Just 7 Step’s Top Parenting Tips and Tricks from 2022
2022 has been a great year for me personally and professionally. My family has settled into our new home in Arizona. My girls are doing well in school, with friends and activities, and I’ve been able to start my blog and podcast. After six months, I’ve posted on a total of 26 topics so far. These topics have ranged from questions I’ve received from parents to areas of interest I’ve been working on with my consulting work. I thought I would share with you some of my favorite parenting tips and tricks taken from some of this year’s best blog posts.
How to Create Close a Relationship with Your Child
The first of my parenting tips and tricks is how to develop a close relationship with your child. There’s nothing more important to a parent than creating a close positive relationship with their child. And one thing is for sure, you are not going to get there by being more permissive, or by giving into your child’s every want. You’ll have to do it with a combination of factors. You need to know how to control and use important motivators. How to pair yourself with your child’s favorite things. Set fair and consistent boundaries. Learn the value of following through. Knowing how to do these things and a few more consistently is the key to developing the positive reciprocal relationship with your child that you want and that you both deserve.
How to Establish a Healthy Family Culture
The next of my parenting tips and tricks is about establishing a healthy family culture. What’s more important in life? One where you and your kids are teammates in the process of running the family home. Also helping them grow and develop into competent young adults. Start from a place of safety and love. Look to build positive behavior, not tear down negative behavior. Start small and build over time only from success. Learn to talk instead of yell, let meaningful consequences do the work for you. Don’t be afraid to model asking them for help when you need it, and offer your kids help when you think they need it. But don’t try to force it on them or micromanage their lives.
Don’t Focus on the Negative
Learn not to focus on the negative with your kids. Parenting is about building new skills and abilities. And to build skills you need to increase good behavior and positive communication. If you only focus on the mistakes your child makes and correct them, you’re actually not building anything, but merely tearing down behavior and along with it, your child’s confidence and desire to engage with you.
Instead, try to focus on motivating your child toward better behavior. Find ways to give that behavior value and purpose when you see it. It is this value and purpose that will motivate more positive behavior in the future.
Be Funny With Your Kids
One of the best ways to build a positive relationship with your kids is to be fun. Even funny. Making them laugh and fostering good times is the best way to build positive feelings. But be careful in your attempts to not make fun of them. Even if they seem to take a joke well, teasing your kids can do long term damage to their self esteem. And if paired with frequent criticism from mistakes, it can even cause them to want to avoid you and damage their feelings towards you. So try to be the bringer of laughs and fun to your kids. But be careful to never make fun of them. You’re too important and they need to see that you love them and respect them in good times and bad.
Respect Earns Respect
Respect is defined as having a deep feeling for someone or something based on their abilities, qualities or achievements and having a due regard for their feelings, wishes, or rights. I’m often asked by parents how they can get their child to respect them more. I can teach them that. But before I help you earn your child’s respect, I need to know that you are giving them respect as well. Are you consistently demonstrating a deep feeling for your child based on their abilities, qualities, or achievements? And do you have a due guard for their feelings, wishes, or rights?
Get Your Child’s Attention When Asking for Something
One of the most important aspects in getting your kids to cooperate with your instructions the first time without having to yell or nag them is to make sure you stop calling your instructions from another room to a child who is attending to other things. Halt their current activity and be sure to gain their eye contact before clearly stating your instruction. Then look for a verbal acknowledgement of agreement to the instruction. This way, they will be much more likely to complete the task. And if it isn’t done as you expect, then you can stay calm and follow through with a thought out consequence, as there is no denying they heard and agreed to cooperate.
Control Access to Important Items
Control access to your child’s most important things. This doesn’t mean deprive them of anything. But set up your home environment so that you can easily control when and how much of these things that they can have. If you can control access to it, you can use it as a reason why they would more regularly choose better behavior. It won’t stop honest mistakes, but it will put you in the position to be able to consistently have a positive effect on their behavior.
How to Teach Children to Deal with Disappointment
Why do children have meltdowns? Well, children are highly emotional beings constantly going through states of growth and development. They’re experiencing new situations on the daily and they are trying their best to navigate a thoroughly complicated and ever changing world. They count on us for guidance and support and understanding. And they need us to be able to be there for them as we push them through a never ending gauntlet of potential disappointments. Yes, life is filled with fun and joy. But to really get to enjoy these things we have to get them through life’s disappointments as quickly and painlessly as possible. Children just aren’t born with this skill. It’s something that they’re going to have to learn through experience. And as parents, we need the tools and skills to guide them.
Teach Children to Accept No
Accepting the answer no can be extremely hard for children. Nobody likes to be told no. And if you’re not careful, a “no” not handled correctly can lead to consistent meltdowns. You’re not likely to avoid all meltdowns, especially with younger kids. But if you want to minimize them, one of the best things you can do is to teach your child to accept the answer no. I know that’s easier said than done. But there are proven techniques for families who know where to go for help.
Lean into Being an Embarrassing Parent
Don’t be bothered too much when your teenager finds you to be embarrassing, lean into it. Try to find a way to be okay with it. That doesn’t mean to purposely try to be embarrassing, or to get even with them by trying to embarrass them in front of their friends. Because as silly as it may seem to your adult brain, this embarrassment is a real thing that they experienced deeply. And they truly can’t help it. Just know that it is inevitable and you might as well learn how to enjoy the experience. Because like every other phase your children have gone through, this too shall pass. There will actually be things about this time in your life that you will miss.
It’s Okay if Your Teen Doesn’t Want to Hang Out With You
Don’t be bothered by the fact that the kid that used to idolize you now seems to want to have little to do with you and is much more focused on their friends. It’s a healthy part of growth and development for them. In the early teenage years, it is all about learning how to fit in. When they get a bit older, it’ll be all about learning how to stand out. And that is when they will finally be able to appreciate just what a cool and wonderful parent you’ve always been. The only thing you can do now to ruin that is to not allow them this time to figure out who they’re going to be.
Teenage Drama is All About Hormones
When dealing with all the teenage drama around your house, try to remember this one thing: it’s not personal; it’s hormones. A teenager’s emotional intelligence is not fully developed, yet their hormones are through the roof. There’s nothing that a teenager does or says that is more than an immediate reaction to their circumstances based on a developing ego and the confidence that comes from feeling independence for the first time.
Their moods are changing constantly. And they spend most of their time with friends who think just like they do. They will be infinitely embarrassed by anything their friends might see as weird, which usually includes just about everything a parent might say or do. They want what they want with immense passion, making it very hard to see anyone else’s perspective. So when dealing with teenage drama, you have to remind yourself that it’s not personal and it’s not permanent.
The Good Way to Discipline Your Child
First, stay calm and remind them of their error and give them a chance to fix it with little to no consequence. Next, stay calm, and ask them why they may have broken the rule or used bad behavior. Then stay calm and find a measured response that is meaningful to your child and involves the removal of a preferred item or opportunity in the short term. Next, stay calm and be able to undo your meaningful consequence as soon as you see behavior you’d like to reinforce. And finally, if your child escalates behavior, just stay calm and wait out their escalation before giving them a chance to change their situation. Remember: try to always stay calm.
Don’t Nag, Yell, or Embarrass Your Child
Don’t yell, nag, belittle, embarrass your kids. Stay away from physical punishments, like spankings, don’t give them additional workload to pay them back for mistakes that they’ve made. Stay away from threats and warnings. Instead, try to stay calm and find a measured response that is meaningful to your child and involves the removal of items or opportunities for a short period of time that can easily be undone with better behavior.
Focus On Your Mental Health as Parents
Remember, there’s a reason the airline tells us to first put oxygen masks on ourselves before we put them on our kids. This is because we can’t do anything to help support or guide them when we are incapacitated as well.Your mental, physical, and emotional health has to stay a priority as a parent. If you neglect your own needs for too long, you won’t be any good to your kids. To help them, we have to be there and we have to be healthy. Take care of yourself and get the help you need so you can be a long term help to those that you love.
You Don’t Have to Be Perfect
The final parenting tips and tricks I have is to not appear perfect to your child. One of the mistakes that parents make with their kids is that they want to seem perfect or infallible. When they’re younger, your kids are naturally going to see you as perfect because you generally seem to know everything. But as they grow it becomes important to let them know that you too make mistakes, screw things up, have regrets and sometimes just don’t know the answer. If your house is being run exactly the way you want it to, there’s little chance you’ll be making any mistakes.
Conversely, it can begin to feel to them like all they do is make mistakes in your eyes. If you’re constantly critical of them and you come off as infallible, there will be a point in time where they will not want to confide in you when they don’t feel perfect. And they could really use your help. So try not to act or seem perfect to your kids. Let them know that making mistakes is just part of life.
Parenting Tips and Tricks Conclusion
That’s all the parenting tips and tricks that I have for you today. I hope that you have as great a year as I have had. Here’s looking to the future for an amazing and progress-filled 2023!
Remember whenever you need help with your children, everything you need to do can be boiled down to just seven steps.
