How To Be A Good Parent To A Toddler And Teenager

Parenting is among the most researched fields in the entire social science. The scientific evidence for the parenting principles is very consistent. In fact, it is not easy to be a good parent within a short time; however, if you are really serious about this, you will meet your expectation if you follow basic rules on how to be a good parent to a toddler and teenager below.

How To Be A Good Parent To A Toddler And Teenager – Top 17 Tips Revealed

Good parenting helps to boost cheerfulness, kindness, self-control, cooperation, self-reliance, honesty, and empathy. It also helps to promote motivation, intellectual curiosity, and desire to achieve. If you know exactly how to be a good parent, you can protect your children from developing drug and alcohol abuse, anti-social behavior, eating disorders, depression, and anxiety. A lot of parents base their actions on gut reaction. Nevertheless, some parents have better instincts than others. In fact, it is totally not easy to be a good parent that not everyone can stay well on the way of nurturing and educating their children. That is the reason why today I would like to introduce simple tips on how to be a good parent that people should not miss!

I. How To Be A Good Parent To A Toddler

1. Respect Your Child:

Your relationship with your child is the foundation for her relationships with others.

The best way on how to get respectful treatment from your child is to treat him respectfully. In fact, you need to give your children the same courtesies you will give to anyone else. You should speak to your child politely, respect her or his opinion, pay attention to what he or she is talking to you, treat your child kindly, and try to please the child if you can. Children treat people around them the same way as the way their parents treat on them.

Besides, you should let your child learn or do what they love to, such as taking part in a personal piano course if he or she wants to become an artist or musician.

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2. Explain Your Rules And Decisions:

A good parent has expectations about what they want their children to live up to. In general, parents under-explain to adolescents and over-explain to young children. What is evident to you may not be obvious to a little boy. He does not have the judgment, priorities, or experience that you have. Therefore, you should spend time explaining clearly about what you want your child to implement.

Besides, to make your child easily understand what you say in every case, you should keep calm. If you are in a terrible mood, it will make it difficult to talk to your child and you may make wrong decision in a while. Thus, you should learn how to end a depression fast or simple ways to manage stress.

3. Avoid Harsh Discipline:

how to be a good parent articleParents should never hit a child, under any circumstances. “Children who are spanked, hit, or slapped are more prone to fighting with other children,” an expert writes. “They are more likely to be bullies and more likely to use aggression to solve disputes with others.”

You should also take care of daily meals that you give your children to help them get healthy physical condition. Thus, I recommend you adding super foods to boost health and energy into your family’s daily diet. Or else, you should learn simple yet healthy meal plans to give your child delicious meals with energy and nutrients every day.

If you are looking for a step by step guide on how to be a good parent to your toddler and teenager, you should read the How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk book.

4.  Be Consistent:

In fact, if your rules come different from day to day in an unpredictable level and style, or if you enforce your child only intermittently, his (or her) misbehavior is actually your fault. The most important disciplinary tool for you is consistency. You should identify your non-negotiable. The more your authority is based on wisdom, not the power, the less your children will challenge it. As a result, they will follow your rules much more easily.

A lot of parents nowadays have to face the problems of being consistent. When parents are not consistent, your children will also get confused. Thus, you will have to force yourself to be more consistent if you want to manage the situation.

5. Allow Your Kids To Experience Life For Themselves: 

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You should not make decisions for your kids in all case. In fact, it will be better for your kids that they should learn how to live, face, and accept the consequences from the decisions they made. After all, they will need to learn how to think for themselves sometimes. It is the best start when you are there to help them reduce the negative consequences at least and suggest a more positive one. The children need to learn that every of their own actions can leave consequence (both bad and good). By doing so, it will help them make better decisions and solve problems effectively so that they are ready to go through an independent life in the future.

6. Establish And Set Rules: 

Parents Reading to Laughing BoyIf you do not control your children’s behavior when they are young, they will go through a hard time learning how to control their own life when they become older and you are not around. In any time, you should always be able to answer 3 big questions: Where is your child? Who is with your child? And what is your child doing? The rules your children has learned from you will shape the rules they apply to their own life. However, you cannot micromanage your child. Once they are in middle school, you should allow your children do their homework by themselves, make their own options, and not intervene.

7. Be Involved In Your Child’s Life:

If you want to be an involved parent, you will have to spend much time and effort, and it often means rearranging and rethinking your priorities. It regularly means that you need to sacrifice things that you love to do for what your children need to do. You should be there physically as well as mentally all the time.

Being involved does not mean that you should do homework for your child, read it over, or correct it. Homework is a tool that every teacher uses to determine whether or not the child is learning. As a result, if you help your child do their own homework, you are not letting his (or her) teacher know what and how your child is learning.

One more tip on how to be a good parent you should remember is that you and your wife or husband should join together to stay in a happy marriage because your children need a happy family to live in and feel peaceful and safe. Thus, you should learn simple ways to keep and stay a happy marriage.

8. You Cannot Be Too Loving: 

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It is simply not likely to spoil a child with love. What we usually think of as the result of spoiling a child will be never the product of showing a child too much love. It is often the consequence when you give your child things in place of love, such as material possessions, lowered expectations, and leniency.

If you are looking for a step by step guide on how to be a good parent to your toddler and teenager, you should read the How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk book.

9. What You Do Matters:

This is one of the most important rules in parenting: what you do will make a separation. Your kids are watching you so you should not just react on the spur of the moment. It will be better if you ask yourself for what do you want to do, and is this likely to produce that result.

10. Spend Time With Each Child Individually: 

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You should try to equally arrange your time spending for each child if you have more than one.

  • You should attend school functions as you can spend time doing homework with them, visiting their teacher at open house even if it needs you to take some time out from your work. You should remember that your children are growing fast, and they will be on their own soon. Your boss may or may not remember that you missed a meeting, but your child will most remember certainly that you did not attend the play they were in.
  • You should set aside a day to take your child to a library museum, theme parks, or a park according to their interests.
  • You should listen and respect your child as well as what they want to do with their life.

Besides, you should also monitor what your child are doing or watching online with a powerful internet monitoring program.

11. Avoid Rescuing Them:

You should help your kids determine their choices, and the consequences of each one, then both you and your children will live with whatever option they opt for in general. 

12. Give Up Your Vices: 

The last tip on how to be a good parent that I want to introduce today is that you should give up your bad habits and vices to stay a bright mirror towards your children. Drugs, alcohol, and gambling can affect your child’s financial safety. Smoking, for instance, almost always causes health harms to your child’s living environment. Second-hand smoke can lead to a lot of respiratory diseases in children. It can also contribute to the early death of the parent. Drugs and alcohol might also produce health damages or violence towards your child.

If you are looking for a step by step guide on how to be a good parent to your toddler and teenager, you should read the How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk book.

II. How To Be A Good Parent To A Teenager

1. Listen & Understand: listen & understand

Many parents complain that why their teenagers never listen to them. Is this your situation now? Have you ever tried to listen to and understand your child? Because they are just young adult, sometimes they are still behave like kids. Sometimes they are stubborn. To be a good parent, you must be patient to your child. Put yourself in your child’s position to understand him or her. This is also a way to make a tight bond between parents and children.

If you are angry with your child, or vice versa, let yourself and your child a space and a little moment to have calmness. Then, remember to come back and give him or her an apology if it can make your child feel happy and smile with you.

2. Talk:

Talk

Pay attention but don’t keep silent. Talk or give your teenager some advice when he or she needs. In fact, teenagers have a lot of awkward questions related to life, relationship, gender, lifestyle, fashion, hobby and so on. Thus, spend time with your child and help him or her answer questions of these topics above. If the teenager is ashamed of giving some sensitive question, especially related to sex, personal hygiene for teenagers, be open to explain for your child.

Actually, learn to be your child’s close friend as all teenagers love to make more friends, but besides being his or her close friend, be your child’s special friend, too!

Just make him or her feel free to talk and ask. They are young adult and they seem curious to be interested in adult issues. Be open to let him or her know about safe sex, sexually transmitted diseases, contraception for girls or general topics about his or her opposite sex.

If you are looking for a step by step guide on how to be a good parent to your toddler and teenager, you should read the How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk book.

3. Manage Your Child’s Cell Phone Use:

manage your child’s cell phone use

As teenagers start opening many relationships at this period of time, so control your teenager to have good relationships and good activities in his or her social life. If possible, manage your child’s cell phone use, such the time to use, the call payment, the friend list or the call diary. Explain that as a parent, you must do these rules, and he or she should follow your rules and cell phone management.

4. Teach Your Child To Drive:

Take care of your child when he or she starts his or her adulthood and your child can drive legally. Teaching your teenager to drive actually is the sweetest way to show your care and love to him or her. This is also a way to show your responsibility for your child’s safe driving and his or her future. I bet that all teenagers who were taught to dive by their parents would remember that time till the end of their lives.

5. Help The Teenager Have Good Friends: help the teenager have good friends

Next to ways on how to be a good parent, you need to manage your child’s time to know where he or she is, who he or she is with and how his or her friends are. Actually, relationships can affect your child’s point of view and habits. Some are good, some are bad. Just be a guider of your child and give him or her on-time advice to start and keep good relationships and stop playing with bad gangs or individuals.

All of the 17 tips on how to be a good parent to a toddler and teenager are from a lot of people out there. I have studied them for a long time, and now, I am glad to share them with anyone who desires to find out how to become good parents.

If you feel the tips on how to be a good parent I offer in this article are really useful for your current expectation, just feel free to leave all your comments/feedbacks at the end of this post. We appreciate your contribution and will respond all as soon as possible.

If you are looking for a step by step guide on how to be a good parent to your toddler and teenager, you should read the How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk book.

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