It's easy to find parenting advice when it comes to changing your child's outer behavior. But wouldn't you also like to get parenting advice that helps your child grow from the inside - and make changes on the outside happen almost automatically? The positive parenting principles outlined in this parenting article will help your child to:

  1. Become more confident in themselves.
  2. Become more loving towards friends and family.
  3. Use their creative thinking skills to make good decisions.
  4. Feel more comfortable with difficult social situations.

You can help your child to experience all four of these things by parenting in a way that enhances their brain development. Particularly, you want to help them establish the most positive neural connections in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) of their brain. The PFC is responsible for many of the "higher" levels of thought, including the ability to:

  • Plan for and predict certain outcomes.
  • Make good decisions based on internal goals.
  • Express one's personality in socially acceptable ways.
  • Determine the value of one's actions.

The PFC is the part of the brain that helps to control or govern some of the more impulsive, emotionally charged thoughts and feelings coming from the more "primitive" areas of the brain.

Children, especially when they are young, only have a limited ability to control their impulses. Some parents use scare tactics to coerce them into behaving, saying things like "Put that down right now or else…". This threatening sort of parenting style appeals to the same primitive part of the child's brain that their impulsive behavior came from. However, it does nothing positive to stimulate brain improvement in the PFC where the child could learn to make a better choice.

Brain development occurs as a result of heredity as well as environmental influences. While you can't change the hereditary part, good parenting skills can make up for a large part of the environmental influence. It's sobering to consider research that shows about 85% of what children hear each day has a negative bias to it - things like: "Don't eat that", or "Stop making that noise". It might take some work and changes in your old habits, but you can provide your child with a more supportive environment for enhancing their brain development in ways that positively affect their behavior.

Here are 3 Positive Parenting Principles that will encourage optimal prefrontal brain enhancement:

1. Noticing as Opposed to Judging.
Simply notice your child's behavior instead of judging their behavior. Judging places your own values of behavior along with a strong message of disapproval (or approval) toward the child's sense of self. On the other hand, noticing a child's behavior simply points out the harm (or helpfulness) of the action itself as separate from the child's sense of self worth.

2. Connecting to the Value Beneath the Emotions
One of the tools used in Neural Linguistic Programming (NLP) to create lasting, internal changes in habits and behavior is to make a new, strong emotional association with a desired action. Unfortunately, most children's brains haven't developed adequate neural pathways to connect their feelings with their actions. You can help them make these neural connections. Instead of saying something vague like "Good job picking up your toys", you can show them the value of their actions by saying "You picked up your toys quickly so you still have time to go out and play with Joey".

3. Assuming the Best and Accentuating the Positive
As I mentioned earlier, most of what children hear is negative. You can help re-train their brains by noticing the positive aspects of their behavior. It will be difficult to do in some cases unless you first change your own perspective of your child by assuming the best and giving them the benefit of the doubt. If you are constantly looking for the best of your child's behavior, you are far more likely to find it. If you help them "notice" whenever they do ANYTHING positive (without "judgment" as in number 1), you will be helping them associate their positive actions with something they value. This association will create new neural networks in their PFC which help them make better decisions in the future.

Find as many positive ways as possible to show your child how their feelings are connected to their actions. Point out the value and positive benefit in as many of their actions as you can. Following these positive parenting principles will enhance their PFC brain development with the result that your child will make better decisions for their life based on their internal "higher level" motivations.

You can find more parenting articles or get one on one support for your parenting by visiting Inspiring-Self-Improvement.com.

Author's Bio: 

Susan Merz Anderson is a Professional Certified Coach with more than 10 years of experience inspiring hundreds of clients to realize their potential and live their dreams. She has also completed training as a Relationship Coach and a Heart Virtues coach and trainer. In addition to her life coaching practice, she and her husband Steve provide empowering personal development resources on their website at Inspiring-Self-Improvement.com.