What To Do When You Lack Parenting Skills

If you lack these critical parenting skills you’ll find your family life more difficult than it needs to be. Many parents have picked up some knowledge of parenting by recalling what their own parents did wrong. But, simply trying to avoid making the same mistakes as your own parents doesn’t necessarily result in good parenting skills.

Parenting Skills Checklist: First of all keep in mind that if what you’ve been doing to provide guidance and discipline to your child hasn’t been working it is not the child’s fault. As a parent it is up to you to figure out the most effective ways to get your child’s attention, respect and cooperation.

The common sense approach to good parenting skills is to keep what has been working for you and discard what hasn’t been working.

Before taking a course to build new parenting skills I recommend taking a parenting styles quiz. This self-assessment of the way that you parent your children will identify where your currently at.

Before you know how to improve your parenting skills you must first be aware of your present parenting style. You can take a free parenting styles quiz at www.parentalquiz.com . The results are not saved or recorded but are sent to you confidentially by email.

Managing Your Child’s Behavior Ben Franklin believed that character is taught to children by teaching them good habits. Your job is to figure out how you can best teach your child the character building habits that will make them popular and successful.

Some children fail to learn basic social skills like how to play together or how to share with others. Parents need to teach these skills until they are second nature for the child. No one, not teachers, not psychologists nor the court system is responsible to teach your child to be polite and interact well with others. This is your job as the parent.

As a parent you’ll need to understand these basics: 1. What a child wants mos is positive attention from people who are significant to them. When they can’t get positive attention they’ll do whatever is necessary to get attention even if it is negative.

2. Children need and actually seek boundaries. To a child having no limits is a very frightening idea. A child actually needs the security of knowing what their routine is and knowing that their parents care enough to set those limits.

3. Children crave consistency. As a good parent you must strive to always be consistent in the way you dispense discipline, for example.

4. Consistency in providing discipline means that there will always be consequences for misbehavior.

5. Positive reinforcement like when you praise your child has about fifty times the impact as always being critical and always being negative. To get your child to want to please you be generous with praise, with your affection and with your time.

6. Don’t overlook the importance of play. Children who play with their parents in a low-key, non-judgemental way thrive. Laugh and play every day with your child to see them blossom and to see your relationship with your child improve.

If you’ll just learn and practice these basic parenting skills you’ll soon see major improvements in your child’s behavior and attitude!

David Davies has written nine books and courses including his latest audio course The Total Makeover Parenting System. For better behaved children download a copy of The Code of The Samurai his brand new behavior wheel software.

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