All interaction skills are very important but the four skills that we have selected: are “Must Know and Must Do” skills that all parents need to learn more about and use in a positive manner when interacting with their children.
Effective time management skills are essential to all adults and children. From scheduling and managing after-school activities to homework to chores… oh, and your life, too. Day-to-day demands can become overwhelming and create an atmosphere of constant stress. Who doesn’t want a calmer, more efficient morning, a less hectic afternoon, and a more peaceful bedtime?
When we hear the words ‘Intentional interactions’ we tend to think these interactions include parent and child doing things together like doing chores together, teaching your child step by step how to make her/his bed, planning discussions that will take place during meals, and doing a cooking project with your child. Yes, these interactions are important, but there is much more to learn about intentional interactions and how important these interactions are.
We need to understand that to be an intentional parent, we need to plan how to continue growing and building our parenting skills as our children age. Intentional parenting stresses the need for parents to have an intentional approach to improving their parent-child skills.
An effective parent’s goal is to raise children who are responsible, confident, and empathetic individuals who can contribute positively to society because you will not just provide basic needs for your children, but you will be nurturing their emotional, social and intellectual development. Good parenting enables children to grow into healthy, productive and compassionate adults.
It is difficult to find a single definition for effective parenting because the information presented by different writers varies. It is important for parents to realize that effective parenting is seen both in childhood and in the adults their children become. However, the most effective determination of good parenting is how your children in turn become good parents. Thus, effective parenting is best seen in what kind of parents the children become.
Like many parents who go to a website to learn more about parenting, we found some confusion because of the different words that different writers were using to define effective parenting and intentional parenting. Both have common beliefs and we believe that they differ in name only.
Before we developed this guide, we questioned the need because we had some awareness of the massive amount of parenting information that is available online and assumed that most parents would use the Internet and other options to enhance their parenting skills. But after visiting with some younger parents, we found that even though they had many options, they found that because of the massive amount of information available online, parents can spend hours searching for blogs, looking at parenting tips, and personal accounts on how to raise their children. While this can be informative, it is also time-consuming and confusing.
Today’s parents do differ in how they parent but this is expected because their parents parented differently than other parents. This suggests that we start our parenting with different levels of beliefs. That’s OK when we first start our parenting, but parents need to continue to improve their skills if they want to have a positive impact on the upbringing of their children through all stages of development from birth into adulthood.
Our goal is to provide you with a guide that contains the information, strategies and skills that, if implemented consistently, will increase the possibility that parents will be successful raising their children to meet the standards noted by the American Psychological Association.
