The Parenting in The Family

The purpose of parenting is to provide guidance, love, support, and discipline to children as they grow and develop into adults. It involves helping children navigate through life's challenges, teaching them important values and beliefs, and preparing them for adulthood. Parenting also involves providing basic needs such as food, shelter, and clothing, as well as emotional support and encouragement.

Effective parenting helps children develop a sense of security, self-esteem, and confidence, which are important for their overall well-being. Additionally, parenting involves setting boundaries and expectations for children and holding them accountable for their actions.

One of the most complicated questions ever is “How do we do effective parenting?” As my wife and I ponder this, it was clear that coming to a consensus is hard, especially since we have both come from different cultures and backgrounds and were taught differently in this regard. However, there are a couple of phrases that have helped us: “Rules should not be multiplied beyond necessity” because “bad laws drive out respect for good laws”. These phrases are important especially paired with the following principles which have been very helpful:

• Limit the rules.
• Use minimum necessary force.
• Parents should come in pairs.
• Understand your own capacity as a parent to be harsh, vengeful, arrogant, resentful, angry, and deceitful.

As we learned about Michael Popkin's “Needs Approach” I realized it is a great way to help our children with their challenges. Dr. Popkin emphasizes the importance of meeting the emotional and psychological needs of children as a means of promoting their healthy development. According to this approach, children have five primary emotional needs that must be met in order for them to thrive:

Contact and belonging: This need is often met by physical contact and attention. Undue attention seeking is a child's way of establishing contact and connection when they feel it is not being given freely. Children also need to feel that they are valued and important members of their family and community. Teach children to contribute and then thank them for their effort helping them see how the contribution made an impact on the group.

Power and Control: We need to offer choices, age, and situation appropriate, such as what to wear, what to eat, and times to do things like now or later because children need to feel that they have some level of control over their lives and decisions. We also need to let the consequences associated with those situations (positive and negative) happen to help them learn and grow. A couple of rules when letting the children learn by natural consequences are:
Avoided if

• Too Dangerous
• Too Far Away (the learning experience)
• Hurt Others.

Protection: Children need to feel safe and secure in their environment. This includes physical safety, as well as emotional security in the knowledge that their parents will always be there for them. Allowing children opportunities to express when something we've done has hurt their feelings or impacted their feeling of safety, encourages them to seek protection through advocating rather than revenge. A crucial part of this is being patient with their attempts to be assertive.

Withdrawal: Withdrawal is the chance to take breaks when stressed. Teaching when to take breaks wisely is a great way to learn how to deal with anxiety and depression. Letting the children take breaks and withdrawal and be by themselves sometimes is powerful because they can have a chance to collect their thoughts and recover.

Challenge: Children need opportunities to develop their skills and talents, and to feel a sense of accomplishment and pride in their abilities. Humans of any age have an internal drive to seek stimulation and difficulty. It is what drives us to progress. We need to avoid “keeping our kids safe” to the extent that they are not growing or developing.

These are some of the things we want to work on and follow as parents. Ultimately, the purpose of parenting is to raise children who are capable of living fulfilling, independent lives and making positive contributions to society.