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.