Skills Of Parenting

 Many parents feel confident in their skills while their children are little, only to wonder how it all got away from them as their kids reach the pre-teen years. And who are these strangers inhabiting their adolescents' bodies, and what did they do with the off-spring we knew, anyway?

Parenting is not the same as it used to be. Fewer families include a stay-at-home parent. Economically, most families need both parents to be in the work force. More women are single parents.

The kids who are teens now were in daycare or otherwise looked after by people other than their parents. They don't see us as the arbiters of their lives or as the holders of all the keys, because we no longer are. As well, TV and computers have made information easily accessible by children - information that, just a few years ago, was the domain of adults. The way we protected children in the past from overwhelming material such as sexual images, disasters, and pictures of war-torn bodies, was to keep it unavailable. Now that is almost impossible. Children are traumatized by the news.

They are also feeling immense pressure to be involved in activities and interests that their peers and the media tell them they are ready for. Advertising, loosened standards in TV programs and movies, and the availability of adult content, are all making our children (and many parents, actually) believe that ten-year-olds should be concerned about deodorant, and engage in sexual behaviors.

We are all racing - kids and parents alike. Society runs at a much faster pace. Music, TV shows, sentence structure and pacing in books, magazines, even symphonies, have sped up drastically. There is an overwhelming amount of information bombarding us and demanding that we respond to it instantly. We work longer, vacation less and are expected to be available by phone, hand-held, and computer 24/7. On top of all this, neighborhoods are not as safe as before. Gangs, drugs, and violence are not restricted to inner cities.

When parents come to me, often they want to reduce some unacceptable behavior in their child. Old parenting styles that many of us were raised with, were based on behavior control. They worked moderately well then, because children were more dependent on their parents. Today, the same methods often have wildly unsuccessful results, in that they spark dramatic reactions in our children that are often the exact opposite of what we hoped for.

When parents now use a domineering tone, lay down the law, and are unaware of their child's point of view, while expecting instant and unquestioning obedience, pre-teens and teens often react with aggression or rejection in terms that we'd never have dared to use. We cannot focus simply on behavior cessation or our own comfort levels. There is nothing more silly and helpless than the feeling you get when you bellow, "You're not going anywhere until you clean your room!" and have the kid shoot you that who-are-you-kidding sneer and stalk out of the house. Parents feel shell-shocked and confused, and the children feel disrespected, misunderstood, and alone.

What we need now are the skills that will help our kids see us as their major support. We need to help them learn to navigate the world as it is today. They need to take risks within a reasonable range, learn from their mistakes within the safety of a family that knows the value of trial and error. We need to make sure that our families help young people think about situations, options, and consequences.

It is difficult to give up old patterns and to try new ones. The benefits are legion. As painful as the tumult often is in today's families, we can see it as an opportunity, if we view the chaos from within a positive psychology framework. We have the chance to lay a foundation for continued connection and understanding with our young children, to build real and lasting closeness with our adolescents, and in so doing, to work beyond some of the hurts we may still be carrying from our own childhoods, by learning to have more meaningful and warm relationships with our kids.

It is so easy, in the face of kids' changing behavior and moodiness, to lose sight of the fact that we have wonderful skills. While they treat us as if we are clueless, ridiculous, and offensive, it is imperative that we maintain our own reality. The more we can maintain our own equanimity and center, the more they will acquire these same strengths, to help with the pressures that face them in years to come.

Many parents started by uncovering their assumptions about families, as well as the patterns they inherited from their own upbringings. We looked at the effects of these patterns on the present. Then we discussed what is causing their children to act the way they are.This information included normal developmental phases as well as how modern culture and environmental factors have accelerated kids' behavior. It is not only a relief for parents to have more insight into their child's reality, it helps immeasurably in staying calm and in being understanding during conflicts, rather than reacting only to the surface behavior.

Once the elements feeding into the tumult were uncovered, So many parents paused to remember why they wanted to have a family in the first place - the spiritual, loving, giving, connected, creative, nourishing reasons for generating and supporting life. Then they identified their signature strengths, as identified by the research in positive psychology spear-headed by Chris Peterson and Martin Seligman. We brainstormed parenting applications.

Parents feel empowered to acknowledge and utilize their Values In Action such as curiosity, loving, perseverance, genuineness, open-mindedness, kindness, leadership. For example, one has perseverance/diligence as a strength. We talked about how they could redirect it from doing all the chores and running herself ragged, to setting up job plans and following through with consistency. They could apply her strength to learning more about child development, new approaches to discipline, as well as putting more emphasis their own well-being within the family.

But the VIA signature strengths are not the only characteristics that parents have or need! After working to upgrade my own parenting skills and helping many families, I have identified a list of Positive Parenting Strengths you could call them Values in Parenting  that are explicitly helpful in family life. We have many of the Positive Parenting Strengths in abundance but don't always recognize them as valuable.

As parents recognize these attributes and attend mindfully to expanding their use in situations, we feel more assured in our parenting. Increasing our reliance on these strengths also tends to give us more confidence in our communities and in work lives, as we see them help in all relationships.

The value in parents list is meant as an adjunct to the VIA list, so I have not replicated the many valuable parenting skills, such as authenticity, curiosity, love of learning in the original. The two can be used together to focus and enhance parents' efforts.

Here Positive Parenting Power are skills that help parents of any aged child improve communication, feel more calm and confident, and maintain loving connections.