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Top 12 Tips on How to Parent with Less Stress

published at CuriousParents.com - December 2005

1. Decide to parent and discipline kids with the long term in mind. Yelling and nagging can be effective in the short term, but it carries an emotional price tag. If you focus most of your energy towards building a safe, open, respectful, and unconditionally loving relationship with your children, then you’ve formed the strong, longterm bonds that withstand any mischief or bumps in the future.

2. Teach children the intrinsic value in being of service to others; provide opportunities for them to serve: the library, fire house, and the lonely, old neighbor across the street (if you know and trust them) are perfect places for them to learn the joy of helping others. It will go a long way in helping them feel good about themselves.

3. Find ways for children to be valuable at home, at school, in their community and in the world.

4. Teach children to look inside themselves for their motivation, the answers to their questions and finding their purpose and direction.

5. Decide that being close to your children is more important than always being right.

6. Teach children that mistakes are wonderful opportunities for learning. Don’t scold or punish a child for a mistake. Instead, say, "It looks like you made a mistake. What could you do to fix it?" Kids thus learn to take responsibility for repairing mistakes, without taking on any shame or bad feelings about themselves. Seeing parents model this same attitude is the best teacher yet!

7. When you are spending time with your child, give them 100 percent of your attention and love so that they will feel important, cared for and loved.

8. Create opportunities so that children can experience the good feelings that come with doing things at their personal best and sharing their victories with supporting teammates through cooperation to do their personal or team best.

9. Help children become aware of their self-talk. If it is negative or discouraging, teach them to redirect their own self-talk to positive and encouraging.

10. Never do things for children that they can do for themselves.

11. Keep all judgments and criticism out of the relationship with your children.

12. Most importantly, role model the life you would want for your child. Be easy on yourself when you make mistakes and take full responsibility for your life. Live life at your personal best. Keep your self-talk encouraging and be internally motivated. Live your life in alignment with your purpose while being of service to others.

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