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The Right Way to Encourage

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Children have an innate need for our approval. Young children especially, like to see their parents smile of approval when they have done something, they themselves are proud of. It is easy to praise children when they have done something good. For the past few decades, parents have been taught that praise is good and necessary for encouraging positive behaviors in children. It is also easy to offer rewards, also known as bribes, to help motivate children to do things that they would not normally do on their own. These methods, however good the intentions, only serve to motivate the child for a short period of time. According to Nelsen et al (2007), it teaches them to rely on external judgments rather than “their internal wisdom and self-judgment” (p. 27). In fact, the message we send to our children when we praise is that they are not good enough if they haven’t done something great or wonderful. It also leads them believe that they should be paid to do anything we ask of them, ev...
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There’s No Such Thing as “One Size Fits All” in Parenting

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Three years ago, I embarked on a new journey to further my education. As a single mother of two boys, ages 9 and 11, working fulltime and attending school part-time would prove to be detrimental to my children. It marked a new path that I would have to travel with them, an especially difficult path for my 9-year-old. That was the year the tantrums began. I was blinded by what I now consider to be selfish aspirations; I refused to listen to the pediatrician who told me that my children were screaming for my attention. I was surprised when she was bold enough to tell me that now is not the right time for me to be going to school. Here, I finally had this opportunity through the church, to work on my undergraduate degree, and the pediatrician was telling me it was wrong. It made me very upset and my righteous pride blinded me even more. I could not bear the disposition of my 9-year-old. He was always grumpy. I would often think of how miserable an existence it must be to be him...
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On Parenting- a Personal Journey

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Last Christmas, I resolved to not buy Christmas presents for my boys ever again. my hard work and thoughtful effort to engage them in something other than video games ended up sitting in the garage collecting dust. Besides, Christmas is about the birth of our Savior and learning to be like Him while sharing His light with others. Still, I changed my mind, and I've been racking my brain and asking questions to get ideas, ideas that would make my children happy and meet my approval. On the way home from my son’s Winter Concert, I wove the questions into our conversation. That did not go so well. He wanted a gaming PC. I attempted without success to motivate him to get good grades to earn that PC. His responses included, “I hate you.” “You only want to ruin my life. You want to take away my opportunity to have fun.” And more subtly, “You should go kill yourself. You’re the worst parent ever.” After several futile attempts to reason with him, to encourage him to believe in his ...
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