expected behavior.

• If you overdo praise, or gush over every small thing, or make up fake kudos, your child will see through them and may start to question even genuine praise.

• Sometimes it may be more appropriate to simply use acknowledgment such as a wink, a smile, eye-contact, a nod etc – it is more of a dispassionate praise that can help shape how a child pleases themselves rather than perform for approval.

• If you are praising children genuinely and appropriately you will avoid “over praising”, remembering that you don’t want to raise praise “junkies”.

• Whenever you can, try to turn the praise back toward your child. For example rather than saying you’re proud of her (which is perfectly fine), you might say “I bet you’re proud of yourself”. This can help develop you child’s internal motivations.

• Be “present” for your child when praising children. Get down on their level and make eye-contact.

• Give praise immediately after good behavior.

• Take notice – there are many genuinely praiseworthy moments in our child’s life that we simply miss.

• Most importantly avoid the opposite of praise – criticism. The power of praising children can easily be undone by the power of criticism.