Raising a happy, healthy child is one of the most challenging jobs a parent can have — and also one of the most rewarding. Yet many of us don’t approach parenting with the same focus we would use for a job. We may act on our gut reactions or just use the same parenting techniques our parents used, whether or not these were effective parenting skills.
Parenting is one of the most researched areas in the field of social science. No matter what your parenting style or what your parenting questions or concerns may be, from helping your child avoid becoming part of America’s child obesity epidemic to dealing with behavior problems, experts can help
.In his book, The Ten Basic Principles of Good Parenting, Laurence Steinberg, Ph.D., provides tips and guidelines based on some 75 years of social science research. Follow them and you can avert all sorts of child behavior problems, he says.
Good parenting helps foster empathy, honesty, self-reliance, self-control, kindness, cooperation, and cheerfulness, says Steinberg, a distinguished professor of psychology at Temple University in Philadelphia. It also promotes intellectual curiosity, and motivation, and encourages a desire to achieve. Good parenting also helps protect children from developing anxiety, depression, eating disorders, antisocial behavior, and alcohol and drug abuse
What are the principles of good parenting?
1. What you do matters. Whether it’s your health behaviors or the way you treat other people, your children are learning from what you do. “This is one of the most important principles,” Steinberg explains. “What you do makes a difference…Don’t just react on the spur of the moment. Ask yourself, What do I want to accomplish, and is this likely to produce that result?”
2. You cannot be too loving. “It is simply not possible to spoil a child with love,” Steinberg writes. “What we often think of as the product of spoiling a child is never the result of showing a child too much love. It is usually the consequence of giving a child things in place of love — things like leniency, lowered expectations, or material possessions.”
3. Be involved in your child’s life. “Being an involved parent takes time and is hard work, and it often means rethinking and rearranging your priorities. It frequently means sacrificing what you want to do for what your child needs to do. Be there mentally as well as physically.”
Being involved does not mean doing a child’s homework — or correcting it. “Homework is a tool for teachers to know whether the child is learning or not,” Steinberg says. “If you do the homework, you’re not letting the teacher know what the child is learning.”
4. Adapt your parenting to fit your child. Keep pace with your child’s development. Your child is growing up. Consider how age is affecting the child’s behavior.
