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These are the first 5 of 10 Effective Parenting Tips - look for the next 5 in our next article.

Your kids deserve your very best all the time. You've only got one chance to mold them into the kind of adult who is productive, thoughtful, enthusiastic, visionary and hardworking. You won't always feel good about doing what is necessary, but remembering that you've only got one chance to get it right for them will help you do what you need to do. Here are five effective parenting tips to help you:

1. There Is No Tomorrow. You've only got right now, today, to do the right thing and to be there emotionally for your children.. Once this "right now" is gone, it's gone forever. Decide that you will make the most of every single moment as often as possible. Decide that you will give them your complete attention even if it means setting your stuff aside. Of course you won't be at the 100% level. No one is. But if you decide in this right now moment to utilize as many of the following right now moments with your kid's benefit held at the forefront, they will benefit from your decision.

2. Begin With The End In Mind. It won't do any good when your child is eighteen years old to look back and wish you'd done things differently. Right now is when you get to make the decisions that will affect his getting to eighteen. Think through what you'd like that to be and then think about how you'll have to "be" in the intervening years to help your child accomplish that. Be sure to listen to what your child says he wants and weave that into the plan. Help your child become an achiever. Your primary goal as a parent is to give your children the tools that they can use to lead happy, healthy and successful lives. That's all that matters. That is your magnificent obsession. Remind yourself each day of the goal you're working towards and remind yourself that it doesn't happen in a single day.

3. Your Influence Is Greatest Every Day. Teaching is what you do every time you interact with your children. And it always happens today. There isn't a moment when you are not teaching your children - if you're helping with schoolwork, watching their team sports or just sitting down to the family meals. It doesn't matter if you're having dinner in your kitchen or if you're a part-time parent who is having dinner at McDonald's. What matters is that you're really there. You are a guide and an anchor. Know that you are a teacher, that you are a role model. That's how you will have the greatest impact on your children. Parenting is about the millions of "small things" and not about big events or sounding great when you talk about them. It's about the quiet times and the little things.

4. Listen To Them. You'll Be Amazed. One of the most important things you can do to fully be with your children is to listen to them with full attention. When that little voice in your head is rattling on incessantly about the past or the future, or coming up with an answer to what you think they're saying, you're not really hearing what they say. If you're not present with your children, they know it. What is the message you're telling them if you're not present? They're not worthy? They're not important? They're not valuable? Stop. Look. Listen. That means stop what you're doing, stop watching the T.V., stop reading the paper, stop thinking about other things. Look. Look into their eyes, you're less likely to be distracted when you're looking into their eyes. Listen. Don't let that voice in your head drown them out. Sometimes to make sure I'm listening, I will repeat in my head what they're saying.

5. Control Your Emotions. Don't yell at your children. If you yell at children, they do not hear you. Instead, you're simply upsetting them. That doesn't mean if you've yelled at your children, you're going to destroy their psyche. Remember, take the long view. We're building a foundation one brick at a time. None of us is perfect. Yelling at your children and upsetting them once will have no effect on them. Yelling at them the entire time they grow up, well.....let's hope that somehow children who have to deal with that eventually learn how to overcome it. Most of us fall somewhere in the middle. The point here is that it's not effective. It's not promoting your magnificent obsession. See if you can pinpoint what kicks off that emotion. It's not your children. Keep in mind your goal of being a great parent and then create a disconnect. Emotions aren't a bad thing. The problem is that we have triggers that release our emotions without thinking.

If you use these effective parenting tips, you'll be on your way to a healthy and happier relationship with your children. Look for five more tips in our next installment in this series.



By: Len Stauffenger

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A parent, whether single or with a partner, is often blamed for anything that goes wrong with their children. Blame for the perceived wrongdoings of our children is probably one of the hardest burdens that we as parents have to carry.

The truth is that parents these days are time poor and their children are, more than ever before, influenced by many powerful outside sources. Most parents are doing the best they can with the knowledge they have. For the majority of people, this knowledge is based on how they were parented themselves. But times have changed, what worked for their parents and for them as children may not work now for their own families. Many people find that relying on what they learned from their own experience isn’t sufficient.

With just about everything that we do in life, we learn from our ‘mistakes’. Some of our mistakes are easy to move on from, others can last a lifetime and cause untold heartache.

Most people are born with parental instincts so parenting does come naturally to a certain extent. But who among us can say that they have not made mistakes? The evidence of some of our hasty parenting decisions can be in the form of defiant, uncommunicative or sullen children and teenagers, and these mistakes are not easy to live with.

Is there a better way? Yes, there is. Learning to become an effective parent can save a great deal of heartache.

Effective parenting is a learned skill and like just about everything else that we do, the more we practice effective parenting techniques, the better and more effective we become at parenting.

Effective parenting training gives us a better understanding of the complexities of our family, the pressures that our children face in the modern school setting, and the added pressure from part time work that many young people experience. It teaches us how to listen, understand and communicate with our children so that we do not make things worse, whilst still understanding that every child, family and situation is unique.

Can effective parenting training (EPT) help?

In short, effective parenting training takes some of the guess work out of parenting and provides strategies and tools that can be used to create a more harmonious home. If things are pretty good at home, proactive parenting is even better.

* EPT gives parents the opportunity to stop and look at their home situation from a different perspective. What were your goals when you started your family? EPT is a big step towards achieving those goals.

* EPT can help parents identify if they are working with or against each other. How do they reach consensus?

* EPT provides guidelines for putting things into order at home – creating a ‘bottom line’, revisiting values and establishing rules, boundaries and consequences. This step alone is critical. Too many rules become unworkable but rules and boundaries provide a baseline for the whole family and a structure with foundations for feeling safe with everyone knowing what is expected of them.

* Rules, boundaries and structure are meaningless to children and teenagers without loving, sincere and effective communication. EPT will teach parents how to listen and communicate effectively rather than inflaming situations.

* EPT will assist parents in understanding what their children need to experience in order to feel loved. Most parents do try to show their love but do not understand that what is perceived as love to one person may be quite different to another.

* Parents will understand how their children learn. Once again, because we are unique individuals, we all learn differently. This understanding can provide the parent untold and unique opportunities to help their children gain confidence at school.

With these tools and a firmer foundation upon which to move their families forward in a positive direction, parents and their children will feel empowered.

Children are resilient and forgiving and they do want to feel the love their parents have for them. It is essential for their growth into healthy young adults. Where there has been continuing conflict you can be pretty sure that some of those loving feelings have been lost. They can be reestablished. There has to be at least one ‘adult’ in a situation to turn things around; someone who is willing to take the responsibility to get things moving in the right direction.

Beginning parents will probably have a good understanding of some of the pitfalls in modern parenting – prevention is so much better than any cure.



By: Coby Edmunds

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