Need Some New Tools for Parenting?

from our friends at Empowered to Connect



by Kayla North
I don’t consider myself a lazy person.  I am up early, I rarely sit down, and I always have a to-do list a mile long. I mean who has time to be lazy when you are a parent?  Yet I find myself parenting lazy.  I find myself saying ‘no’ to my kids out of laziness.  I find myself yelling at my kids out of laziness.

Let me explain…

A few years ago we signed up for the Empowered to Connect parent training. It really made us reconsider some of our parenting strategies.  We had to look at the parenting tools we were using and decide if they were working.

Most of us have four tools in our parenting tool belt:

• verbal reprimand (yelling)
• isolation (timeout, sending kids to his/her room)
• physical punishment
• consequences

Most days we find ourselves in a vicious cycle of using these tools to no avail.  They seem effective because we see our kids behavior modified in the moment. But rarely does the change in behavior carry over to the next day or interaction. As a result, we find ourselves doing and saying the same things again and again.

The ETC course offered to show us 25 new and different tools that we could use with our kids. We just had to be willing to put the other four to the side.  We agreed, and we were introduced to a crazy new world of parenting. One that has proven to be effective and has taken us to a whole new level of connection with our kids.
 
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