Building a Healthy Relationship with Your Child
Building a healthy relationship with your child begins with choices you make each day.
- When you take the time to listen to your child, instead of brushing her off, you are building connections.
- When you respond in a manner that validates her feelings instead of invalidating them, you are teaching her to be caring.
- When you help her to choose appropriate actions, you are helping her to be more competent.
- Connect instead of disconnect.
- Assist instead of taking over.
- Listen rather than lecture.
- Stop firmly rather than grabbing or jerking.
- Help instead of abandon.
- Explain instead of force.
- State rather than shriek.
- Smile more, frown less.
- Think about your relationship in the long run.
- Start with a single step.
More on: Discipline
Excerpted from:
From the book KIDS, PARENTS, AND POWER STRUGGLES: Winning for a Lifetime by Mary Sheedy Kurcinka, published by HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. Copyright © 2000 by Mary Sheedy Kurcinka. All rights reserved.
Buy the book at www.harpercollins.com.
