While everything seems good and picture-perfect when imagined, it’s quite a different story when you have to live out that imagination which soon culminates into a reality. Parenting may appear to be an easy task which comes naturally to parents. However, like everything in life, it requires practice and one becomes better at it with experience. It’s like other life skills that must be developed and nurtured to be carried out or utilized effectively. Sadly, there is no one-trick or one-stop solution to this. However, don’t let this dishearten you as many effective strategies and parenting tips for toddlers can help you along your parenting journey. If you have been troubled and wondering how to get better at parenting and taking care of your little ones, then you’ve come to the right place. Before we delve into parenting tips for toddlers and different parenting strategies, let’s take a look at why good parenting is so crucial to the development of your little ones.
Importance Of Good Parenting
- It lays a strong base for the emotional well-being and development of a child. Providing love, care and emotional support to a child from a young age fosters a sense of security and encourages children to be themselves.
- Good emotional support from the family encourages and builds a child’s self-confidence and allows him or her to be accepting and receptive to challenges rather than fearing or avoiding them.
- It encourages a smooth flow of communication between children and parents and reduces stress levels in kids.
- Believe it or not, good parenting also helps in the development of a child’s cognitive abilities. Parents serve as guides and mentors from whom children acquire knowledge and learn important moral values.
- Last but not least, good parenting helps promote the holistic development of a child. It promotes independence and autonomy in kids.
Effective Strategies For Parents With Babies
Now that you have a good idea about parenting and why it is so crucial for us to act as role models, it’s time to get to the baby care tips and positive discipline strategies that will work wonders for you. Here is a comprehensive list of the best baby care tips which you can implement as parents and caregivers.
- Setting routines
- Respond to your child
- Fostering an environment of interaction, exploration and play
- Setting limits and discipline
- Take care of yourself
- Encourage language development
- Nurture emotional intelligence
- Embracing uniqueness and the blessing of parenting
Having a set pattern or a routine which is followed daily provides a sense of safety and security for your young ones. Before they can understand, express and assert their sense of individuality and creativity, they need to feel that they are in a well-protected environment. It will be good to start with the basics and create a routine for eating, napping and playing. A bedtime routine can be easily set including a a warm bath, oil massage and maybe even story time.
As parents and caregivers, it becomes essential for us to respond to how our kids act and feel. When they are infants and toddlers and haven’t yet developed the ability to speak, they communicate through babbling, crying and other such signals. You should keep an eye out for such gestures and positively respond to them. This provides children with a sense of reassurance.
Children are curious by nature and this curiosity must be nurtured positively rather than being shut down or subdued. An atmosphere that fosters play and interaction allows for kids to grow, develop and learn. Children learn from their environment and surroundings more than you can imagine. Provide your kids with toys that suit their age and maturity level. Playing with toys improves their sensory development as well as motor skills.
While it is important to give your kid space to grow and learn, you have to ensure that it doesn’t go beyond a certain limit. Just like adults need checks in their lives to keep them on the right track, kids too need the same. At the tender age of two or three, a child will not know right from wrong unless taught by the parents. Use positive reinforcement to encourage desirable behaviour and set limits or checks to discourage negative behaviour.
Do you know that before you can think of taking care of your kids, you need to take care of yourself? If you didn’t, you do know. Contrary to popular belief of that being a selfish act, it’s actually putting you in a better position to take care of your child. If you haven’t been able to sleep well for a prolonged period, your health gets affected and if that happens, you will not be in the best shape to take care of your kids. Pay attention to what you want as a parent. Prioritize your mental health and physical well-being and you will notice how better equipped you will be to handle your kid’s problems.
Simple acts like gestures, dancing and evening singing can help speed up the process of language development. Respond to your child’s babbling with words rather than reinforcing that with babbling of your own. Encourage your child to take an active role in social interactions to overcome fears and be open to communicating better.
To provide your child with a holistic sort of education, your child needs to develop emotional intelligence. Being emotionally intelligent helps one to manage emotions and deal with problems from a rationalistic as well as sensitive standpoint, without hurting their feelings or the feelings of others.
As we mentioned earlier in the article, there is no one-stop solution to parenting. This is why it is important to keep an open mind and use the strategy which works best with your kid. Each child is different and will act or react differently to the same or similar situations. It is for us as parents to identify what works best and implement it into our daily routine.
Here at Eurokids, we focus on bringing the best and most up-to-date strategies and techniques to deal with kids, making parenting feel like the blessing it truly is. Our positive discipline strategies are well-thought-out and designed by professionals who have learned over the years through tried and tested methods. Apart from this, we also try to inculcate your kids with life-long values and a strong academic foundation that will serve them well throughout their academic journey. If you want to learn more about us, have a look at our blog or visit us at our nearest centre.
