How to Parent

How do I raise a child? How will I teach my children? Can I manage all of the stress and responsibility of parenting? Am I good enough? Many future and current parents ask themselves these questions. The answers depend on what you want to teach your children and what kind of parent you want to be. 

If you want to teach your children to be well-rounded, responsible, respectful, and cooperative, Dr. Michael Popkins suggests an active, needs-based parental approach, rather than being passive or reactive to a child's behavior. 

Besides physical needs, children have five needs that active parents address: contact and belonging, power, protection, withdrawal and the ability to take breaks, and challenge. 

Every child needs physical, verbal, or eye contact. When that need is not met, they turn to undue attention-seeking. They find unhealthy and often annoying ways to get those needs met. An active parent would avoid this issue entirely by offering physical, verbal, and eye contact freely and building it into the family culture.

Every child needs power, or the ability to influence their own environment. When that need is not met, the child rebels and tries to control others, including and especially the parents. This can often lead to power struggles and damaged relationships. An active parent would help their child develop responsibility by giving them age and situation-appropriate choices and letting them experience the consequences of those choices. It is important that they consistently witness, experience, and associate certain consequences with certain choices so they can predict behavior and make better choices. 

Every child needs protection from physical, emotional, and social harm. When that need is not met, the child turns to revenge. This often leads to revenge cycles, especially if the parent reinforces the revenge by condoning or accepting the behavior or retaliating in like manner. Active parents prevent this by teaching their child assertiveness -- I feel statements -- and forgiveness. The best way to teach these principles is by example. 

Every child needs the space to withdraw and take breaks. When that need is not met, the child turns to undue avoidance. That typically looks like procrastination and avoiding confrontation. An active parent teaches their child to take breaks and go back at it again.

Every child needs to be challenged and to do challenging things. When that need is not addressed, it leads the child to undue risk-taking. They seek adrenaline highs and other dangerous things. An active parent does not provide artificial skill-building scenarios but encourages their child to pursue real skill-building. That way the child learns to challenge their learning rather than learning to take risks. Working alongside your child is one way to teach them how to address real challenges. 

Despite these needs being addressed, problems still arise. Popkins presents a problem-handling model to handle such problems. The first question this model asks is who owns the problem? In other words, who is bothered or affected by the problem? 

If the child owns the problem, the model recommends allowing natural consequences to take their course. A parent should only interfere with natural consequences if the consequences are too dangerous, too far in the future to be good teaching experiences now, or others might be harmed by the natural consequences of the choice. If the parent owns the problem, they can start with polite requests and "I feel" statements before moving on to stronger statements and logical consequences for the problem. 

No matter who owns the problem, the parent is always supportive, kind, and understanding and holds problem-solving conversations with the child. 

Parenting is the most critical job that exists, and it's the only job that comes without an instruction manual. Hopefully, Popkin's guide to active, needs-based parenting has provided some insight into how to parent.