Are you having difficulties parenting your young children? Our research shows that is probably why you are reading this right now! If you would like to be among those who succeed while being a parent to your kids, the time to do things right is while they are still on the young side.
So, if you are having troubles, and you want to turn things around, here are three things you should avoid doing.
Number one.
You should not be flimsy when it comes to setting boundaries for your children.
Many parents feel bad saying no to their children, so they may even initially say no to a situation or a request, only to change their mind later on.
You should avoid doing this for two reasons.
It sends a mixed message to your children which can create confusion.
It also lets them know that if they keep asking you to do something that they want to do, eventually you will say yes.
The best way to avoid these hassles, especially if you are parenting young children, is to just be firm and steady.
It doesn't mean you always have to say no to things, or even the same type of requests.
As long as you have consistent rules and logical explanations, they will most likely adhere to your words.
The second thing to avoid doing, is really an extension of number one.
When your children are very young, the explanations for your reasoning of letting them do things or not, should be as brief as possible.
This is especially true during the moments that they are asking you to change your mind.
Later on, at a convenient time, you can explain further, but again, you don't have to get into too much detail, unless you can turn it into a learning experience.
Young children are especially curious about things, so it's great to use these times to teach them about life, or whatever.
However, during the actual time of the request, it's best to keep it simple and firm.
This can be a crucial point because when their mind is set on wanting to do something, the more you get into explanations and dialogue, the greater the chance will be that you might give in to their request.
This is especially true if you are prone to giving in to them.
If there are rules of the household that you have, in addition to other things that you generally don't want them to get involved with, it's best to stick to your guns.
If you don't, you'll end up with chaos, and as time goes by, more and more stress and tension..
The last thing to avoid doing, is actually far and away, the most important of all.
This is probably, especially true for readers of this article.
If you have possibly failed at times to employ the first two suggestions, you may be experiencing high levels of tension while you are parenting your young children.
There also may be other issues beyond the scope of this article, contributing to this.
Whether this is the case, or not, you should always avoid yelling, screaming, lecturing, or any other similar types of harsh parenting technique.
These techniques will only make matters worse, as you might have already experienced.
One way to avoid having to yell and scream is to uphold the first two suggestions.
As you continue doing that, you will probably see a decrease in the overall tension in the house.
If things have gotten really bad between you and your children, you might consider using some other resource.
We mentioned that not coming down harshly on your children is of the utmost importance.
This is because it has been discovered that this causes children to act out even more.
The yelling causes stress, which then causes something called cortisol to be released from the adrenal glands to the brain, which then causes all sorts of problems.