What’s wrong with you?

Why are you so naughty?

Why can’t you be more like your sister? The neighbor? A “normal” kid?

If you’re raising a strong-willed child, you’ve most likely asked questions like these, or have watched as your child was being asked these questions by other family members or teachers.

As a parent myself and a play therapist who works with families struggling with their children’s behaviors, I’ve come to learn over the years that parenting in general is a hard job, even when you have an easy-going child. The role of parenting might lead you to say or do some things that you instantly regret, that plague you with guilt day after day.

But dealing with a strong-willed child? That’s an experience that only a small portion of parents get the luxury of experiencing, and if you’re reading this, it means that you’ve very likely won that lottery.

And that you know parenting this child brings a level of emotional and intellectual exhaustion that the typical parent cannot even comprehend (and never truly will). [Read more…]

As a behavior specialist, I am keenly aware of how difficult it is to practice at home what I preach at work.

At work it’s all about positive behavior interventions, proactive coaching, growth mindset, and staying calm in the face of crisis. I get home and some days, I am a model parent. And on others, it all flies out the window. 

I know I’m not alone in this. We all have strengths and weaknesses, and embracing a positive parenting philosophy is often easier said than done. 

But isn’t this where self-reflection and grace come in? 

Our ability to self-reflect on the areas of positive parenting that could benefit from improvement is the first step towards growth. 

The team from AFineParent.com invites all of our amazing readers to start assessing your positive parenting skills by taking our FREE Parenting Skills Quiz. [Read more…]

My daughter used to yell at, throw things at, and chase our cats. Although she never hit them, the behavior she exhibited scared our cats to the point in which they became wary of her. Our Siamese, Scott, would hiss at her when she’d pass by and our Scottish Fold, Opie, avoided her as much as possible.

After deciding that enough was enough, we began working on some strategies to help our daughter treat our pets more kindly. With much hard work, I’m happy to report a tremendous improvement in how my toddler treats our pets. I’ve also noticed that our cats have gotten used to her and Opie even tolerates my daughter’s playful petting and antics.

As amazing as it is to see our three-year-old be kinder and more gentle to our pets, getting to this point was not a walk in the park. These lessons took countless hours, weeks, and months of warnings and reminders. It was frustrating at times, but also a valuable lesson for me as a parent on how to encourage my toddler to listen to me without yelling.

While it wasn’t easy teaching our daughter how to be kind to our cats, it was a necessary lesson as our pets were around long before she was! In addition to the necessity, learning empathy and kindness towards animals opened the door for continuing to own pets and added some amazing benefits and positive side effects. [Read more…]

It was eleven in the morning on a Sunday. My oldest child, who is nearly six, had just finished her breakfast and was about to scurry off to play with her one-year-old brother.

Being on my normal table manners duty, I called out to her “Don’t forget to put your plate in the sink!” She hurried back, picked up her plate and started walking to the kitchen. Halfway to the kitchen she turned around, looked at me, said with a sweet smile “I love you,” and then ran off.

This small moment became larger as I reflected on the parenting my wife and I have done over the first six years of our daughter’s life and the impact we may have had in that seemingly small moment.

It is reassuring to think that for our daughter to express her love in such an unprompted way, she must feel the love that we have for her. In contemplating this discovery, I decided to pay extra attention to some of the small things our daughter says and does. The way that she wants to share a story from school with her mother, or the way she will kindly ask if we are okay when she notices that we look tired; it all comes back to modeling the same empathy and love that we give her. [Read more…]

Last fall, I put my oldest son into public school for the first time.

He was in second grade. We had just moved to a new state and I was hoping that going to “normal” school would help him make friends and get adjusted to our new home. Prior to that, he’d been in an online school–which basically meant he was being homeschooled, but with a state-sponsored curriculum.

There were lots of reasons I initially chose to keep him home. I worried about the strong academic focus of our local elementary school and the kind of pressure that would be present, even in kindergarten. I worried about long hours away from home. I worried about minimal outdoor recess time for a child who didn’t particularly excel at sitting still.

What I didn’t realize at the time was how much staying home with me had allowed my son to grow into himself and to build his own sense of who he is and what he likes. I also never anticipated how quickly public school would pressure him into conformity.

I still remember the first time he went to school with his nails painted. We had all–both of my sons and myself–painted our nails over the weekend: blue and purple with sparkles.

When I picked him up after school on Monday, his nails were bare. His classmates had made fun of him and he’d painstakingly scraped all the colors and glitter off over the course of the day.

I was heartbroken. I had always tried so hard to build up my son’s sense of individuality, to support his interests and not force him into a box based on socially acceptable, but outdated gender norms. And a few months of public school was already working to undermine all that. [Read more…]