As parents, we all want the same thing: to raise happy, confident, kind and successful children equipped with the tools to thrive in this world. But truly effective parenting is equal parts heart and strategy.
It’s not just about love; it’s about implementing well-researched parenting principles that teach accountability, nurture emotional intelligence and autonomy, and facilitate a strong family relationship. Here are five key things backed by scientific evidence that every parent, especially those whose children are between the ages of 6-12 years need to understand:
Build Connection Before Correction:
Having a close, secure attachment bond with strong parent-child connections (built through quality time, emotional attunement, and making the child feel understood) is the foundation for effective guidance. It allows kids to internalize our teachings instead of dismissing or resenting them.
Attempting to correct behaviors through consequences or criticism alone, without first making a child feel loved and seen, undermines our authority as parents. Think of connection as the anatomy acing before trying surgery.
Freedom Comes Through Structure:
While it may seem counterintuitive, children actually develop independence and autonomy through the guidance of healthy boundaries, routines and age-appropriate responsibilities.
Kids raised in too rigid or too permissive environments (“Do whatever you want!” or “My way or the highway!”) both struggle to self-regulate, weigh options and make wise decisions. Guardrails for safe freedoms activate parts of their brain.
Prioritize Emotional Intelligence:
A child’s ability to recognize, express, and manage their own feelings in a healthy way – and perceive and relate to others’ emotions – underlies all future success. Emotional intelligence (known as EQ) has proven far more predictive than IQ for future life satisfaction and achievements.
Parents have a prime opportunity to coach kids in regulating big emotions, delaying gratification, understanding complex feelings like disappointments, and considering effects on others. Don’t miss this window.
Lead with Empathy and Understanding:
Human beings of any age have an innate drive to be understood and feel their perspective matters. Approaching kids with empathy, getting on their level, and validating their feelings and viewpoint first makes your guidance far more likely to be internalized.
Lecturing or punishing from a place of disconnection registers as shaming, and shuts kids down. But when they feel your empathy first, they’re much more able to rise to expectations.
Model the Behavior You Want:
More is caught than taught. From delaying gratification to managing anxiety to bouncing back from setbacks – kids adopt the approaches you model around regulating emotions, resolving conflicts, negotiating challenges, making amends, and admitting mistakes with accountability.
If you stay calm and problem-solve out loud, so will they. If you lash out and blame, they’ll follow suit. You are your child’s first and most impactful instructor in how to respond to adversity and interpersonal issues.
These core parenting truths aren’t just pithy suggestions, they’re universal principles backed by decades of developmental psychology research. When you constantly put them into practice, you equip your children with an emotional toolbox and nurture parent-child relationship patterns that allow them to flourish while staying grounded yourself. It’s the entire family that wins.
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