5 Ways To Teach Your Children Good Parenting

Good parenting involves transforming your habits and attitudes. How can you ask your children to do the right thing if you don’t? How can you ask them to be respectful, if you disrespect and attack them?

The best way to teach is by example. For your children, seeing how you behave is worth a thousand lectures.

Good parenting is not an easy job

You might have asked yourself what you can do to help your children to become good parents when the time comes. This brings us back to a familiar concern: what is good parenting?

We must first make the effort to be better individuals and parents ourselves. Human beings are a work in progress: we can always improve ourselves.

We teach by example. Being a parent means seeing yourself as a role model.

Here are some tips for teaching good parenting, from the book La Crianza Feliz (Happy Parenting), by the Spanish author and parenting expert Rosa Jove.

Avoid adultcentrism

Adultcentrism appears in the ideas and practices of some adults who think they are superior to children, and have more rights than them.

This leads to parenting methods based on blind obedience, and to the idea that rules should be imposed from the top down; that is, by parents onto their children.

According to this line of thinking, the parent is never wrong. If they are, they must hide it. And if their mistakes are too obvious to hide, they make excuses. Anything to avoid saying sorry.

Many parents still believe that they alone know what’s best. They don’t listen to the wonderful ideas that their children give them.

Remember, a family should not attack or defend each other, but talk and understand one another.

So, don’t be afraid to admit when you’re wrong and try to address the problem. This is good parenting, and will help your child to grow up and become a person with humility.

Understand them

From 2 to 4 years of age, we must make it very clear to our children that we understand them, even if we don’t always accept their actions.

This is the stage at which children begin to develop their independence. Therefore, they may try to do everything themselves, or to contradict you.

We must understand this before we try and correct their behavior. Even if what they are doing goes against our principles, they are not doing it just to annoy us. They are trying out new things and experimenting with their surroundings.

Let them experiment and learn things on their own. It will help them to grow up secure and independent.

Share habits and routines

Learning to take a bath, make a meal or tidy up is important. It’s best to do these chores with motivation, because we like the results, not just because we have to.

The psychologist Rosa Jove recommends that we resort to building habits only when a task is essential and it is impossible to teach your child to do it in a fun and motivating way.

She also explains that the father should participate actively in household chores. As well as being important for a couple’s work-life balance, it also gives a positive example to their children.

All of this reminds me of an image that has gone viral on social media. The photo shows boys playing with dolls, feeding them and carrying them.

The text beneath it asks sarcastically: So you let your sons play with dolls? Aren’t you afraid they’ll turn out to be…good fathers?

Practice horizontal leadership

There are two types of leadership: one is exercised through force, and is imposed from the top down. In parenting, this vertical leadership is based on the adult’s conviction that: “I’m right and my child is not.”

A parent who is a vertical leader will shame poor behavior and try to eliminate it through imposed routines or punishment.

Horizontal leadership, meanwhile, occurs when we work with our children, shoulder to shoulder.

This is based on the idea that, when the child slips up, we can highlight the good in what they did and guide them to do better next time. There is always a positive side; you just have to look for it.

If our children are able to learn from the situation, and we provide guidance, praising them for the good aspects of their actions, they will begin to consciously modify their behavior.

Give respect to get respect

An adult should never disrespect a child. If we allow adults to be disrespectful, then we will have to accept it when children do it. And nobody has the right to treat others with a lack of respect.

Whatever happens, we are parents, and we try to raise our children to embody our strongest values.

If we want to teach them to respect others, then we can’t treat them with disrespect whenever it suits us. If we do this, then so will they.

Children will often (though not always) imitate their parents. It is therefore vital to educate them with respect.

Explain what you expect from them at a particular moment, and provide an example: “I’m angry too, but I’m not acting like that.”