John Gray - Children Are from Heaven - Positive Parenting Skills for Raising Cooperative, Confident, and Compassionate Children

Giving children increasing freedom is an organic process based on lots of communication between parents and children and with other parents and teachers regarding what they consider to be appropriate. Although preteens and teens are given much more freedom to decide what they are going to do, each of the five skills of positive parenting is still necessary to maintain control.

If a sixteen year old is out of control and fights you in a disrespectful manner, then a time out is still required. When teens talk back, they need a clear message that their behavior is unacceptable and that you want them to be more respectful. As children become more articulate, parents need to remember that they still should not back up their requests with the threat of punishment or explanations.

If your teen resists your requests, then shifting to rewarding or commanding still works best. Just give your message and give it time to sink in. Until your children leave home, they still need you to be the boss, but they don’t need punishment. With each year of maturity, they do need greater and greater freedom.

Until your children leave home, they still

need you to be the boss.

Teens, just like children, need supervision. Even if you are not physically present, just their knowing that you know where they are and what they are doing goes a long way to assisting the child in feeling connected to your control. This control is often lost when children become more independent in school. Children come home and parents ask how the day went, but children have little to say. Sometimes, before they can talk about their day, they often just need some time to forget what happened or talk with a friend on the phone about what happened. To get your teens to talk, it is essential to maintain a presence in that part of their lives.

Parents are often so busy that participating in school activities and staying connected can be very difficult. For most parents, their primary link to the school is their children, and their children are not talking. Children need their parents to be connected to school activities, and then children will more easily talk about it. Fortunately, there are new technological advances that make this connection easier.

To maintain a better connection with their children’s school life and activities, parents can now use the Internet. More and more schools are using new free software to connect schools with parents at home. On the Internet parents can now access their children’s current grades, daily academic focus, events, projects, homework, and progress reports, as well as e-mail teachers and even connect with other parents. A convenient personal calendar of your child’s school and after-school activities, and a family calendar, including the activities of all your children is also included. If your school is not already using it, then ask your school administrators to begin. This new system is free and available now to parents and schools.

On the Internet, parents can now directly access

information about their children’s school activities.

Within a few minutes of logging on to the Internet, parents can become instantly informed with what their child is doing at school. With the click of a mouse, parents can send an e-mail message or ask a question to every other parent.

To find out more about this software, provided free by Achieve Communications, just go online to their Internet site at www.achieve.com.

This increased awareness facilitates much better communication between parent and child. When parents simply say, “How was your day?” they can’t really expect much of a response. But when they ask an informed, directed question, a door opens for better communication. Instead of general questions, parents can be more specific. Here are some examples:

How much progress did you make on your science fair project?

How did baseball practice go today?

How did Jessica treat you today?

How did your teacher respond to your oral report today?

I am really proud of the A you got on your math pop quiz.

Children can and will talk about their school life if parents have a greater awareness of what is going on at school.

The more parents participate in school activities and are aware of what their kids are currently studying and who they are spending time with, the more their children will open up and talk to them. An ongoing dialogue about what is going on in our children’s lives and at school is essential for staying in control and having influence over them. As parents become less influential, children become more vulnerable to the influence of other children.

An ongoing dialogue about what is going on

at school is essential to having influence over

your children.

Using www.achieve.com helps you connect with other parents and get an accurate reading on what they are doing with their kids. In raising my own children, it was almost impossible to get parents to meet regularly to talk about what their kids were doing and what they allowed their kids to do.

As long as parents are not talking to each other, kids will have too much power. For example, they will come home saying they are the only kid who has to be home by 11 P.M., and you feel pressured to change the curfew. The reality is usually that only one parent allows a curfew of eleven while all the other parents have set the curfew at ten. Parents don’t know this unless they are in communication with one another. Talking with other parents helps you figure out appropriate limits for your children and helps parents maintain control.

Start a monthly support group, read from Children Are from Heaven , and discuss the current issues you are having with your children. Talking about your issues and hearing what others are going through as well not only brings greater clarity, but also makes parenting easier. It becomes unnecessarily difficult when you feel alone. Parents need support, just as kids do. When you get the support of other parents, your children will get the support they need.

When you feel the support of other parents, it becomes much easier to maintain strong control and leadership while also giving your children permission to resist. With the support of others who share your commitment and insight, you will most effectively put the five positive messages into practice.

Deep inside all children, there is a button. When pushed, this button reminds them that they are willing to cooperate and they want to please their parents. The five messages and the five skills of positive parenting are primarily focused on that button. By learning to push that button again and again, parents gain the control they need to lead their children. Children at all ages primarily learn by cooperating and imitating. Unless parents keep pushing that magic button, children are restricted in their ability to learn and grow.

Children at all ages primarily learn by

cooperating and imitating.

Positive parenting even works with children or teenagers who were not raised with these five positive parenting messages. It is never too late to be a great parent and to inspire cooperation from your children. No matter when you start, by applying the five messages of positive parenting, you will hold the power to improve communication, create cooperation, and bring out of your children the best that they can be.

The most strained or difficult relationship is often between mothers and their adolescent daughters, because often the mother is still trying to control everything in that child’s life.