Effective Parenting Skills to Embrace For a Happier Household

How and why my patterns of parenting changed after learning about child cognitive development

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The difference between assuming how to raise a child versus what I learned by educating myself on a child’s brain development was astronomical.

Before I had my baby last year, I was unaware of how drastically my life would change. I was about to bring a child into this world, and the only knowledge I had on parenting was taught to me by my parents. My parents were neglectful and lacked the essential skills needed to nurture a child, so I had to rewrite my own approach.

My idea was that once I had my daughter, I would be the truest mom by doing everything contrary to everything my parents did. I wanted to make sure my girl would be raised perfectly.

Once my daughter arrived, I realized that being the perfect mom wasn’t only unobtainable, it was also naive. As I’m sure most parents have thought, their kid is going to be the mascot for what a “good” child is believed to be.

As the months passed, I realized, aside from being loving and responsive, I had no idea what I was doing. I had no concept of early childhood development. I didn’t want to be overly strict, or not strict enough. There has to be a balance, I thought. So I spent months obtaining advice on parenting from family, friends, studies — virtually any form of early childhood education I could read.

I started to apply what I learned from my research to my life.

These parenting techniques are essential to raising a happy, healthy, intelligent little human.

Avoid Aggressive Discipline

The word discipline means to educate and instruct. However, when most people hear that word, they associate it with training a child via punishment.

I used to think that teaching a child with rigorous discipline is what was needed—but teaching by nurturing is what’s required.

The thought of yelling or being aggressive towards my child made me feel awful. Nonetheless, sometimes she would do things that made me grab my hair and want to shout as loud as I can, such…