Parenting is one of the most difficult jobs we will ever do.  Not only does it require time, patience and commitment but, we also have to do all of this with a boat load of emotions.  We love our kids more than anything else and with this unconditional love comes a barrier to do our job and parent. Parenting requires us to teach our kids all they need to know to navigate this world and grow up to be kind, respectful and successful adults.  This gets tricky when our emotional barrier blocks us from PARENTING and we turn to PLEASING.  Pleasing our kids is something we all love to do and there is nothing better than seeing our kids happy.  Unfortunately, for us to teach life lessons we sometimes have to see our kids upset or frustrated.  It's important for us to parent and not please when certain situations arise such as tantrums, refusing to do homework, bedtime battles and more.  With these difficult moments it gives us opportunities for lessons to be taught and to help our kids grow.  So, the questions are;  How do we parent in a positive and productive way? How do we avoid the constant power struggles?   How do we teach the lessons needed without creating damage or making matters worse? The answer to all of these questions - FILL UP YOUR POSITIVE PARENTING TOOL BOX!!  We want our kids to embody self-discipline, responsibility, accountability, courage, self-confidence, honesty, self-motivation and the list goes on.  I can tell you that these attributes do not come from letting our kids get away with everything simply to please.  They do not develop when you do everything for your kids or bail them out.  These characteristics are taught, practiced and repeated over and over until your kids feel great sense-worth!  KIDS ARE CAPABLE and we show them this by taking the time to teach them what's right and wrong.  We help our kids develop these positive attributes by  FILLING UP OUR PARENTING TOOLBOX and using positive discipline strategies!  I wish there was one magical positive discipline tool that would work for all issues that arise, but sadly that doesn't exist.  In order to help our kids develop and learn these important characteristics we need to FILL OUR TOOLBOX so that we can pull out the most effective tool at the appropriate time.  Positive discipline parenting tools do not make our kids feel poorly for their mistakes, but rather they help them learn from their mistakes.  Positive discipline parenting tools help us connect with our kids and build a stronger parent-child bond/relationship.  Positive parenting tools allow us to look at the situation at hand and create a learning experience to help stop the negative behaviour from reoccurring in the future. Lets put all of this information into an example:

Your child wants you to read another story before bed, but you have already told them only two stories.  When you remind them that we are only reading two, they begin to whine and cry.  They continue to ask for more and you continue to tell them no and explain that you already said only two books.  This goes on for quite some time, the negative behaviour escalates, until finally you can't take it anymore and decide to read them another story. 

Does this sound familiar?  Have you had a similar situation happen in your home?

I'm guessing we've all been there and would do just about anything to get the behaviour to stop!  When we give in to our kids to please them, we are telling them that the behaviour is acceptable.  With our actions we are telling them to repeat the behaviour again in the future as it will get them what they want.  Now, this wasn't our goal and it wasn't the end result we were looking for.  We wanted the behaviour to stop and not occur again, but when we give in to them we are enhancing the rate in which the behaviour occurs in the future.  REMEMBER: Kids will continue to do what works for them!!! We need to FILL UP OUR PARENTING TOOLBOX with multiple positive parenting tools/solutions so we can stop negative behaviours from re-occurring in the future.  With positive tools we can teach valuable lessons from the negative behaviours and get the behaviours to stop for good! Doesn't that sound dreamy?!! :) contact me today for one-on-one parent coaching and FILL up your tool box today!