Parenting Skills

Through our journey together, we have talked about our relationships within the family, within marriage, and even to others!! But today, we are going to talk about the relationship we have with our kids.

Parenting is such a huge aspect in our families, and there have been THOUSANDS, literally THOUSANDS of suggestions on how to best teach your kids and help them grow into solid members of society. But let’s be honest. Not all of them work. And not all of them are humane. It takes a lot of work to help your kids grow and develop, and everything we do is for them. Now, I am not a parent, but I do know some good authors who really are trustworthy when it comes to teaching about parenting. So, you don’t have to take my suggestions, but I think it would be worth your time and energy to look up some of these resources if you are struggling with parenting.

One of my newest favorite authors and researchers is named Michael Popkin. He writes parenting books and has loads of resources to help you have a more relationship focused relationship with your child. His book, Active Parenting, is a super good resource and I highly recommend you go take a look at it!!

One of the things he focuses on is meeting the essential needs of your child. One of those needs is the need for contact and belonging. If we are all being honest with ourselves, we all want to have the feeling of contact an belonging. I know that throughout this lovely pandemic, I have felt starved of physical contact. I’ve learned that I actually really enjoy physical contact!! Now, imagine you are a 10-year-old kid who rarely receives physical contact with your parents and/or those around you. You would want to start acting out to get some kind of attention!! And what do your parents do when you act out? They punish you and tell you to stop. Does this work? Yes and no. It may work for a minute, but then you will go right back to acting out. So, what would you suggest would help this? Michael Popkin suggests we offer contact freely. This means we hug our child whenever and wherever we want. We elbow them when they are sad. You offer contact freely.

Another need Michael Popkin shows is the need for power. Now, don’t mistake this kind of power with authority. This kind of power is the power to influence your own life. When we give kids the chance to make choices and deal with the consequences of those choices, we allow them to take control of their lives. I’m sure that each of you would rather have control of your own life than not. Your kids probably would like the same. That’s why it is important to let your kids have “response-abilities”. You have to give them the ability to respond to the different situations and problems in their lives.

A third need that is pointed out is the need for protection. Now, how we meet this need is a little different. This one we can’t just give to our kids like the other two. This one we have to show by example. To have protection, we have to have assertiveness as well as the ability to forgive. Neither of these are easy, and both must be shown by example. If we don’t show a good example of both assertiveness and forgiveness, we can’t really expect our kids to have good assertive and forgiving skills. This requires we have good communication skills as well as good perceptions of others and how to respond to them.

Now, these are just a few suggestions, I highly recommend you take a look at Michael Popkin and his resources, because they really are amazing!!
So, how will you contemplate your family this week? I’d love to hear!!

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