Positive parenting refers to learning and relationships that form between parents and children. Helping them to develop properly and interact constructively and nonviolently with others. In addition, it increases academic achievement and expectations about the future, instills self-esteem and self-confidence and reduces behavioral problems.

In that article, I told you about a parental style that I called Democratic Style. They were those parents who used dialogue, empathy, and limits to communicate with their children; managing to raise children sure of themselves, with good skills for social relationships and with values as important as responsibility and respect.

What is Positive Parenting?

Positive parenting is an educational style based on secure attachment. Where parents strive to create a strong bond with their children, fostering a relationship of mutual respect and understanding.

The goal is to educate children to develop properly so that they know how to interact with others in a constructive and non-violent way. Of the strategies used in positive parenting, three can be highlighted as the most representative and important:

Communication and active listening; between parents and children. A child educated in a home with open dialogue will feel important and valuable. He will learn to express his opinions and negotiate house rules, from respect and responsibility.

Emotional regulation by parents: Educating your child by being able to control your anger will allow you to understand him better and teach him to regulate his impulses. Remember that you are his role model and that he learns just by looking at you.

Positive discipline: away from punishment, but focused on limits and consequences. It is intended that children learn to be self-disciplined, for example, that they are able to regulate for themselves the candies that can be eaten every day. For this purpose, punishments (which only generate submission and fear) are no longer applied and educational limits and consequences (which provide security, stability, and responsibility) begin to be marked.

This type of parenting has many benefits in the development of the child, some of them are:

• Learn to respect and tolerate other people. Which will improve the way you interact with your schoolmates or with the other children in the park?
• Acquire values such as responsibility, cooperation, and pro-activity.
• Regulates his emotions in an appropriate way, increasing his tolerance to frustration when things do not go as he wants. Applying positive parenting, your child will barely have tantrums and have more skills to put themselves in the place of the other.
• It improves your self-esteem and self-confidence.
• Increase your academic achievements.
• Resolve their conflicts properly, using dialogue and empathy.

How can you apply Positive Parenting at home?

To make it easier for you to become a mother who educates positively, I have prepared a small list with some tips so that you can gradually change your parenting style towards a more effective one.

Think about your child's needs. Behind every cry, joy or sadness hides something that you want to convey.

Be empathetic Put yourself in his place, trying to understand their behavior without judging, ask you this question "What react like that?”

Practice active listening. Let me tell you his things and tell him yours. Encourage moments of sincere dialogue between the two, because this will create a bond full of trust.

Mark limits and applies educational consequences. Do it clearly and easily so that the child knows them and can fulfill them by taking coding test. Remember that you have two articles in this blog, one dedicated to the limits and another to the consequences that will surely give your ideas on how to abandon punishment for a more positive educational style.

Teach him to regulate and manage his emotions. Help him name the emotions he feels, teach him how he can identify them and then show him how he can express them without harming himself or harming other people.

Speak positively. Change your "Noes" for a closer, affectionate and firm language. Reformulate expressions like "Don't shout” for more positive ones like "Honey, we have to speak softly to understand what we say."

Finally, I can only remind you that children are sponges that absorb everything and the best way for them to learn is to see how their parents do it. So, become your role model, in the mirror where you can look.