A Fine Parent

A Life Skills Blog Exclusively For Parents

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Are You Really a Good Parent?

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(This article is part of the Self Awareness series. Get free article updates here.)

Doubt kills more aspirations than failure. Do you control your doubt, or does your doubt control you?(This article is part of our series on self awareness)

You’re not a good parent — there I said it!

Just think of it. Right now, you could be watching TV. Or facebooking/pinteresting. Or reading a fantastic book. But here you are – reading a personal development blog meant exclusively for parents!

You are not a good parent… You are a @#&*ing awesome parent!

And yet….

In spite of being the awesome parent that you are, in spite of being the cream of the crop and rising above the average, when I said “You are not a good parent” you felt a tiny bit of guilt. And a sense of self doubt.

Why?

To many of you I am just a stranger. To some who read the blog regularly (Thank You!), I am a good acquaintance. And to a very small set of poor unfortunate folks, I am a close friend/family 🙂

But, no matter how much or how little I know you, the fact remains – I am a third party when it comes to your kids, your values, your circumstances, your kids’ temperament and a whole list of other variables. I have absolutely no right to even dare comment on your parenting skills, let alone judge it.

You know that.

But still, when you read the words “You are not a good parent”, even though you were probably (and, rightfully) pissed off with me, there was that tiny bit of self-doubt in the background making you wonder if I was right.

Every parent that I know of – no matter what their parenting style is or how their children eventually turn out – struggles with this self doubt at some point or the other.

So, today let’s explore it a bit.

The Self-Doubt Snowball

[Read more…]

Positive Discipline 101: How to Discipline a Child in a Way That Actually Works

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(This article is part of the Be Positive series. Get free article updates here.)

Positive Discipline: Try to understand your child instead of changing himLet’s play a quick word association game.

I will say one word, and you will say the first thing that comes to your mind when you read that word. Don’t think for long. Just say the first word that occurs to you. OK, here we go.

Sky.

Night.

Discipline.

Chances are, when you read “sky” the first word that came to your mind was “blue” or “high”.

When you read “night” you might think of the words “dark” or “day”.

What about “discipline”? What did you think of when you read that? In my case, I would probably have gone with “punishment” or “set right”.

The idea of discipline being synonymous with punishment is ingrained in our psyche. The first thing we think of when we hear the word “discipline” is usually something negative.

However, did you know that the word discipline originates from the Latin word ‘disciplina’ which means teaching, which in turn comes from ‘discipulus’ which literally translates to pupil?

Yet, I can bet that very few who tried the little exercise above would have thought “teach” when they first read the word “discipline”.

For whatever reason, over the years, discipline has gone from meaning “to teach” to “to punish”!

Today we explore “positive discipline” an idea that focuses on reverting things back to the roots – when children do something wrong, instead of punishing them, parents teach and guide them to set the behavior right.

So, how do we go back from “to punish” to “to teach”? In small baby steps, of course!

Here are a few tips to get started, and by following some of these (pick a subset of the ones that work for you), slowly we can change our perspective about “discipline”. [Read more…]