Raising Ourselves, Raising Our Children

Perhaps the most important key to raising children is raising ourselves. The best form of help for parents is self-help. Raising kids with sanity and skill demands that we grow. One of the best tips for parents is to pursue continual self-improvement.

Your level of success and fulfillment in raising your children reflects your level of focused awareness, knowledge, emotional self-control, empathy and communication skills. You can always grow in these areas! As you fulfill your higher potential you will be raising your children more competently, meaning that your children will feel more secure and more easily fulfill their greater potential.
When children and parents enter conflict, it is never just the children's fault.

Parenting advice is always available. Parents can always look back and see how they caused or contributed to their conflict with their child to see what they can do differently. Overlooking what we do, we blame the child and we do not change; so we continue achieving the same old frustrating results. To experience more satisfaction in the job of raising your children, remember to focus on what you do.
Make it your goal to handle every aspect of raising children with more joy, love, inner peace and competence.

When you feel frustrated, don't blame your child. Take total responsibility for your reactions. Pay close attention during every interaction with your child to recognize how your way of relating with your child can be improved.
One obstacle to the self-work needed for raising our children more effectively is expecting too much of ourselves as we are.

If you have the mindset that you are "supposed" to be raising your children perfectly already, you will resist looking for how you can improve. Adopt the mindset instead that raising children is an educational process. All experiences with your child offer you an opportunity to learn how you can do a better job. So do libraries, bookstores, websites, and seminars!
Raising children as well as possible involves continuing education and skills that we can develop.

Here is an example of the skills and education involved in a typical experience of raising children. Did you know that parents reading to children under the age of six provides those children with a foundation for future reading skill? Did you know also that it satisfies the children's deep need for intimate connection with the parent?

The skills involved in this essential activity go beyond the ability to read. They include:

* Being patient while the child looks at the pictures.
* Reading at a slow enough pace for the child to process the words.
* Maintaining a tender, loving attitude toward the child.
* Being alertly aware in the present to recognize things that you might do to distract or disturb the child, like reading in a voice she says that she doesn't like.
* Employing the time-management ability to preserve the time needed for reading to the child.

Alert responsiveness is a core-skill required for raising children.

Children begin communicating at birth. Through sound, physical gesture and facial expression they say what's on their minds. A parent's non-responsiveness to a child's non-verbal and verbal cues is a common way of raising children to behave outrageously for attention and control.
To improve how you are raising your children reflect back upon each day.

Each evening reflect upon your parenting that day. Perhaps you raised your voice more than was needed, expressed too much annoyance (which can damage a child's self-esteem), or argued with your mate in front of the children. The point of this is not to beat yourself up and to make you feel guilty and inadequate, but to recognize specific ways that you can improve how you are raising your children.