If you're new here you might want to check out our top recommendation for parents. You can get a copy of The Total Transformation Program for free for a limited time, and it truly is a fantastic resource.

Parents the world over are in a constant search for the education that can lead them to the most effective parenting. Skills that can appropriately discipline our children, not merely punish them, are the pinnacle of parental achievement; we’re constantly seeking the best and most effective parenting skills.

It’s important to understand, in that search, what exactly we mean by “effective.” Parenting skills that worked in previous generations are not always appropriate to the modern child; the newspapers are full of advice, from columnists and reporters alike, who tell us which new and improved methods will work best with our children.

But in the end, the most effective parenting skills are not anything new – because children, no matter how much the world changes, are still more or less the same as they have always been… and rather than develop skills at parenting our children, the true aim is to teach skills to the children themselves.

One of the earliest skills our children should develop is the ability to read social situations. This can be made into a game; magazines, newspapers, and television shows can be used to teach children when people look happy or sad, tired or angry.

As children grow, failure to read social situations can lead to difficulty in getting along with others, or – worse – to hanging around with “the wrong crowd.” Our collections of effective parenting skills need to include this practice, of teaching our children to read others’ emotions.

The second step from this position is to educate our children on reading their own emotional states, and controlling their responses – to choose a response that is not merely the easiest or most instinctive, but one that will be effective. Parenting skills that focus on simply calling emotions “bad” or “negative” do little to help with this; the correct and proper behavior needs to be encouraged.

Building on this foundation, as children become older, they’ll need to understand problem solving techniques to make their own decisions. Effective parenting skills are measured not by how well they control the child’s behavior, but how well they educate that child in the skills necessary to enter adulthood.

While teenage angst has become a cottage industry in and of itself, from the “emo” movement to the “goth” and “punk” subcultures, most true dissatisfaction with teenage life comes from a lack of problem solving skills – and teaching them is one of the more effective parenting skills you can develop.

Once you’ve developed the effective parenting skills that can teach your child to read social situations, understand their own emotional states, and solve their own problems… parenting rapidly becomes a joy, rather than a chore. Children are remarkably good at, well, being good – if they have the skills to deal with the world around them.

Children have honestly not changed much over the last several centuries. For all the discussion of effective parenting skills in the new millennium, the children are ultimately still the same… and will probably be the same for generations to come.

To learn more about effective parenting skills I highly recommend The Total Transformation Program, by James Lehman.

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