Active Parenting

 Hey y’all, welcome back to the Kunzler Kronicles! This week we will be talking about the great challenge of parenting! We all know that being a parent and taking care of children is a hard job. As I have grown up and gotten older, I have seen how my parents have taken care of my siblings and I, and also how other members of my family have taken care of their children, and what they have done/what they have tried to do, to be effective parents.

Recent research is/has been showing that effective parenting styles have gone down in recent years. Instead of kids being willing to obey their parents. Kids have become more defiant and uncompliant to obey their parents in even simple requests like eating their vegetables. Parents have also recently been moving to a place of compromise with their children, as well as just trying to not have any conflict with their children and just using methods of distraction like online games, movies, or tv shows to appease their children. Parents are also not as willing to discipline their children nowadays because they either don't want to have anyone think it's "abusive" or because they don't know how to set good boundaries. This causes the children to start gaining control over the parents because the parents don't want a confrontation. Kids need to learn responsibility and that there are consequences to their actions. This is being lost. Parents need to be more confident when dealing with children, you must show your child that you are confident in what will be best for them. Parents also need to be more consistent with what they say that they will do (in all areas of life). Parents must also teach their children by example.

Michael Popkins- a renowned psychologist, wrote a book about a topic that he called Active Parenting. Active Parenting is centered on taking care of and focusing on the needs of children. Now these needs aren’t things like love, food, clothes, and a good place to live because those things should be a given. No, these needs are things that you need to make sure that children have so that they can grow mentally and emotionally. Which when parents supply these needs, research shows, that the kids are not only more obedient, they are also more responsible. These things that children need are: Contact, belonging, power, protection, withdrawal/break, and the need for a challenge. lets go more into depth on them.

Contact: research shows that people of all ages need contact otherwise you won't develop properly. you need to have all forms of contact, eye contact, contact through voice/talking, and physical contact as well. Kids especially need contact! Parents you need to offer contact freely to your child from newborn to young adult. Don't force contact, but always offer and give it when they want and need it. 

Belonging: Everyone, especially kids, need and crave to be involved in something. They want to feel like they are contributing and are a part of the team. This is especially important because as a family you are such an important part of who a child becomes and the things that they learn first. Teach kids to contribute and allow them to do jobs that they can handle and that help them to feel involved.

Power: people need a feeling of control in their life. Kids need to feel like they are in control and have the ability to make choices for themselves. You need to help children to learn responsibility. Give them age appropriate and situation appropriate choices and let them know what the consequences are. Then let them make the choice and live with the consequences of their choices, this is a part of how they learn and grow.

Protection: Kids need to feel and experience protection both physically and emotionally. you must create an atmosphere of protection as a home. Make it a safe place where they don't have to be afraid of who they are. Teach your kids to be assertive but also to be able to forgive others.

Withdrawal/Break: Everyone needs a break, no matter what you're doing, you can't keep doing it forever. You need time to take a step back and do something else. Then you an go back and and work on the problem or whatever the thing was that you ere doing before. Kids need breaks too, just don't let breaks go too long and become undue avoidance.

Challenge: Kids (and adults too!) need to be doing things that challenge them and help them to grow! I don't mean taking big risks or undue risk taking. I mean building skills that will help them to develop. They need something that they can work on that is a challenge but one that they can overcome.

Remember, as you meet the needs of your children, your needs will be met too. They will help you as you help them.