Reply to Best toddler tips you have or have received from parents with "good kids"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The best parenting advice I've ever received, and which I remind myself often, is: parent the child you have.

It works for all ages. People will try to sell you on parenting approaches that worked for their kids, or that they heard are the "best" way to parent. And you will try that stuff and feel like a failure when it doesn't work for your kid. But not everything works for all kids.

Example:

One of my kids is highly sensitive. To everything -- strong smells, loud noises, strong emotions. She is just more reactive to her surroundings and less "go with the flow" than the other kid. If I parented them in the exact same way, she'd be really anxious and difficult because when she feels overwhelmed by her surroundings (which happens easily) she becomes highly rigid and controlling. So something that might work with my older kid, like setting a timer for getting ready in the morning, will simply stress her out and make it harder to get out the door. I have to approach it differently.

So when a parenting approach makes sense and works for you, great! You found the right approach for your kid, whether it came to you naturally or you got it from a book or whatever. But if something you do doesn't work, no matter why you did it, just accept "ok, this is not right for this kid, let me think about what will work better." THAT is what makes for a good parent -- the ability to adjust, to stop doing things that aren't working for your family, and to get creative and come up with solutions that do work even if it's not what everyone else does.

Never trust anyone who thinks they know the "one, correct way" to parent. They are myopic and simply don't have enough experience with different kinds of kids.[/quote]

I absolutely agree with this.  Different kids (and different parents!) well find different approaches effective.  Do what works best for your family.

And also: [b]little kids will listen and model.  Demonstrate the behaviors and speech and habits you want them to pick up consistentl[/b]y.[/quote]

This x 10000

Be the parent you want your kid to have and you’re more likely to have the kid you want.[/quote]

This. If you want respectful kids who say please and thank you, stay calm when things get tricky, are flexible, etc., you have to do those things. It's not a guarantee and you'll still have to parent (your kid will have some engrained personality traits and some things require more reinforcement than just modeling because they are hard to master), but when you encounter ver polite, respectful kids with good emotional regulation, you can assume their parents are polite and respectful towards them and modeling good emotional regulation.[/quote]

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