Daily Parenting Tip:
Teach responsibility by holding yourself and your child accountable for both positive and negative behaviors.

Daily Parenting Tip: Set structure and routines because children thrive on predictability.

Daily Parenting Tip: Be consistent with your message.

Daily Parenting Tip:   Make time to just listen.

Daily Parenting Tip: Focus more on your child's positive qualities than the negative ones.

Daily Parenting Tip:  Learn different ways to spend quality time with your child.

Improve Parenting in the New Year (By Anshu Basnyat, LCPC)

Daily Parenting Tip: Think about how you can improve your parenting this New Year and take small steps in achieving it! 

     Even the best of parents can make improvements when it comes to parenting.  Whether you have an infant, a toddler, a tween, a teenager, or an adult child, we can all improve our parenting skills! Every stage in human development presents us with challenges.  An exhausted parent of an infant may say “I can’t wait until the day my baby starts walking! I am so tired from carrying him all the time.” When that infant becomes a toddler, the same parent may say “I can’t wait until he starts talking so he can communicate his needs without throwing temper tantrums!”  Then the toddler becomes a tween, and the parent may say “I’m just waiting for the day when he starts driving so I don’t have to take him all over the place.”  Of course, he then becomes a teenager who starts driving and now the parent worries about all kinds of issues that never crossed their minds before the child was a teenager (car accidents, drugs, sex, bullying, violence, etc.).  The point here is that every step of the way, every parent faces challenges in parenting and can afford to work on mastering a skill that is a bit daunting at first. Like with any skill, practice makes perfect!

Wishing you and your family a very Happy and Healthy New Year!