What is Positive Parenting?
Positive parenting is understanding how children think and feel, balancing warmth and structure and identifying long-term goals. It is based on communication, love, mutual understanding and empathy; and requires a positive and respectful family atmosphere.
In turn positive parenting, favours the family relationships and strengthens effective bonds.
Positive discipline helps parents through one of the scariest phases of parenthood, raising good people who can fend for themselves and help others.
Being a parent is a joyful journey, sometimes frustrating and exhausting, but always inspiring. However, the challenge is enormous: raising a human being to live a good life and direct it towards adulthood with the aim of raising a good person.
In the process, as a parent, you will have to teach the child everything he or she needs to know to live a perfectly happy life.
Yes, perfectly happy, as a parent you have to teach your child that their own happiness cannot cause pain to others. You will have to orient your child in order that he or she grows up with a balanced amount of compassion and assertiveness.
And that is what positive discipline teaches. The goals of positive thinking are: understanding how children think and feel, balancing warmth and structure and identifying long-term goals.
Positive discipline is also based on communication, love, mutual understanding and empathy. It requires a positive and respectful family atmosphere, and in turn favours the family relationships and strengthens effective bonds.
Most of the authors identify the following principles as the core of the positive discipline:
KINDNESS AND FIRMNESS
Keep in mind that the positive discipline has its basis in the respectful way of teaching and raising. A balance must be found and you should stay away from excessive authority and excessive permissiveness, so it is necessary to be firm and friendly at the same time.
MUTUAL RESPECT
With positive discipline, the needs of the child are respected, but also those of the adult. It is about listening to children and understanding what they feel, to help them manage those emotions and show them ways to behave respectfully.
It is not about looking for guilty parties, or about making anyone feel that way, but about teaching them to learn from errors, by accepting and understanding them.
RESPECTUFUL COMMUNICATION
Handling conflicts without physical aggression is key. Considering other people’s feelings and achieving the goal of parenting without hurting others physically or emotionally.
CONNECTION AND AFFECTIVE BONDS
Positive discipline requires an emotional connection, which on one hand furthers the effective development of the child, and on the other, helps to strengthen ties with their parents.
INVOLVEMENT OF THE CHILD
Is the active participation of the child in the family; based on the communication between parents and children and a democratic model to put the rules at home in a consensual manner. By involving the children you are able to make the rules their own, which will help them understand them and make the children more committed to them.
EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT
The child understands and accepts their emotions and can develop their emotional intelligence. Inappropriate behaviours may occur, but punishment is avoided and the adult’s job is to understand the reason for that behaviour and correct it respectfully and affectionately.
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