Eight Simple Steps . . .

We had our best “New Parent Orientation” yet Friday night!

For those that missed or have not been to one yet I thought I would share the eight parenting tips from the session. They are designed to make YOU the best parent on the planet:

1. Learn now to practice “non-judgement”: You will need to develop this before your child enters their teens years. If you do they will trust and talk to you. Learn to stop judging everything as right or wrong, good or bad. And, dads, learn not to “fix” or “solve” everything!

2. Do not be your child’s BFF: The reason – if your #1 motivation is for your child to “like” you, you will never be able to be their parent. A friend cannot tell a friend something they do not like or want to do! They do not need them to like you . . . they need to love and respect you. Tough Love = Good Parenting.

3. The four stresses your child needs more of: You want your child to have a good life but not an easy life. When everything comes too fast and too easy they never learn character, particularly strong work ethic and discipline. The four stressed you need to find and put your child in more are fear, boredom, hardship and failure. How much of each of these did your child experience today? Courage can only be learned in the presence of fear. Discipline and hard work can only be learned with boredom, hardship and failure.

4. Make them do things they do not want to do: What is discipline? The ability to do things you do not want to do. So, make your child do things they want to do all the time!

5. Make them wait: Self-regulating, self-control and delayed gratification are all critical skills for success as adults. Technology works against you. So, make them wait for everything you can.

6. Do not make your children the center of your family: Dr. Spock started this in the 1960’s and has been proven wrong! “If the relationship between the mother is father is good the kids will be fine.” The nucleus of any family is the husband and wife. The number one thing that messes up kids is the break-up of the family.

7. Punishing a child into good behavior does not work: Try not to even go down this road because it does not work and both sides lose. Just learn to do two things: “Catch them doing something right” and “Learn to reward approximations of success”.

8. The #1 thing you can do to raise a highly successful and happy child: Develop a “Growth Mindset” in your child and your family. Just do these three things:

a. Start by becoming much more aware and discover where you are on the Fixed/Growth Mindset spectrum.

b. Learn to stop judging and labeling, starting with yourself.

c. Learn the language of praising “Effort, Choices, and the Process” rather than performance and results.

*For more information on this, search keywords “Dr. Carol Dweck” and “Growth Mindset”.

Now go out there and work every day on becoming the best parent ever! See you at the dojo,

Sensei