Effective Parenting: How to Raise Children Effectively

Good parenting does not only deal with satisfying the physical needs of children, like food, shelter, and safety, but it also includes striving for their intellectual growth, education, and moral values. It also focuses on the efforts, that can enhance their motivation level and can keep them away from stress and anxiety. Good parents always consider mental health of their children as important as their physical health.

However, in the real world, parenting is not simple and easy. Things are quite mixed up and complicated, and we need to follow practical strategies to cope up with the challenges.

1) Teaching Children to Respect Elders

Teaching children to behave respectfully is not as easy as it sounds. Most parents fail to educate their children to behave gently. Let’s find out how to teach children to be nice and courteous.

Rule #1:

Teaching children to be respectful initiates by guiding them to respect themselves first. You need to make them feel significant about themselves. You could make them feel this way by listening to them properly, or by gently talking to them. You need to make them feel valued about themselves in any case. Once they have learned to respect themselves, they will surely learn to respect others as well.

Rule # 2:

Try to be their role model. Let's find out how to be your children's role model.

The integral part of being a good role model for your children is to possess good character traits. 'Practice what you preach'. It is complicated but can be achieved.

1) Don’t Ask Them to be Kind; Demonstrate

It is absurd asking children to be kind because 'you said it’. It makes no sense to them. Try to teach the importance of kindness by your actions, not by your words.

Things that have to avoid:

You are continuously asking them to be gentle, and respectful to others, yet you yell at a waiter in a restaurant or get rude to the cashier at the supermarket. This way you have failed to be their role model, and they will never listen to your advice because they are observing the difference between your words and actions.

Example:

If you disagree with someone and going to have a heated argument, take a pause, and try to understand their point of view, so your children can learn the importance of compassion.

3) Stop Asking them to be honest; Practice

Instead of asking them to be honest, practice honesty in front of them to teach them the real worth of being honest.

2) Try to be Your Children’s' Best Friend

Authoritative parents fail to develop emotional bonding with their children. They love their kids so much yet fail to express it. It is important to build an emotional connection with your children. Follow these strategies to build bonding with your children.

Strategy # 1:

Spend quality time with them.

Strategy # 2:

Have fun with them. Take them to their favorite place and enjoy it.

Strategy # 3:

Try to connect with them emotionally by listening to them. No doubt, it is complicated to be their friends and parents at the same time, but you can do this job if you want to.

3) Treating Every Child Equally is Important

Parents should not favor one child over other children. If you are blessed with more than one child, always treat them in an equal manner. At times, being parents, we get mesmerized by a child to other children, but we must hide these strong sentiments. Otherwise, it may bring complications to other siblings. It is research-oriented fact, that not being able to equally treat kids can induce stress in other siblings.

Mostly, parents use to be permissive for their male children, and authoritative for their female children, which also leads to inferiority complex in the female kids. They should be treated equally. Let’s learn how to maintain equality at home.

Strategy # 1:

Always give an equal number of gifts to all your children.

Strategy # 2:
Always give them equal pocket money (In case of less age gap)

4) Don't Value Kids According to Their Academic Performance

Sometimes parents say, ‘I would buy you this bicycle if you get “A” grade this time’. (you are bargaining). Stop loving your children according to their academic performance, as it is unjust to consider marks while being kind to them. Parents’ love should be unconditional and pure.

How to teach children that they are more important than marks

It is hard to bear the poor academic performance of children, but being strict with them can create more complications, and this is not the solution. You need to give them the idea that their worth is not going to be judged by their grades, yet having good academic performance is essential for their bright future. Try to make them responsible.

5) Overprotective Parents Cause Anxiety in Children

Being too protective toward children, and not letting them experience new things on their own takes away their confidence. As a good parent, you should let your children live, and enjoy new things. Experiential learning builds confidence and self-assurance.

Things you should double-check to see whether you are an overprotective parent or not.

1) Manage their day to day affairs

2) Fulfill every responsibility

3) Always worrying about their safety and education

4) Continuously checking up on them

5) Not letting them experience new things in life

6) Teaching kids to Love Unconditionally

Solely worrying about the academic performance of children is not enough. It is necessary to teach the importance of unconditional love.

Setting Examples for Them:

Demonstrate the character traits to make them believe in the importance of love sacrifice and humanity. For example, if you are in a restaurant, you should talk to the waiter nicely, or if you are at a grocery store, try to be nice and humble with the shopkeeper.

Things to Ponder

Secondly, Children have this concept that their things are truly theirs, and they feel reluctant to share their toys and food. Educating them about the value of people around them can solve this issue. They must be taught, that human beings are far precious than the stuff they have.

Building social skills is also highly needed to bring selflessness to children's personality traits. If they asocial and feel more comfortable playing with their toys alone, it is not a good sign. Ask them to play with others. That’s how children learn social and other skills like anger management, and problem-solving.

7) How to Tolerate Children

Expecting a child to be calm, gentle, and mature is an absurd expectation. You need to understand, that kids often shout, do mischievous stuff, and fight with their sibling over trivial matters. Stop expecting them to behave nicely all the time.

However, if your children are continuously misbehaving try to handle them with care, if not handled well avoid them for a while as punishment.

Strategy # 1:

It is a psychological phenomenon that, showing displeasure to children by ignoring them is highly effective to make them nice and gentle.

Strategy # 2:
On the other hand, operating a zero-tolerance policy over-aggressive behavior is also helpful and effective.

8) Ways to Handle Stubborn Child

A stubborn child is the biggest challenge for the parents. Parents are often seen giving up on a stubborn child. Continuously giving up on a stubborn child is not a good sign. Following the given below steps can sort out the problem.

1) Never Argue with the stubborn child

One of the evident character traits that all stubborn children have in common is they are always ready to argue, so never give them this opportunity, try to listen to them.

2) Building a strong emotional connection

Strong bonding with a stubborn child is very important. Stop forcing your stubborn child to do something, he is never going to listen to you, rather try to build an emotional connection with him by listening to their problems, and point of view.

I have been taking multiple courses in human psychology online. Moreover, I research a lot about how the human mind works. I also tried my best to figure out effective ways to raise children. I have gone through Freud's Psychosexual stages in a detailed manner.