What is Effective Parenting – Creating Happy and Health Children

Cute mom and her daughter

In this new world, everything people do is measured, weighed, configured, and planned to meet some standard to be considered meaningful. The internet has made access to millions of tidbits of information incredibly easy. With just a click of a mouse, one can find the means to make decisions, choices, or find an appropriate definition or description that will provide details about even the most intimate aspects of everything known to humanity today. If you search the word “parent” online, you will instantly be directed to millions of links that try to help you figure out exactly what a parent should do, be, look like, and feel in every instance and situation in life. Still, so many are left wondering: what, in the world, is effective parenting?

The Pursuit of “Effective” Parenting

At some point in our hectic lives, it is important to realize that not everything has to be done in an attempt to be constantly efficient or effective. We spend a lot of time figuring out how to kill two birds with one stone, and multitasking is no longer a skill but a necessity. We even try to teach this to our children. They can watch TV and do homework, play several sports at once, and are even expected to learn while doing something as playful as splashing in a pool outside. It seems that many people feel if we aren’t doing something effective, efficient, or that propels forward motion, we are wasting time and just “lollygagging.”

When it comes to things like parenting, marriage, or family, it may be time to adjust our beliefs and begin to understand that being effective in one form or another is not as important as just being. For most people, this type of mindset shift and gratitude only happens after a near loss of life or a tragedy that unveils the forest from the trees.

Obviously, when it comes to responsibility, there is nothing more important than parenting. Poor parenting can result in poor adults who become a drain on themselves, others, and society as a whole. It can stem from not knowing better or from a lack of awareness, and it can create countless problems in our schools and jails. However, it’s also relevant to add that poor parenting can stem from parents trying so hard to be effective that they become pushy and overzealous, creating chaos in their children’s minds and taking away the very childhood they should be enjoying.

Take, for instance, the trend among many new yuppie parents. They purchase Baby Mozart albums and educational teething toys or stuffed animals that sing and dance for their newborns, long before their infants can even keep their tiny eyes open for more than 15 minutes at a time. They fill their children’s rooms with baseball bats, footballs, and computer programs meant to “make them smarter” and “stimulate cognitive development,” all in the pursuit of being effective. These children learn to crawl and walk surrounded by other toddlers raised by minimum-wage daycare workers so that their parents can afford a huge house, a fancy SUV, and a backyard swimming pool that no one ever uses. Some even take their 18-month-olds to Disney World and the Kennedy Space Center for a “family” vacation, while most toddlers would be thrilled just by the thought of playing in a McDonald’s Playland. All of this is happening as parents attempt to implement “effective” parenting. Children are schooled younger and younger, yet still learn their ABCs with the rest of their peers when they enter kindergarten. Perhaps the act of learning, or the thought of it, makes the parents feel warm and fuzzy inside, but the reality is that a kindergartner is just that, no matter how many years of preschool they had before.

There are more children under the age of 10 playing travel soccer, softball, baseball, and football, with parents entering exhibition games to get their children recognized a full 12 years before college. When we were kids, it wasn’t until high school that we started to discover what we were good at. “Effective” parenting has become about pushing kids to their limits because we realize they “can” do and learn things at a faster rate. It would be like driving our cars 120 miles per hour just because the speedometer says we can go that fast. The problem is that the pressure to perform in every arena of life can also lead to poor, ineffective parenting, which leaves many children more trusting of strangers than their own family. It also means many children don’t experience the simple joys, like spending a lazy Saturday afternoon fishing for catfish or lying in bed watching Scooby-Doo on a Sunday morning with their siblings and parents.

So, what is effective parenting? Effective parenting is listening to your children and hearing not just what they say, but also what they feel. It’s realizing that your kids will sleep when they are tired, regardless of what some book says is the “required” amount of sleep. It’s letting them know there is always a soft, safe place they can go when they are afraid by letting them share your bed occasionally. It’s helping them with their homework, offering a couple of answers so they have more time to play in the mud. Effective parenting is letting them splash around in the kiddie pool in your yard, naked and without sunscreen, and not getting upset when they squirt you with the hose. It’s eating meals together that were cooked at home and spending holidays enjoying each other’s company. Effective parenting is sometimes letting sibling rivalry work itself out, saying “No” when necessary, and realizing that one cookie before bedtime won’t keep them up all night. Effective parenting is cheering them on from the sidelines and allowing them to decide how often, how much, and which activities they enjoy. It’s living your own life without living vicariously through your children and pushing them only when they won’t push themselves. Ultimately, effective parenting is about giving children a foundation of home, family, and love that will stay with them for the rest of their lives—and taking the time to just “be.”

What is effective parenting? If you searched the internet, you would find thousands of books and articles by professionals offering answers that might work for you. The truth, however, is that effective parenting is going to bed each night knowing in your heart and soul that your children felt loved, that you did your very best, and that, although you are not perfect, you are trying. Effective parenting can’t be read about or learned through a course; it has to be felt in the hearts of parents. It’s about raising a child so that one day you’ll have the courage to let them go, knowing they will make their way through this world with humility, pride, integrity, and courage. Above all, it’s about ensuring they will love others and themselves. Effective parenting is the one thing that makes a child, no matter how old, want to come back home for a night, just to feel the unique and welcoming comfort of being home again.

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