Successful Parenting Tips and Plans for Parents

Successful parenting does not come with a set of rules; you will learn parenting while raising your child. No matter the number of books or articles you study on parenting, it is a natural process; you will learn it automatically.  

Raising kids is not easy as it looks; it is one of the most challenging jobs. Moreover, if you are being parents for the first time, it can be more overwhelming for you than being parents for the second time.

Your parenting technique can change based on the different phases of a childs’ life. When your kids are toddlers, you may use different parenting styles, and once they move to their teenage years, your parenting method can change.

Your kids’ behavior depends on the way you treat your kids. If you are a harsh parent, your kids can have aggressive behavior; therefore, your raise your kids shape their behavior in the future.

Even though parenting is learned through your personal experience, you need to know some basic tips and plan in advance, which reduces overwhelming situations in the future.

Here in this article, I have mentioned some successful parenting tips and plans that you can use:

Spend Quality of Time With Your Children

One of the most essential tips that you should follow as a parent is spending quality time with your kids.

Spending time with your kids does not mean spending hours without talking a single word. Spending quality time means doing some productive activity like painting, watching TV, cooking, baking, or any other activities.

You may know that children, especially toddlers, want their parent’s attention. Therefore by giving them enough time ensures them that they are loved. It helps to create a special bond between you and your kids.

Likewise, you need to give equal time to your teenagers as well, during teenage children can feel lonely when you do not give them time. And when you spend time with your teenagers, you will know their likes and dislikes, things your kids want to pursue in the future, and more importantly, if they are on the right path or not.

Spending quality time is not just beneficial for your kids, but it is equally beneficial for you. After a long day or a week in the office, it will reduce all your stress, and you spend some time with your kids.

Show Them You Love Them

Every parent has different ways of showing love and affection to their kids, some like to show, and some do not. If you are among those parents who do not like to show how much you love your kids, you may be doing it wrong.

Children need love and affection for their mental well-being and help to develop their self-esteem.

Children can quickly feel unloved if you do not express your feelings towards them frequently. They are emotionally sensitive and can have a sense of insecurity in them. And it is one of the main reasons that kids often ask if you love them or not.

To ensure your kids that you love them, you should never hesitate to express your feelings. As a parent, you should not feel awkward expressing your love to your kids.

Just saying “I Love You” to your kids can make your kids feel they are loved. When you express your feelings toward your kids, it helps your kids be expressive too.

Set Rules

Rules are the guideline that helps your kids to stay disciplined. Children can be very naughty if you do not set any boundaries for your kids.

When you set specific rules for your kids, like to wake up on time, do your assignment on time, eat healthy food, it makes kids self-disciplined.

You may be aware that in every place you go, you have to follow some rules. Hence, when your kids have a habit of following rules you set for them, they can quickly adapt rules that are made outside their home. 

When you are setting rules for your kids, make sure that you do not keep extreme rules. As far as possible, make sure the rules are simple.

Once you set rules for your kids, make sure that you stick with the rules and be consistent with the rules.

For instance, if you set rules like do not have junk food and you give them junk food saying sometimes it’s ok to have it. Then this creates children’s freedom to break the rules you have made for them.

Limit Their Screen Time

In this digital age, everyone is dependent on their digital devices. Kids these days want their devices all the time, whether for entertainment, doing their homework and other studies, or having food. 

You need to give your kids devices for safety reasons and make them familiar with the technology. But instead of taking their device as an essential device, kids take it as an entertainment device and spend half of their time on the device.

On average, teenagers can spend more than 7 hours on their mobile devices. Instead of doing some productive activity most of the time, they are either on social media or playing mobile games.

Hence it has been essential for you to set a screen time limit for your kids. As a parent, constantly checking your kids’ device and their screen time might not be a good idea.

Therefore using parental control apps can be one of the best solutions for limiting your kids’ device. Parental control apps show your kids total screen time and help you block websites, show your kids’ device activities, their location, and many more.

The best parental control apps you can use to limit your screen time is fenced.ai.

Listen To Your Kids

Due to your busy schedule, sometimes you might not have enough time to listen to your kids. And when you do not listen to your kids, they can feel you do not give them importance.

Kids do have their problems, viewpoints, thought processes, and they want someone to listen to them. You should be your kids’ someone with whom they can express whatever they are feeling.

Toddlers can be very curious about every new thing they see, and they will constantly question you. You should not feel irritated each time they question; instead, you should listen to their question and try to give answers and remove their queries.

Likewise, if you have teenagers, then they should give them an equal priority. You may know that teenage children go through an emotional rollercoaster; therefore, at this phase of their life, you should listen to your teenager, understand what they are facing, what they want, and so on.

Trust Your Kids

One common mistake that parents do especially for their teenage kids, is by not trusting their kids. Trust is the most important factor for every relationship, as it shows honesty in the relationship.

Sometimes, you may have seen kids lie to their parents once; then, parents stop believing their kids from the next time onwards. Even when the kids are trusting, they will suspect their kids. This can disappoint kids, and in the worst case, kids start to lie to their parents.

When you trust your kids, they will never hide anything from you, and even when they lie to you, they will eventually feel guilty about it. Likewise, when you create a trustworthy environment, your kids will feel comfortable sharing their feelings with you.

Praise Your Kids For Good Work

You may scold your kids immediately after they make any mistakes. But do you praise your kids whenever they do some good deeds? How often do you praise your kids?

Whenever your kids do some good work, praise them, which motivates them to continue doing better work in the future.

You should praise your kids immediately after they do some good work. Sometimes even if your kids fail at something, even after putting in lots of hard work, you should praise them.

While praising your kids, you should mention the action that you liked the most.

One thing to keep in mind is never to praise by comparing your kids with other kids.

When you praise your kids by comparing them with other kids, they start to take everything as a competition. By taking everything as a competition can disappoint kids and can make them unhappy.

Do Not Jump into Giving Punishment.

Parents usually jump into punishment immediately after their kids make mistakes. Parents think that punishment will keep their kids disciplined and think that kids will never repeat their mistakes once they punish their kids.

Also, another mistake that parents make is by giving physical punishment to their kids.

Before you jump into giving punishment, you need to tell them the wrong deed they did and not repeat the mistake. You should warn your kids about the wrong action they did, which gives them time to correct their actions.

Even if you need to punish them, give punishments that make sense, which improves them.

For instance, if your kids repeatedly disobey you and do specific actions even when you restrict them, do not do it. First, you should warn them; even after the warning, you should punish them if they continue the same action. Give punishment like writing handwriting, taking their devices for certain days.

Do Not Give Everything They Ask For

Many parents want to give everything they wish for, but do you think it is good to fulfill your kids’ wish?

If you start to fulfill everything that your kids demand, they will stop valuing the things they get. They will not respect your hard work, and they want you to fulfill their demand at any cost. Moreover, kids will also start to be materialistic, and they start to compare whatever they get with their friends.

When you fulfill your kids’ demands or wishes only after they do something good like behaving well or getting good marks in exams, then they will respect those things. They will feel like they have earned it and will value it more.

For instance, if you give your kids a new iPhone right after its release, they will demand a new one when its new version is released. But if you give a new phone, if your kids get a good score in their exam, they will value the phone.

Feed Them Everything, You Cook

Every household that has babies knows how picky kids can be with their foods. Kids and their food tantrums are like never-ending stories. 

Sometimes just to avoid childrens’ drama over food, parents give them any food they ask for. Most of the time, kids ask for junk food and fast food that might not be healthy.

If your kids start to get picky with their food, you should warn them or simply ignore their tantrums. When you start ignoring their tantrums, they will realize that their food tantrum will not work.

Sometimes, you can even ask your kids what they want to have for dinner or give them some options to choose from if they demand fast food.  You can even make new dishes or modify the same dish to excite your kids.

Moreover, if you provide every food they demand, they start to give less value to the food you provide for them.

Try to Create Light Environment

Home is the first school of kids; they get their first education from their home. Children can earn better in a positive environment; hence, it is your responsibility to create a light and positive environment at home as a parent.

You may have seen many parents try to show themselves as strict parents and always put on their grumpy faces all the time.

One common mistake parents make is by acting strict and setting many rules. When you act as strict parents, your kids will feel difficult to share their problems and feelings with you. They try to hide any difficult situation they are facing.

Instead, you should use humor to create a positive and light environment around your kids. When you create a light environment around your kids, they will feel comfortable sharing their problems with you.

Do No Compare Your Kid with Anyone

Most parents tell their kids that a common sentence is “Look at your sibling, be like your sibling.” Kids usually get hurt when you compare them with their siblings or with their friends.

You should know that every kid is unique, and forcing them to be like someone else will make them unhappy, and they will start to feel insecure.

By comparing your kids with others, you may feel that your kids will start to do better work and improve themselves. But you may not realize that their confidence will reduce when you compare your kids with other kids.

When you constantly compare your kids with other kids, it will create pressure on kids. Likewise, it also increases stress levels and anxiety among kids.

Also, when you make the comparison between your two kids, it creates sibling rivalry among them.

For instance, if you compare your second child with your first child, your first child might start to feel superior and start showing aggressive behavior towards the second child.

Try To Make Your Kids Responsible

Another parenting tip that you must know is to make your kids responsible at a young age. Making your kids responsible at a young age will help them when they move out for college.

In kids’ free time, you should assign some home duties to your kids like cleaning their messy room, washing their dishes themselves, taking care of pets, and so on.

When your kids complete the work you assigned to them, you should praise them, motivating them.

If you do not assign any responsibility to your kids, you will try to ignore their responsibility in the future. Moreover, kids will feel reluctant to take responsibility growing up, and it will take time for them to be responsible in the future.

Encourage Kids to Take Part in Extracurricular Activities

Most parents make their kids focus only on their studies and even scold them if they want to do some extra activities apart from their studies. You should know for successful parenting to encourage your kids to do activities they love doing.

You should know what your kids are interested in and encourage them to do the activity.

For instance, if your kids love to dance, you can send them to dance class and motivate them to do better.

When you encourage your kids to do what they love doing in the later phase of their life, they can pursue their careers.

Also, you should note that you never force your kids to take part in activities that they are not interested in. Children will not feel happy when they are forced to learn, and they cannot even perform well when they are forced to do the activity.

Understand Their Likes and Dislikes Before Judging Their Choices

There is a huge generation gap between you and your kids, therefore likes and preferences can differ between you two.

For instance, every month there is a new trend and style in the market, you may not be aware of the trend like your teenagers are. Your teenager might choose a dress or fashion style that you have never seen to keep up with the trend. In such cases, you should not judge your kids’ choices, as they can get hurt.

When you judge your kids and make fun of your children’s choices, they might feel unsure about their choices. Also, they start to hide their thought process in fear of being judged and getting trolled by their parents.

FAQ

What are some good parenting rules?

Some good parenting rules that you can follow are:

• Have frequent communication
• Show them you love them.
• Spend some quality time with your kids
• Be their role model.

What is the most successful parenting style?

The authoritative parenting style is one of the most successful parenting styles. However, most of the time, parenting styles depend upon how your kid behaves.

Does parenting ever end?

Parenting is a never-ending role; once you step onto parenthood, parenting continues till the end of your life. Your role does not change even when your kids are in the 50s or 60s.

Conclusion

To conclude, parenting cannot be entirely taught; you will learn parenting through your own experience. You can take advice from many books and articles from your peers who have already been parents, from your parents, but successful parenting entirely depends on you.

Also, parenting depends on your kid’s behavior; if your kids are rebellious, then being a chilled-out parent may not be effective. And if your kids are sensitive, then being a harsh parent can scare them.

Hence parenting depends upon many factors, but this does not mean that you should not look at parenting tips and plans.

You need to look at some parenting tips and plans that help you get some idea on parenting and prepare you mentally to have successful parenting.