Every family is faced with different situations and events. There is no perfect family, and if you are faced with bipolar disorder it makes the possibility of coming close to a perfect family impossible. The good news is it isn't impossible. With good doctors, working treatments, and plenty of responsibility, you can have a close to perfect family life and relationship with your family. One goal to reaching and maintaining the close to perfect family, no matter what mood you are in, is practicing positive parenting every day. There are six different areas of parenting you should strive for to succeed in positive parenting, beginning with the most important area, love.
Your children need to be loved every moment of every day. There isn't any way you can love them too much. Showing them love isn't limited to caring for their basic needs and showing interest in their daily activities. Loving your children including show them physical affection every day. Giving them a good morning hug, telling them you love them, and kissing them good night are some of the basic ways to show your children physical affection. Play games, coloring, and listening to them are other ways to show them you love them.
Feeling safe and secure is a basic necessity for everyone, and your children are not any different. Helping your children to feel safe and secure will help them to learn to trust you and other people. Safety and security help lead to self confidence and self esteem because kids feel safe to open up and be themselves. If there isn't any feeling of being safe and secure, they will quickly grow anxious and unhappy instead.
Encourage good behavior by praising them rather than pointing out what they have done wrong. Children feed off of praise and will repeat the behavior they were praised for over and over. Always focus on the positive behavior they have shown and remind them how good they did or are doing.
Give your child attention. By giving your child attention, you are showing them how much you care about them and how much they matter to you. This is also helps lead to self confidence and self esteem. Smile at them, talk to them, and play lots and lots of games with them. You don't have to spend a fortune on things to entertain them, but inexpensive trips to the park for a picnic will be a memory they will treasure.
Just like us, children have feelings too. Respecting your child and their feelings is yet another path to self confidence and self esteem, but also towards your child respecting other people. Encourage your child to share their feelings with you. You can accomplish this by telling them it's okay to be scared, angry, or upset, but remember to remind them it's not okay to hurt another on purpose, such as name calling. Replace name calling and other behaviors with expressing how they didn't like what the other person did or walking away.
Last, encourage your children to learn by showing and making learning fun. There are lots of new challenges and experiences in such an exciting world and teaching them this will open the door to the world of wonder. Expose your children to other people and their children helps to not just open the door, but see how people are different from each other as well as how to treat people outside the home. Reading, singing, and writing will help to grow vocabulary and understanding of the world. Museums and local events will help them understand different cultures and customs.
The basic tools to positive parent are easy steps you can take, love, and enjoy every day. Your children will return the love and respect you give them. Praising them is a positive way to show them the appropriate way to act. Showing them attention and encouraging learning is fun will open their eyes that what they do is seen and heard so they will continue to strive to happy successful adults.
