Parenting Basics

"Righteous parenting emphasizes charity, gentleness, kindness, long-suffering, persuasion, and appropriate discipline in a warm and nurturing relationship (D&C 121: 39-46). In order to promote optimal development and to rear children in love and righteousness, the following are crucial elements for each child, although specific implementations and approaches may be individualized based upon the needs and personality of the particular child: 

• Love, warmth, and support

• Clear and reasonable expectations for competent behavior

• Limits and boundaries with some room for negotiation and compromise

• Reasoning and developmentally appropriate consequences and punishments for breaching established limits

• Opportunities to perform competently and make choices

• Absence of coercive, hostile forms of discipline, such as harsh physical punishment, love withdrawal, shaming and inflicting guilt

• Models of appropriate behavior consistent with self-control, positive values, and positive attitudes" (Hart, 2012).

These basic skills can be summed up in three parenting characteristics: love, limits, and latitude, as described below.

 

Love

President Gordon Hinckley said, "Every child is entitled to grow up in a home where there is warm and secure companionship, where there is love in the family relationship, where appreciation one for another is taught and exemplified, and where God is acknowledged and His peace and blessings invoked before the family altar" (Hinckley, 1997).

 

President Ezra Benson counsels parents, "Take time to be a real friend to your children. Listen to your children, really listen.  Talk with them, laugh and joke with them, sing with them, play with them, cry with them, hug them, honestly praise them.  Yes, regularly spend unrushed one-on-one time with each child.  Be a real friend to your children" (Benson. 1990).

 

Limits

"In an effort to make the home a place of security, parents build a safety net of appropriate limits for children, generously communicate their approval of desired behavior, and help children understand how to regulate themselves. These lessons are taught within friendly parent-child interactions where tutoring and discipline occur when necessary." Parents should be "firm and consistent in following through in a calm and clearheaded manner when violations occur.  Strategies might include reproving, withdrawing privileges, setting up opportunities to make restitution, or following through on pre-determined consequences for breaking rules" (Hart, 2012).

 

"Seeking to understand the underlying causes of the misbehavior can help parents treat the core problem and not just react to symptoms." Approaching children with reason, persuasion, and love can help children learn "socially acceptable behavior, communicate clear limits, acknowledge the emotions being felt, emphasize consequences to others for hurtful behavior, and present more acceptable strategies for dealing with conflict. Following up with role plays...can go far in helping children rehearse acceptable behavior" (Hart, 2012). "Reasoning with children (especially in advance of a problem) can help them willingly regulate their own behavior, resulting in more confident, empathetic, helpful, and happy children" (Hart, 2003). 

 

Latitude

"Helping children learn how to make decisions requires that parents give them a measure of autonomy, dependent on the age and maturity of the child and the situation at hand.  Parents need to give children choices...thus preparing children for real-world situations" (Ballard, 2003).  "Whenever possible, supporting children's autonomy...helps children view adults as providers of information and guidance rather than as deliverers of messages of control.  When children have been taught principles of truth, internalize correct principles, and have many opportunities to make choices within an environment of love and concern, they are more likely to learn to choose wisely" (Hart, 2012).

 

Parents with appropriate latitude "allow a give-and-take relationship with their children. Differences are respected and valued. Parental communication is open and nonjudgmental, with more emphasis on listening to understand rather than on talking. Respect for authority and independent thinking and feeling are valued, rather than being seen as conflicting principles.  Children are more likely to be respectful to parents and others when there is reciprocity and a degree of power sharing in their relationships with parents" (Hart, 2012). 

 

"As children grow older, and more mature, they are granted more autonomy and a greater share in family decision making.  Provided that a pattern of giving choices, setting limits, following through, and reasoning is established early in children's lives, parent-child relationships and positive child development will more likely be enhanced" (Hart, 2012).