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  • Child Development
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Positive Parenting Techniques that Raise Emotionally Healthy Kids

December 20, 2018 by Angela Pruess

Inside: Experts share their top positive parenting techniques for raising emotionally healthy and well-adjusted children.

Parenting often feels like a fifty sided Rubik’s cube, deceivingly simple before you really get into it, but seemingly impossible to figure out when you’re in the thick of things.

Instead of contending with brightly colored toys, parents find themselves sorting out variables such as their own upbringing, expectations of others and wading through the massive amount of parenting information at our fingertips.

Oh, and then there’s the small task of taking into account each child’s individual needs and challenges.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Parenting Tagged With: Emotionally healthy children, parenting

5 Parenting Mindsets That Are Toxic to Your Child

August 22, 2017 by Angela Pruess

Inside: These mindsets allow parents to use positive parenting skills to grow emotionally healthy kids and fully enjoy the amazing experience of parenthood.
positive parenting skills

Sometimes it feels as though there are two different parenting mindsets.

One can be likened to looking at your sweet child fast asleep in bed at night, the moon reflecting off their cherub-like cheeks, your heart ready to explode with all the love, gratitude and endless possibility that lie within the honor of growing a human being. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Parenting, Uncategorized Tagged With: parent mindframe, parenting, positive parenting

Here’s How and When to Teach Your Child About Sex

March 21, 2017 by Angela Pruess

Inside: Research tells us following these 6 guidelines gives children a healthy foundation for an understanding of their sexuality, intimacy, and relationships.

teach my child about sex

When it comes to talking about sex with our kids, most parents conjure up some pretty negative internal headlines, “The Sex Talk: Causing Irrational Panic and Avoidance for Parents Everywhere Since the Beginning of Time.” [Read more…]

Filed Under: Parenting, Uncategorized Tagged With: parenting, sex talk, tough topics with kids

Supporting Grief and Loss in Childhood

February 18, 2017 by Angela Pruess

 

This article appeared on Parent.co

Grief is complex. Most adults struggle to navigate themselves through a painful loss or death, so how do we go about helping our child in this complicated and unwelcome situation?

If you are feeling at a loss for how to help your child through a tough time, you certainly not alone. This is challenging territory for any parent, and you are an amazing parent for digging in to find out how to best support your child during an overwhelming time. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Childhood Mental Health, Parenting Tagged With: childhood grief, death, grief, parenting

4 Ways to be an Amazing Parent to your Teen (and even enjoy it!)

January 30, 2017 by Angela Pruess

Inside: Learn four essential ways to be the best parent to your teenager while also enjoying this stage of their growth and development.

*This post may contain affiliate links which allow me to hook you up with the best parent resources and help the website keep running in the process!

For decades the teenage years have been foreshadowed by fear and negativity. My oldest daughter just lost her second tooth and I am already breaking out into a sweat thinking about the hormonal years that lie ahead.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Child Development, Parenting Tagged With: parenting, parenting teens, teens

6 Signs Your Child has Officially Entered the Pre-teen Years

January 20, 2017 by Angela Pruess

Inside: Learn 6 common behaviors that signal pre-adolescence in a child and how to handle them with confidence.
This article may contain affiliate links that allow us to make a small fraction of your purchase to keep bringing the research-backed goodness coming. 

While parents are told to ‘buckle up’ for the teenage years, we don’t talk much about the turbulence of the years leading up to adolescence, the pre-teen years.

We should, though. The pre-adolescent years (between the ages of nine and 12) are chock full of amazing developmental changes for your child; cognitive, physical, and emotional. The volume and velocity of these changes can leave us wondering, who took our sweet child and replaced them with a villain from ‘The Descendants’?

It can be an unsettling and confusing time, for both you and your child, but have no fear, there is much hope for the both of you. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Child Development, Parenting Tagged With: parenting, tween

10 Insights of Remarkable Parents (from a family therapist)

December 9, 2016 by Angela Pruess

Inside: Find out what parenting insights and approaches consistently lead to happy, emotionally healthy and well-adjusted children from a family therapist.

At any given time you’ll find four or more parenting books on my Amazon wish list, a few by my nightstand, and an email box chock full of insightful parenting theories and approaches. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Parenting Tagged With: best parenting practices, parenting, remarkable parenting

More Peace Less Stress: How to be a Positive Parent During the Holidays

December 8, 2016 by Angela Pruess

Inside: Learn how to beat the holiday stress and be a conscious positive parent during the holidays.

There is no time of year where magic is in the air like during the holidays. When you become a parent this magic intensifies, right along with feelings of exhaustion and overwhelm.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Parenting Tagged With: Christmas parenting, parenting, self-care

3 Important Reasons Your Parenting Needs an Overhaul

September 21, 2016 by Angela Pruess

Inside: Learn three signs your go-to parenting approaches may not be meeting your child’s emotional needs and how learning new parenting skills leads to better behavior.

parenting skills

Somehow we had gotten all the way upstairs in a matter of seconds, as I gripped the doorknob, my tense knuckles turning white. Adrenaline had clouded my brain and urged me to follow my internal script. The one that sounded something like this, [Read more…]

Filed Under: Parenting Tagged With: child well-being, parenting

6 Ways Parents Unknowingly Stifle Their Child’s Social and Emotional Growth

June 10, 2016 by Angela Pruess

Inside: Many parents unknowingly negatively impact their child’s developing social and emotional growth through common behaviors and situations.  


I could tell by the look on her face as she got into the van after school that something had happened.

My 8-year-old sat quietly in the back until we were pulling into our driveway. Then the floodgates opened.

“I had the worst day mom. We were passing around a puppet in class, and Lucy wouldn’t hand it to me even though the teacher kept telling her to. I finally asked her to give it to me, but then she whispered in my ear that now she would never invite me to her birthday party ever”.

A tear rolled down her cheek as my sensitive girl described her heartbreak.

It is in these very moments that being a conscious parent is the hardest as our children grow older. Despite having the knowledge we should let our child feel the hard things of life, and work their way through them, our protective instincts surge, “suffering child! suffering child! Send in reinforcements!”

How parents interfere with their child’s emotional growth

We are biologically programmed to have protective instincts with our child, but when it comes to protecting them, when does protection become stifling to their social and emotional development?

This is one of the many grey areas of parenting, but I can tell you navigating our way through starts with recognizing our own emotions and triggers when our child is struggling and how they enter into the equation of our reaction and response.

I did not do a great job that day standing in our garage as I impulsively reacted to my daughter’s story, “Why would you even want to go to the birthday party of someone that would treat you that way?”

Whoops. As soon as the words left my mouth I knew. I was mad she was hurting. I was scared she would become friends with the ‘mean girls’ and maybe even become one herself (parents have lots of fears lurking beneath the surface).

The protective and loving instincts we have as parents are so strong, they can often lead us into actions indicating that we are fully responsible for solving our child’s problems.

When our own unattended emotions from past or present mix with our best intentions to help and protect our child, the combination can be one that hinders emotional development and our child’s opportunity to develop resilience.

It’s hard to know where to start reflecting, so here are six scenario’s that commonly trip up even the most well-meaning and intentional parents.

Six ways parents unknowingly stifle their child’s emotional development.

1. Consistently over-scheduling your child.

You want your child to be athletic and popular, and if they don’t start basketball by first grade, they’ll never be ready for the club team! Your good intentions are translated into exhaustion on their part, resentment on yours, and the always resounding question of “When was the last time we had a family dinner together?” If it is more stress than it’s worth, it probably isn’t in your child’s best interest.

If it is more stress than it’s worth, it probably isn’t in your child’s best interest.

2. Doing their homework for them.

You know that school is the foundation for future success and are determined that your child put their best foot forward. It is easy for these good intentions regarding school work to result in parents taking it over. By taking the reins on your child’s schoolwork, you are communicating to them that they are not capable of doing it themselves. It is also teaching them learned helplessness, which leads to the logic of “Why even bother trying when I know Mom will end up doing it for me anyway?”

3. Not letting them resolve their own conflicts.

You’ve read up on positive communication and lord knows you experienced plenty of ‘girl drama’ in your own childhood. So why wouldn’t you step in and give your daughter eight-point instructions on how to approach the girl who’s been teasing her in art class?

Because in doing so, she is robbed of the opportunity to learn how to work through social conflict on her own. If your child opens a dialogue, be a good listener and ask her what approach she’d like to try first. This will go far to develop problem-solving skills that will prepare them for the other inevitable relationship struggles down the road.

 

4. Being overly critical.

You so desperately want your child to do things the “right” way, you sometimes (or all the time) find yourself involuntarily “imparting” knowledge through lecturing and criticism. Your son came home to vent his embarrassment at school when he forgot his math homework at home and he was called out for it in class. Internal panic signals telling you that your son is destined to become a lifelong slacker provoke you to rake him over the coals for the next 10 minutes.

The problem is that he has already learned his lesson from the natural (and more effective) consequence of embarrassment that life delivered to him earlier. This excessive criticism will not only create unnecessary anxiety for your son (because you gave him yours) but will also lead to the tendency for him to become overly critical of himself.

5. Making their choices for them.

You know your child best, so why wouldn’t you take every decision of their day into your own hands? After all, you are sure your daughter would be happier in ballet class as opposed to karate (despite her requesting it on multiple occasions). When a child is old enough, giving them room to make some of their own choices will lead to confidence and self-discovery. Allowing your child to choose what they would like to participate in will lead to increased dedication and commitment to the activity.

6. Being overly protective.

You so desperately love your child and, therefore, naturally want to protect them from the disappointment and heartbreak in life. The problem is that you’re protecting them so entirely that they are unable to experience disappointment, fear, frustration, or pain. You are certainly your child’s protector for the big things in life, but remember that one day they will need to get by on their own. Many times it’s the most painful lessons in life that give us the skills, self-knowledge, and resilience to cope with life’s inevitable ups and downs.

Allowing our child their own path to emotional growth and resilience.

It is certainly not an easy endeavor to find the elusive sweet spot between nurturing and supporting your child and stifling opportunities for emotional growth and developing resilience.

Once my stress hormones peaked and reactivity subsided, I continued the conversation with my daughter, “I’m sorry to hear today was stressful. I know you are very capable of deciding what birthdays you’d like to go to. Is there any way I can help?”

A great place to start in supporting the healthy growth of our child’s social and emotional skills is cultivating the awareness that we as parents don’t hold our child’s destiny in our own hands.

We are blessed to be their guide, but we must allow them to forge their own path in life if our wish is for them to flourish. Luckily, life has a way of presenting its key wisdoms and lessons to our children, if we can step back enough to let it.

 

 

 

 

 

A version of this article appeared on Scary Mommy. 

 

We all want to help our child with life's ups and downs, but sometimes helping too much robs them of developing skills of emotional intelligence and resilience. Avoid these 6 things to grow your child's social and emotional skills including resilience and emotional intelligence.

Filed Under: Parenting Tagged With: emotional growth, parenting

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Angela Pruess

I'm Angela, a licensed child therapist and mom of 3. I'm here to help you raise an emotionally healthy, resilient child who'll change the world through emotional intelligence, positive discipline, growth mindset, mindfulness, art/nature, childhood mental health and the therapeutic power of play. Let's help your child reach their full human potential.

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