Everywhere, we read about the benefits of positive parenting for our children. However, after a few years adopting this philosophy, I realize that it teaches many life lessons about healthy relationships not only with our children but also with other people, and eventually with ourselves.
What is positive parenting?
More than a parenting style, positive parenting – also called positive discipline or gentle parenting – is a mindset. It means that you consciously choose to teach instead of punishing, to role model respect and kindness, and to encourage your child’s contribution through connection.
Relationship lessons learned from positive parenting
Positive parenting teaches the importance of being authentic – authentic with yourself and your children. We cannot develop healthy relationships with our kids or anybody else if we are not true to ourselves. Authenticity allows us to come down from our pedestal and engage in a genuine relationship with our children. This means that we accept that we are not always super mom/dad and also show our vulnerable side and struggles. Ultimately, that’s how we role model self-acceptance. By watching us making mistakes, apologize, and try again, our kids learn that it’s OK to do the same.
“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Embrace your emotions
One of the basic principles of positive parenting is to allow and teach our children how to identify, feel and handle their emotions. For a person like me, who grew up in an environment where it was better to hide your feelings, this was a learning curve and, in certain situations, I’m still triggered by my sons’ emotions.
I recently read a quote from the poet Robert Frost saying “The only way out is through.” – to me, this pretty much sums up how we should handle emotions: allow them, feel them, process them, and let go.
“The only way out is through.” Robert Frost
Another invaluable skill, and not only in the frame of positive parenting, is the capacity to let go. Again, we need to refrain from controlling and choose acceptance instead. Positive parenting actually made me aware of several things I needed to let go of: perfection, beliefs, and some expectations are only a few.
Of course, we all have expectations and hopes for our kids. However, it’s vital that we remember that our children also need room to find themselves and develop their own personalities – even if it includes making mistakes.
Another valuable lesson about healthy relationships I learned on this journey is to trust myself as a parent as well as my children. As a parent, it can sometimes be tough to resist the temptation to compare ourselves with others. Even though it can be beneficial to exchange ideas and experiences with other parents, it’s important you don’t fall into the trap of comparing yourself to them. Remember that you, your partner and children are different from other families and that comparison is usually unfair. Instead, try to focus on your own experience and do what you and your partner feel is right. You should not underestimate your intuition!
In the same way, it’s sometimes difficult to step back and trust our children will make the right decisions. I’m talking about situations such as when children want to take responsibility: e.g., going to school on their own, sleeping over for the first time, babysit their siblings. Trusting your children in this type of decisions will empower them. And even if something goes wrong, it will be an opportunity for them to learn from their mistakes and get to know themselves a little bit better.
The legend says that parents always love unconditionally but is this really true? By suppressing punishment, threats, and sometimes even rewards, positive parenting raises the concept of unconditional love to a new level. Loving unconditionally means that you love your kid whatever happens: whatever their behavior, choices, weaknesses, or mistakes. Loving unconditionally is showing them that they will always be good enough.
Not only does this imply that we have to let go of the expectations we had for our children, but also that we will do our best to accompany them in their development despite our preferences. This might have sounded obvious and easy before we had children but the line between providing gentle guidance for our children to thrive and influencing them so they meet our unconscious or conscious expectations is indeed very thin.
Respond instead of reacting
When you react to your child’s behavior, you will (often automatically) try to stop your kid’s emotional behavior with an emotionally-charged reaction: e.g., yell at her when she’s screaming, order her to stop crying when she’s upset. On the other hand, responding means that you give your child room to express their feelings and show empathy instead of being triggered by her behavior.
Before learning about positive parenting methods, I wasn’t necessarily aware of the fact that my reaction to my children’s (or other people’s) emotions might have something to do with my own experiences and wounds. Realizing that these triggers exist helps us not only find more constructive ways to meet our children’s strong behaviors but also to start working on healing our own wounds and leading healthy relationships.
Learn to parent yourself
At the end of the day, learning to parent your kids also teaches you that you need to parent yourself too. Once you start your journey as a positive parent, you quickly realize that your cup needs to be full if you want to be able to give your children what they need. So how do you parent yourself? Well, we already do it for our children so we should know how to do it for us. It’s all about building and maintaining a healthy relationship with yourself. You could try being authentic and honest to yourself, embrace your emotions for what they are, let go of what you can’t or shouldn’t control, trust and love yourself unconditionally, and know your triggers.
It might sound complicated and overwhelming when you read it but, as in all stages and areas of self-development, never forget that this is a journey you need to take one step at a time, so be good to yourself!
Feel free to let me know what you think and share your lessons learned from positive parenting.