Book Review-Positive Parenting: An Essential Guide

A few weeks ago, I enlisted the help of mothers every where seeking advice on how to better parent my independent five year old. He’s an intuitive, funny and rambunctious boy who often challenges his father and I by acting out, throwing tantrums and back-talking.  I have been trying to be more patient with him, but I have fallen short time and time again. When I sought out book suggestions to better provide parenting insight into the power struggles listed above, I received some great recommendations.

The book I opted to dive into first was entitled: Positive Parenting-An Essential Guide-Ending the Power Struggles and Reconnecting from the Heart written by the creator of Positive-Parenting.org, Rebecca Eanes. I have followed her website for quite some time, so this suggestion made the most sense to me. I was in a time crunch, so I hopped onto Amazon and bought this book.

One of the things I really respected about this book was the gut-check that was presented to us as parents. It challenges us all to take a look at our past and way were was parented, to how we currently parent and the correlation between the two.

The goal of her book is to encourage a healthy, connected family unit through intention, better communication and conversation.

Here is a breakdown of the book along with a few bullet points I took away:

The Positive Parenting Philosophy

• There are 5 Principals of Positive Parenting
  • Attachment
  • Respect
  • Proactive Parenting
  • Empathetic Leadership
  • Positive Discipline
• Challenged me to answer the question: Do you think society views children in a negative manner?
• I often regret how I handle situations, and I understand how important it is moving forward to remove myself from the situation before I say or do anything following a situation with my child.

Important Self-Work

• She challenges us to take a look at our story. How were we disciplined? How did our parents raise us? How can we rewrite our story to change the parenting styles we learned growing up.
• In order to properly discipline our children, we need to discipline ourselves
• Practice what we preach
• Identify the triggers that upset you. How can you better handle them the next time they occur?
• Think of calm-down techniques to use in the future

United We Stand

• Challenges readers to look at two people from different families to truly understand their parenting styles, where to compromise and where to be united.
• Discuss what parenting and disciplines looks like to you. How do we want to raise our children?
• Work together as parents:
  • Fill up emotional tanks
  • Focus on positives
  • Argue constructively
  • Treat each other with respect
  • Be flirtatious
  • Give each other space
  • Be intimate
  • Have fun together
  • Show appreciation
  • Be affectionate
  • Be trustworthy
  • Curb criticism
  • Share leadership
  • Be proactive when it comes to common relationship problems
  • Communicate effectively

Communicating Effectively

• Truly work to better communicate
• Choose to be loving even if we aren’t feeling loved
• Find the win-win
  • Separate the person from the problem
  • Assess beliefs, emotions and concerns
  • Explore, invent and rethink options
  • Settle on a solution you both feel good about
  • Give the solution a fair chance
• Things to consider when making assumptions:
  • Assuming makes one fume
  • Listen, listen to there’s no division
  • Halt with the findings fault
  • Drop it when it’s hot
  • Communicating with children
    • Respect
    • Encouragement and Praise
    • Conditional communication
    • Body language
    • Written word
    • Communication Styles
      • Infants: 0-12 Months
      • Toddlers: 12-36 Months
      • Preschoolers: 3-5 Years
      • School-age Children: 5-12 Years
  • Try building communication skills:
    • 3-minute listening challenge
    • obstacle course
    • silent acting
    • notes of appreciation
• This chapter was eye-opening. I found out a lot about myself and my parenting. I’m looking at my communication styles very differently for each child.

Building a Foundation of Trust

• Connection and trust are foundations for which your relationship with your child will be built.
  • Get to better understand your child’s cues and respond to them accordingly and promptly
• She gives tangible ideas on how to build trust for infants, toddlers and preschoolers, middle childhood and teens

Defining Your Family Culture

• This chapter was awesome.  She explained that the happiest families intentionally create positive family cultures. Meaning, as a family, we need to  discuss what those are.
• Here is the breakdown for Family Culture.
  • Values
  • Dispositions
  • Expectations
  • Habits
  • Communication
  • Conflict Resolution
  • Traditions
• She provides examples that fall under each pillar in order to create a Family Blueprint

Seeing Children in a New Way

• The chapter really made me feel guilty as a mother because I think we don’t realize that kids act out or communicate ineffectively or have tantrums because their brain is not fully developed to think, feel and act like an adult!!
• Stop discussing your child to others in front of them.

Raising Emotionally Healthy Children

• We need to stop shaming and humiliating our children in the name of discipline
• If we tell our children that it’s not OK to bully, but do it to them at home oftentimes unintentionally, what message are we sending them?
• We are some of the cause for our children having low self-worth!!!
  • She provides warning signs of low self-worth

Trading Punishment for Solutions

• We need to stop accustoming to training children through pain.
• Look for solutions rather than pain.
• Look at the reason behind the behavior.
• Seek a solution to the problem
  • Remove your child from the situation
  • Let them cool down, and once they’re regained their composure, they can think more clearly. Have them explain what happened and allow them the opportunity to explain what happened and how they acted.
  • Let them try to think of a better solution for next time they’re in that situation.
  • We can’t expect children to do better until we give them the tools they need to succeed.
• She gives recommendations for alternatives to punishments that I will be implementing

Top Parenting Challenges-and How to Use Proactive Parenting to Deal With Them

In this chapter, she outlines the top parenting challenges. There is literally a challenge for every parent with a solution to each.

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Go buy this book. It’s life changing. She offers so many solutions to very common challenges most parents encounter each and every day. I think we all need to rethink parenting and the way we parent. We need to parent more positively, and this book is truly the essential guide to doing just that.

Click on the image below to purchase this book. You won’t be disappointed!

 

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