Nothing is more basic to an infant, a child, and an adolescent than feeling and staying safe. This applies not only to physical safety but to emotional safety based on trust in attachment to at least one parent. Without this, all else of importance falls away. A sense of safety is at the core of Parental Intelligence.
How Do We Know If Our Children Feel Emotionally Safe?
There are two ways to learn if our children feel safe: to listen to them carefully and to observe the nuances of their behavior.
What is a Tantrum?
Play is often structured in games, sports, video games, and classes that teach something like karate or painting. But there are great advantages to unstructured play which is left to the imagination of the child. Without specific rules or an adult present.kids are left to use their own creativity to create narratives about whatever is on their minds. This may take the form of climbing a tree, building a fort out of couch pillows, or playing with superhero figures in a story. What ever form it takes, the child is the creator.
How do you suppress negative self=thought? Some of us our chronic thinkers. It’s important to parent ourselves well. Our minds are so busy we forget to listen to the quiet around us. If you are someone with negative self-talk, that’s the first thing to do: Just listen to the sounds or quiet around you and you will realize how much constant chatter is going on inside your head. Then as if you were an observer of your own mind, listen to the chronic debates you have about your self that you are surrounding yourself with. Take a deep breath and start again. Think this time with reason not emotion. You will find that your talk changes to a more rational decision making process about whatever you are plagued with.
Play is the joy of summer time when all those structured, sometimes overscheduled activities during the school year are over. Now is the time to give your kids free rein to explore and discover what interests them. It’s a time for imagination to bloom as kids find new outlets for their infinite creativity.
Parenting without punishment is an unlikely concept to most parents. However, many tasks or rules we want followed feel like punishments to kids like chores, going to sleep on time, curfews, saying “No” to requests for material goods, and having limits on screen time of all types (phones, videos, T.V., computer youtubes, facebook, Instagram, twitter). If, however, these reasonable limits are perceived as helpful to happy lives and explained at the time, it’s so easy not to think of them as restrictions or punishments.