If you're able to talk and communicate in an open manner with your kids, you've already achieved a lot of what it takes to be a good parent. There's little point in trying to work on more complicated issues if this fundamental factor hasn't been addressed. Unfortunately, the most typical parenting style one adapts is the one that was learned from one's own parents, no matter how inadequate or even damaging this may have been. That's how the same problems are often passed along from one generation to the next. But since you've sought out this article, this means that you want to find a more effective and proactive parenting style. Nobody is born with the knowledge to teach or raise others, and that usually is not taught in school, either.
Children that are raised in an environment that is structured often fare much better in life than those that do not. Your job as a parent, especially at this stage, is to present a structured ideology of the world so that they can adapt accordingly. You can call this boundaries or structure, but it really is all the same thing. As a parent, you should know that this stage of life for your toddler is all about testing you and everything around them. This type of testing can come in the form of seeing exactly what you will do when they do certain things. This testing will go on for several months, if not years, which is something you should expect and learn to deal with. That is why it is so important for structure to exist in their early lives so they can learn how to properly interact. In recent years, lots of research on parenting techniques has been done. There are lots of different ideas about the best way to discipline children, and much research has been done to determine which theory is correct. One outcome has been the finding that positive reinforcement as a form of discipline is much more effective than punishing the child. Positive reinforcement is nothing more than putting an emphasis on praising your children for good behavior rather than chastising them for bad behavior. The usual tendency is for parents to get caught up in all the things their children are doing wrong most of the time. So just simply switch to focusing on good things, but of course we will have to intervene in a corrective fashion. The best approach to discipline is finding the right middle ground.
You can cause yourself immense difficulties when you establish rules and issue consequences for not following them only to break your own rules. An example of this would be telling your children that there's a certain penalty for breaking a certain rule and you then don't follow through with this. If your children learn that they can get out of any punishment by whining or pleading, your disciplinary efforts will come to nothing. Once you establish this kind of precedent, your children will know exactly what they have to do to avoid consequences. That's why it's crucial to stay firm so your kids will learn that the rules must be taken seriously. It's really essential that children grow up understanding that they can't get away with disregarding rules, and as a parent you're the one who they should learn this from.
While parenting isn't always easy, a lot of it comes down to following your intuition. One advantage every parent has is that he or she was once young and has gone through many of the same things as their children. Don't underestimate the value of the lessons you've learned in your own life. If you do some reflecting, you can surely use these experiences to help guide you in your role as a parent.
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