[Solved] Seven steps to successful parenting

Just read this - bit old but really practical

Seven steps to successful parenting

by Honor Rhodes, Director of Development at the Family and Parenting Institute, provides her guide to successful parenting | Observer.co.uk, Sunday 12 November 2006

As mothers and fathers we are constantly told how complex this 'job' of parenting is. Through parenting magazines, society's anxiety about teenagers' behaviour, parenting classes and television programmes such as Supernanny and The House of Tiny Tearaways, we are bombarded with advice and prescription about how to do better.

However, acquiring the knowledge to be a successful parent does not have to be so painful and confusing. Drawing on the Family and Parenting Institute's experience of research into parenting and families, the basic ingredients for happy family life and confident, socially responsible teenagers can be distilled into the following seven steps:

1 Start early: your teenager is just the toddler you put gloves on and comforted when he or she fell over. Those early parenting behaviours of consistent love and care pay dividends when confronted by a 15 year old desperate to go out and seeking to evade your parental enquiry.

2 Listen carefully: and respond to the emotional content of the message you are being given as well as the words, be prepared to negotiate whilst being clear where the boundaries lie. Boundary setting can create dilemmas for parents in deciding what is acceptable, so get help, from talking to friends, relatives and helplines. Talking issues through makes parents feel better prepared when they need to apply a degree of control or require a child to make changes in their behaviours.

3 Remember what teenage years are like: think back to your own, your teenager is struggling to find their identity and will be 'playing' with roles, our task as parents is to help them find their way whilst remaining a constant and consistent source of help and clarity in a confusing world. Being clear in your own mind as to what is acceptable is the first step in helping your child.

4 Apply all your resources to the problem you want to solve: children and teenagers are giving the argument or dispute their undivided attention, you will be thinking about making supper, how to get through the day ahead and issues at work. Clear these distractions away and decide what the outcome you want looks like, work at that with your child and be prepared to spend as long as it takes, hours sometimes.

5 Pick your battles carefully: choose issues that are most important and let others go, you can deal with the smaller stuff another time.

6 Have help and support yourself: a parental couple, united in a common desire, is generally more effective than just one parent attempting to make changes that will be resisted; single parents can get this support from family and friends.

7 Enjoy your teenager, demonstrate your love, when battles are over make sure that you have time together doing something that you both enjoy, remember that memories of teenage years are very powerful, enduring in our children's minds more powerfully than early childhood memories, however lovely they might be.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2006/nov/1 ... heobserver