Education
Pointers for Positive Parenting
Dr. Alice Sterling Honig gives Pointers for Positive Parenting.
Families are powerfully influenced in their child rearing practices by many factors – cultural mores, parent education level, parenting practices they themselves experienced during childhood, community mores where they currently reside, and also by poverty and overcrowding in households. The challenge for professionals is how most effectively to engage with families to bring about best developmental practices, as determined by researchers and clinicians. Finding ways to communicate positively is critical for a harmonious partnership between families and care providers and teachers of their young children.
Using skills in creating trusting relationships with families, teachers need to decide what are the most critical and important child development factors, practices, and insights that adults need to know in order to help all children succeed in becoming curious, zestful learners, kind, patient, and empathic with others, and able to keep wonder and joy in life while courageously navigating inevitable life struggles and setbacks.
Professional knowledge in the following areas can be particularly helpful for parents, grandparents, care providers, foster families, and others who are involved in guiding young children.
TEMPERAMENT. Children have quite different temperament styles, and these are partly genetic. Temperament traits include: mood and activity level (high or low); withdrawal or approach to new persons, events, foods, and experiences; attention span and task persistence (long or short); frustration tolerance and threshold for stress/distress; intensity of response to distress; how long it takes to adjust after stresses; and rhythmicity of bodily functions, such as eating and sleeping.
These nine traits cluster into three major temperament types: slow to warm up/ suspicious of the new; easy going and easily soothed; and feisty/trigger/ intense. Aware of a child’s predominant temperament type, parents can more sensitively deal with upsets that occur. The slow-towarm-up child needs more slow, careful introduction to new classrooms, foods, etc. The intense child needs more redirection, soothing, and provision of opportunities for vigorous movement.
ATTACHMENT STYLE. For over sixty years, attachment researchers have discerned four major attachment styles. Raised by cherishing parents who provide loving cuddles, attunement to and effective responses to infant/child distress or upsets, securely attached children are more likely to act in accordance with parental rules and make friends easily. Insecure/ hesitant/ ambivalent children, whose parents have been inconsistent in discipline and providing loving attentiveness, tend to act more babyish and are more easily bullied by insecure avoidantly attached children, whose parents did not enjoy or provide close cuddles and gave commands without explanations as if the parents had all the privileges and the children had all the responsibilities. Disorganized insecure children combine characteristics of the other two insecure types. Their parents sometimes were fearful and/or fear inducing. Pediatricians as well as infant care providers need to be alert to family practices and with grace and good humour support parental caressing, sensitive attunement to infant distress signals and positive soothing strategies. The good news from research is that when parents of highly irritable babies have been taught swaddling and soothing techniques, then their babies were highly likely to become securely attached despite difficult temperament styles. Temperament is not destiny!
ENHANCING LOVE OF LANGUAGE. To help children relish language learning, parents need to talk with babies and children frequently. Adults need to show genuine interest in young children’s attempts to communicate – even when toddler babbling and jargon are indeed difficult to understand! Babies respond with delight and their brains are stimulated to release cascades of electrical and chemical signals when adults use ‘parentese’ talk – a high pitched voice with long-drawn out syllables and loving tones. Both men and women can both become adept at parentese and enjoy how their delighted babies wriggle and respond with vigorous cooing sounds to parentese talk. Telling stories to children who are nearby and sometimes helping while parents are busy with home or farm chores is another way to entrance children – especially with stories of their own arrival into the family. Story telling is an art that entrances children who are listening to the adults’ stories.
Bringing home and sharing picture books (from the library or buying children’s picture books at second-hand shops) is a sure way to arouse young children’s passionate interest in book reading and learning. Parents snuggle with a child and look at picture books together. Parents show pleasure as a little one points to and labels pictures and talks about the story later. Choose books that show how both boys and girls can be successful and also honored at a variety of roles and skills in life.
EXECUTIVE SKILLS. Young children are challenged when they are asked to focus on a somewhat difficult task. They are challenged not to melt down into temper tantrums when a situation requires an abrupt change from a desired goal (for example, if a child expected to go out for a treat and a sudden downpour cancelled that trip). Controlling strong negative emotions such as anger or frustration is a hard task for young children to learn. In dozens of cultures, research shows that shaming and spanking have severe negative effects on children and lead to later emotional difficulties. Some children are able to self soothe by thumb sucking and rubbing a favorite blanket on the cheek. Ohers learn to distract themselves by humming; some just leave a tense play situation with a bullying peer by going off peaceably to play by themselves. Some elementary teachers teach children self-calming breathing and meditation techniques to help the children grow sturdy executive skills. Executive skills correlate more with high school success than children’s IQ scores when they were young!
NATURE EXPERIENCES. With generous time for outdoor play and exploration, children learn to notice and appreciate plants, animals, insects, fish, night sky stars, trees, raindrops, fruits, and flowers. Their senses become attuned to bird calls, and to different subtle scents sniffed as a rainstorm blows petals in the wind. Their passionate curiosity about the natural world can motivate children later on in life to become scientists to find out ever more about the awesome wonders of this world and worlds beyond.
Parents can rejoice as they notice early gifts of children to appreciate and learn about the natural world. Parents are often the first to notice early gifts of children -whether love for and tenderness with animals, musical talent, artistic ability, dance gracefulness, tinkering skills, athletic skills, a passion for design and fashion, or a passion for numbers and math. Whatever a child’s early passions and talents are, parents can be the first proudly to notice and nourish those early budding interests and skills. Help parents feel how special they are early on as they cultivate in their boys and their girls abilities that can lead to rich life satisfactions in the worlds of work and leisure and friendships.
KINDNESS. Empathy is an essential skill for creating a peaceable world. As parents show compassions for those in need, sick, or with difficult physical or emotional problems, then children grow up learning to feel empathy for those who are having life difficulties. From parent models, children learn nurturing ways with animals, peers, teachers, relatives, and neighbors.
JOY. Happiness experiences are sometime fleeing in life, especially when families experience difficult economic, interpersonal, or medical problems. Parents are the special and deeply-tobe-appreciated persons whose love for each of their children helps “keep the joy pipes” open throughout childhood. Despite life trials and tribulations, when practicing gentle ways, admiring and positively affirming words, providing firm rules plus giving clear reasons for rules, and showing genuine personal interest in each individual child, parents help children grow into people who will help the world become a better place to live. Positive parenting is a priceless gift for all humanity!