Your Core Parenting Tips Can Change How You Raise Your Child
Michalis 'BIG Mike' Kotzakolios
Kotzakoliou, SSA

Some people go through life wondering how their lives would have been different if only their parents had done one thing or another. They wonder what could have been had their folks taken some parenting tips to heart. Yet when they become parents themselves, they end up repeating the very behavior they now lament. There is an exercise that parents can perform which will help them to break that cycle.

Ask yourself one question: What are one or two parenting tips that would make the biggest difference in your own child's life? Think about that for a moment. Take a few minutes free of distractions. Relax and really think about the question. What impact will that one tip have on the quality of your life, your child's life, and your relationship? Then write your parenting tips down. It is not enough to verbalize it in your head. You must write the parenting tips down on a piece of paper and read it to yourself. In most cases, what you wrote down will reveal to you the very essence of your own parenting beliefs.

When you write it down, it forces you to stick with what you came up with. If you are having difficulty with determining your core beliefs, visualize that your child has grown up with children of her own and has come to you for parenting advice.

After you have written it down, reflect upon your own childhood. How were you raised? How did your parents treat you? How did they respond to you when you needed them, physically and emotionally? How did your upbringing shape your feelings about yourself? In reflecting on your own upbringing, think about what their core belief was that guided their own parenting, as if you had gone to them and asked them that very question. Try to distill your parents' beliefs into one or two sentences and write that down below your own core belief. If mom and dad had different beliefs, write each one down.

Now see how your beliefs compare to theirs. How similar or different are they? What are your reactions to what you have written down?

Performing this exercise allows you to take a long, hard look at yourself and your upbringing. Once you can communicate this to yourself, you can make adjustments of your own.