Intentional Strength-Based Parenting

Ages & Stages

Your vision for yourself as a parent and for your children as adults will guide you in making parenting choices through every phase of childhood.

Haven’t created your vision yet? Visit the Parenting Compass now. The tips below will help you bring out the best in yourself and your children so they can grow into secure, capable, joyful adults with a sense of optimism about life.

Infants and Toddlers

• Build your baby’s confidence that her needs will be met by responding to her cries. This is fundamental to an overall feeling of optimism.
  
  
• Connect many times throughout the day. Make eye contact, sing songs, use nurturing touch. The trusting bond you build with your baby paves the way for growth throughout childhood.
  
  
• Notice what especially captures the attention of your baby or toddler. Maybe it’s music, laughter, or physical activity. Get to know your child.
  
  
• Celebrate accomplishments. Be excited at their delight with themselves!
  
  
• Respond to your baby’s feelings and get in the habit of labeling them. “Oh, you’re so uncomfortable!” “You’re having such a happy time!”

Elementary

• Teach problem-solving. Avoid automatically suggesting solutions to your child’s problem. Instead, make a focused effort to see and feel the circumstances from his point of view. “It’s so hard to get on the bus without your friend this year!” is more helpful than “You have to take the bus, so toughen up!”
  
  
• Teach self-awareness. Whether your child acts her feelings out loudly or by withdrawing, it’s important to help her translate behavior into words. “You’re upset by having all this homework, you don’t feel like even trying.”
  
  
• Teach strategies to manage emotions like talking to someone, taking a break to do something he enjoys, or breaking overwhelming tasks into do-able steps.
  
  
• Maintain structure and expectations. It’s reassuring to your child when you calmly stick to the limits. Provide understanding while also communicating your expectation that she behave appropriately.
  
  
• Help your child identify his strengths. Your observation that his dancing made your heart sing allows him to infer that he’s a good dancer.

Tweens

• Help her modulate her emotions. Tweens alternate between feeling like little kids and wanting to be adults. They still need your calm presence to anchor them when it feels like the sky is falling.
  
  
• Be a role model. You set an example for everything from how to manage day-to-day challenges to consistently following the values you embrace.
  
  Sometimes you’ll be their hero; other times, they’ll look at you with amazement at how little you seem to know. That’s all part of growing up.
  
  Mark Twain said, “When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.”
  
  
• Show your child how to apply his strengths. There’s a big difference between your son’s knowing, “I’m good at the guitar,” and making the jump to “I’m good at the guitar, and I could use that to connect with other people and make some friends.” Help your tween catch on to this style of applying strengths to address personal challenges.

Adolescence

Adolescents feel a powerful urge to accelerate the process of defining themselves so that they emerge, in their early twenties, as individuals in their own right.

They need to experience themselves as separate from their parents. When this involves unconventional dress, pink hair, tattoos, piercings, and viewpoints that sharply conflict with your own, you’re likely to experience a compelling impulse to curb this process.

• Strive to see the person. Adolescents are fascinating! Be excited to learn about your teen’s thoughts, tastes, wishes, and beliefs. Your genuine interest has the side effect of helping your teen be open to your concerns.
  
  
• Examine your fears. Feeling a strong need to stop something your child does signals that you’re sensing danger. Often, trends in teen culture trigger fears in their parents, even though they’re not always dangerous. Learning more about the things that frighten you – whether it’s their closing or the violent themes in their music -- provides reassurance and grounding so that you can continue to be a friendly, anchoring presence for your teen.
  
  
• Help them stay safe. Teens who use drugs; cut themselves; take risks that endanger themselves or others; or experience depression need help as they move through adolescence. If your teen has these kinds of issues, seek guidance from your doctor or a mental health professional.
  
  
• Be curious about their ideas and beliefs. It’s often more important to listen and understand than try to influence your teen. According her that respect and appreciation will make her more likely talk with you about topics of importance – and more likely to listen, too, when you have something important to tell her.