8 Parenting Tips to Help You Be a More Effective Parent

Parenting is one of the toughest jobs out there. Even when your children get older, you don’t stop being a parent to them, it’s just that your role in their lives shifts. Parenting requires endless creativity, passion, and energy, not to mention loads of love, patience, and compassion.

This may make parenting seem like dull, hard drudgery, but it’s far from that. The joy that children bring is immeasurable, and there’s nothing quite like the satisfaction of seeing your children flourishing.

8 parenting tips.

Parents need a hand now and again as they raise their children. We can’t be endlessly creative on our own and putting heads together to share ideas and encouragement helps a lot in any parenting journey. Below are several tips to help you remain focused, encourage, and energize you as you raise your children.

1. Keep the main thing the main thing.

Parenting, as explained by a Christian Counselor, is about meeting the needs of your child, and that can get lost in the shuffle. Sometimes parents can try and fill the gap of their absence with things, but that creates a whole host of other problems. A child’s needs include love, nurture, and feeling valued.

On the other hand, a child’s wants can multiply endlessly, and parents can get caught in the trap of confusing wants with needs, something that causes stress particularly if those wants require disposable income. Keeping the main thing the main thing includes not feeling like you’re a failure as a parent if you’re not able to provide for those wants, although that is tough for any parent – no one wants to disappoint their child, and the struggle is real.

Another aspect of keeping the main thing the main thing is to allow your child to live their own life. Don’t try to live through your child or have them remedy the mistakes you made. Yes, parents have loads of life advice, and that often includes mistakes made.

It takes a lot to trust your child to carve out a path for themselves. Give them your wisdom, model what a good life is for them, and know that the tools you’ve provided may lead them to different decisions in life. Even if those decisions turn out to be mistaken, at least they will be equipped to deal with them.

2. Be present.

Of the things that a parent can give their children, memories are one of the most priceless and irreplaceable. Being with one another is the best way to build relationships and connections. The bonds that are formed in even the smallest of moments cannot be substituted for anything else.

So, take the time, put your electronic devices down, have face-to-face contact as often as possible, and build memories as a family. Time is something you can’t take back once it’s used up and using it wisely to build a relationship with your children is a great use of your time.

3. Listen well.

Along with being present and building a relationship with your children, being a great listener, meaning being engaged, curious, and open, goes a long way. Even when they are very young, the little people in your life have things to say. Starting to listen when they’re young sets you up for when they get older and have more complicated and thorny issues to work through.

Ask questions, be genuinely interested in what they’re about – not only does it model good listening skills for them to emulate, but it also allows you to get to know them and what drives them. As with any relationship, good listening is part of a strong foundation. Listening to your children doesn’t mean doing what they want after you’ve heard them – it does mean doing them the honor of hearing them out fully and employing all the tools of effective listening you can muster as you do it.

When your children are older and have strong ideas of their own, patient listening remains an indispensable skill. Ask yourself how you feel and react when someone doesn’t listen to what you have to say. If we’re honest, we might say we feel disrespected, ignored, invalidated, foolish, angry, and more. It’s not a pleasant feeling to not be listened to, and so it’s wise to extend to our children the same courtesy we would like others to extend to us.

4. Nurture your marriage.

If you’re married, nurturing your marriage is a great gift you can give your children. A solid marriage benefits your children in several ways. It makes for clearer communication between the two of you, and thus clearer communication to the children.

There must consistency in how the parents address issues and a support structure that includes at least two people who may be quite different from one another. This is a good thing because the children may gravitate toward one parent on some issues and another on other issues, but they’ll get similar guidance. Another blessing of a great marriage is that the children will see a functional, committed adult relationship modeled for them.

In situations where either the marriage has ended, or there is a single parent for other reasons, the wisdom would look a little different but still point in the same direction. Having functional relationships where you model relating well to one another provides a good foundation for your children’s future relationships. It also hopefully provides you and your children with a broad social network and support structure, which is invaluable.

5. Communicate clearly and often.

It might help here to draw on wisdom from the Bible and our relationship with God. Just as we don’t always hear God the first time (or we’re choosing to ignore Him because we don’t like what we’re hearing), we often obey what we’re told. God patiently repeats himself, and over time things tend to become clear.

With your children, the things that you say once won’t necessarily be heard. Repetition and clarity are the name of the game. And this goes for more than simply issuing instructions. Addressing topics such as sex when they come up, giving your children age-appropriate responses along the way will make for consistent messaging and make the topic something normal to address in your family.

6. Be gentle.

In every area of life, how you do or say something matters just as much as that you’ve done it. This counts just as much when the relationship with one’s children is concerned. You can discipline your child, you can talk to your child, you can relate to them, but how you do those things matters. Our demeanor with our children matters as much as the content of what we’re telling them.

Often, the message is either reinforced or completely undermined because of how we deliver it. Picture this: you have two young children who are fighting, or you’ve just been told that your child was bullying another child. If you charge in like a bull in a glass shop, what are you modeling about how to deal with anger or use your power? Sometimes you need to take a time-out to calm down so that you address the situation calmly and with gentleness.

7. Walk the talk and apologize when you don’t.

It’s come up a lot already, but one of the things that a parent does is model a good life for their children. Parents have the enormous responsibility to share their values and way of life with their children. It’s not a small thing to be the first person to disciple your children and guide them in life.

We can sometimes apply rules to our children that we don’t apply to ourselves. Now, that’s to be expected in some cases, but broadly speaking, what we ask them to do, we ought to be willing to do, and we ought to do it first to show them what we’re talking about. Asking your kids to clean their room while yours is a dumpster fire is hypocritical.
Telling them to play nicely with one another while you’re a fractious person leaves a lot to be desired. And it’s not as though the children don’t notice it – they can tell when you’re applying rules in a grossly unfair manner, or not sticking to your own rules.

This doesn’t mean that you’re meant to be perfect as a parent before you can parent your children well. None of us is perfect, nor will we ever be this side of heaven. What we need is the integrity to walk the talk, and the humility to apologize when we don’t. Apologizing doesn’t undermine your position of strength; it humanizes you, and it provides you yet another situation in which to model how to handle your mistakes when you make them.

8. Cut yourself some slack.

Lastly, cut yourself some slack; you aren’t perfect, nor will you ever be in this life. Christians lean on the gospel for daily life, and it’s a reminder of their imperfection before God. Some of those imperfections lie in the realm of your parenting, and as much as Jesus died for your other daily sins, he also died for the sins you commit as a parent.

You’re not going to get everything right. You’ll need to reset, ask for forgiveness, pick yourself up again and keep going using the strength God provides through his Spirit. There’s no other way to do this parenting thing. As tough as the gig gets, you can’t give up because the stakes are so high.

Christian counseling for parents.

If you’re looking for additional support beyond these parenting tips for your journey, I invite you to contact me or one of the other counselors in San Diego Christian Counseling counselor directory to schedule an appointment. We would be honored to work with you.