Seven Parenting Principles that Enhances Motherhood Experience

Seven Parenting Principles that Enhances Motherhood Experience is an insightful eye-opener you do not want to miss.

Gather here folks, and let’s discuss seven parenting principles that could enhance your experience of motherhood.

This article will discuss the seven parenting principles that could enhance your experience of motherhood while highlighting salient ways by which our children and wards can be better raised.

“Raising a happy, healthy child is one of the most challenging jobs a parent can have — and also one of the most rewarding. Yet many of us don’t approach parenting with the same focus we would use for a job. We may act on our gut reactions or just use the same parenting techniques our parents used, whether or not these were effective parenting skills.”

When you first have a child, well-wishers and experienced mothers or women folks talk about the challenges of parenting vis-a-vis the struggles of a baby waking in the night.

The toddlers who won’t stay in their beds, the cost of childcare, the toddler who won’t eat, children sustaining injuries from sports, children throwing an unnecessary tantrum, among others. 

Parenting challenges could include taking time off work to pick the children up from school when they don’t feel well and helping them with homework.

It may also include dealing with a messy house, moulding them to live right, dealing with endless laundry, and packing their lunches among others. 

You watch their eyes light up on Christmas morning and try to soak in the magic of those moments. 

You coach them in sports, rushing to practices and ballgames, and tote them all over the country to let them play the game they love, exhaustion and expense, notwithstanding.

Seven Parenting Principles that Enhance Motherhood Experience

Life is just so busy that you rarely even stop to think about what the end of those days would look like. 

It is not something you can wrap your mind around. 

You go into it, thinking that 18-20 years sounds like a long time.

Then suddenly, seconds turn into minutes, and minutes turn into hours, and hours turn into days, and days into months,  and months into years.

That little person that used to crawl up next to you in bed and cuddle up to watch cartoons and favourite kiddies shows has suddenly become this lovely young adult who hugs you in the hallway as they come and go. 

That goes without saying that the chaos and laughter that used to echo throughout your home is now filled with silence and solitude. 

You’ve learned how to parent a child who needs you to care for and protect them but has no clue how the whole “letting go” thing is supposed to work.

So, you hold on as tight as you can, wondering how time has passed so quickly.

 You may even be tempted to feel guilty that you might have missed out on something big about your children. 

You ask yourself so many ‘WH’ questions. Did you teach them the right lessons?  Did you read them enough books during their childhood? 

Have you spent enough time playing with them?  How many of their school parties did you miss?  Do they know how much you love them? 

What could you have done better as a parent? 

When it is time for your children to leave your house, all of these above-mentioned questions will hit you like a ton of bricks.

And all you can do is pray, hope and trust that God will protect them as they start to make their way into the world alone.

Parenting is by far the most amazing experience of one’s life and can leave you exhilarated and even heartbroken, sometimes. 

But one thing is certain…..it’s never enough time……💕

Please note that good parenting helps to foster empathy, honesty, self-reliance, self-control, kindness, cooperation, and cheerfulness, says Steinberg, a distinguished professor of psychology at Temple University in Philadelphia. 

Seven Parenting Principles that Enhance Motherhood Experience

It also promotes intellectual curiosity, and motivation, and encourages a desire to achieve. 

Good parenting also helps protect children from developing anxiety, depression, eating disorders, antisocial behaviour, and alcohol and drug abuse.

So, for all the parents with young children, whose days are spent trying to figure out how to make it through the madness?

Exhausted day in and day out.

Soak. It. All. In. 

This is because a day is coming when all those crazy days, full of cartoons, snuggles, sleepovers, Christmas morning magic, ball games, practices and late-night dinners will all come to an end. 

And you’re left hoping that you did enough right, so that when they spread their wings.

They’ll fly…💕💕💕

Here are seven parenting principles that could enhance your experience of motherhood, as follows:

Be involved in your children’s lives –

Being an involved parent takes time and is hard work. 

It often means rethinking and rearranging your priorities. It frequently means sacrificing what you want to do for what your child needs to do.

Be there mentally as well as physically.” Being involved does not mean doing a child’s homework or correcting it alone.

“Homework is the best tool for teachers to know whether the child is learning or not,” Olayemi says.

If you do the homework, you’re not letting the teacher know what the child is learning.

Seven Parenting Principles that Enhance Motherhood Experience

Establish and set rules

If you don’t manage your child’s behaviour when he is young, he will have a hard time learning how to manage himself when he is older and you aren’t around.

Any time of the day or night, you should always be able to answer these three questions: Where is my child? Who is with my child? What is my child doing? 

The rules your child has learned from you are going to shape the rules they apply to themselves.

Remember you can’t micromanage your child.

Once they’re in middle school, you need to let the child do their homework, make their own choices and not intervene.

Foster your child’s independence.

 Setting limits helps your child develop a sense of self-control. Encouraging independence helps her develop a sense of self-direction.

To be successful in life, she’s going to need both. Please always bear that in mind.

It is normal for children to push for autonomy or negotiate with you. Many parents mistakenly equate their child’s independence with rebelliousness or disobedience. 

Children push for independence because it is part of human nature to want to feel in control rather than to feel controlled by someone else.

Be consistent

If your rules vary from day to day unpredictably or if you enforce them only intermittently, your children’s misbehaviour is your fault, not theirs.

Your most important disciplinary tool is consistency. 

Seven Parenting Principles that Enhance Motherhood Experience

Identify your non-negotiable. 

The more your authority is based on wisdom and not on power, the less your child will challenge it.

Avoid harsh discipline

Parents should avoid hitting their children outside the bounds of reason.

Extant research suggests that “children who are spanked, hit, or slapped indiscriminately are more prone to fighting with other children,” Professor Steinberg wrote.

He further said that “children are more likely to be bullies and more likely to use aggression to solve disputes with others.”

It is important to stress that there are many other ways to discipline a child including ‘time out’ among others, which work better and do not involve aggression.

Explain your rules and decisions.

 Good parents have expectations they want their children to live up to.  Generally, parents over-explain to young children and under-explain to adolescents.

 What is obvious to you may not be evident to a 12-year-old. He doesn’t have the priorities, judgment, or experience that you have.

 Treat your child with respect.

Remember, the best way to get respectful treatment from your child is to treat him respectfully.

 You should give your child the same courtesy you would give to anyone else.

 Speak to them politely. Respect their opinions. 

Pay attention when they are speaking to you. Treat them kindly. 

Try to be cordial with them as much as you can.

 Children treat others the way their parents treat them.

Your relationship with your child is the foundation for her relationships with others as well as the quality of their parenting experience.

Adopting these seven parenting principles could enhance your experience of motherhood.

Best wishes in your Motherhood journey

Olayemi Agboola.

Seven Parenting Principles that Enhance Motherhood Experience