10 Basic Parenting Tips

Healthy Parenting Tips 

I PROMISE you that if you follow these tips, your children will become more responsible, more cooperative, and—most important—much happier. After 30 years of extensive experience, I can tell you that THESE are the most effective tips you will find anywhere.

I’m also cautioning you that following these tips will require considerable change on YOUR part. Children are not bolts you can put in place with the turn of a wrench. As you read these ten tips, keep in mind they might seem impossibly difficult, but I will give you a final tip at the end that will change your parenting—and your children—forever. Not kidding.

If you’re paying close attention, you’ll realize that you have no idea how to actually implement any of these tips in your parenting. You’re not alone. The incidence of whining, complaining, anger, and addictions in our children is epidemic, far greater than COVID ever was, with consequences that last for a lifetime.

Parenting Tips Can Help

When our children whine, when they get angry, when they’re addicted to their phones, when they do poorly in school, we tend to shrug and say, “What can I do? I’ve tried, and nothing works.”

What can you do? What is the real problem? THIS is THE question. Until you can answer it, you will be confused and helpless with your child. And almost no experts can answer it.

We cannot understand our children until we first realize that what we all need more than anything is to feel LOVED. As proven by many studies, love is THE ingredient necessary for happiness, and without it we WILL be in pain. We feel small and helpless, and we HATE that. So do our children.

Our children are in pain because they don’t feel sufficiently loved BY US. Yes, I know you love your children as well as you can, but YOU were not given the KIND of love YOU needed as a child either, so you don’t have it to give. LOVE is both the reason for our children’s pain and also the answer. But we must understand that NOT just any kind of love will do.

What we all need is UNCONDITIONAL love, or Real Love®, which means to care about another person without any thought for something in return. There is no disappointment or irritation in Real Love. You didn’t get that kind of love—with no disappointment or anger—so you don’t have it to give your children. How do I know that you didn’t get unconditional love?

Remember in your childhood how many times:

• your parents or others rolled their eyes at your mistakes.
• they criticized your performance, especially with a “tone.”
• they told you they were disappointed in you—with their words, their facial expression.
• you just needed to talk to someone, but there was no one there.

Each of these times we were not unconditionally loved—whether aggressively or by simple neglect—we FELT the message, “I don’t love you.” Really. It was like being poked with a sharp stick. Our children have the same pain.

All of us—including our children—MUST be unconditionally loved and taught how to maintain our feelings of worth, our creativity, and how to identify and be responsible for our feelings.

When children don’t feel unconditionally loved, they try ANY behavior that will earn approval or protect them from feeling worthless. They try to please us, to earn praise. When that wears off, they try whining, complaining, disappearing into screens, anger, fighting, resisting, more pleasing, and on and on.

To be plain: the reason your child has problems—phone addiction, whining, school problems, and so on—is that you simply were not loved unconditionally yourself, and now you don’t know how to give that lifegiving ingredient to them. 

And yes, you’re doing your best, but your disappointment, irritation, or simple lack of involvement with your child—all of which which happen much more often than you might think—are crushing to his or her sense of worth. Do not feel guilty. It all began with the love you did not get yourself.

Take the first step right now. Say out loud these words: “My child has problems because of MY disappointment, irritation, or lack of involvement, which proves that I simply don’t know HOW to love my child unconditionally.” Yes, ouch, but now we can talk about truly effective solutions.

Is There an Answer to Parenting Problems?

Oh yes, there IS an answer. And I know that you’re looking for a cute list of steps to take—we all are. I began this blog with a list of actions. But there is no shortcut to learning to be a loving parent, which is easily one of the most difficult jobs on earth.

We must be TAUGHT how to parent, and in the Ridiculously Effective Parenting Training, you will learn how you can completely eliminate disappointment and anger from your life. And THEN you can learn how to unconditionally love and teach your children.

THAT is the solution to preventing and treating the problems we see in our children. After thirty years of experience I have learned that love WORKS, but learning to receive and give it requires vulnerability and focused effort on your part. There are no easy or quick solutions, but there IS a solution.

I promise you that children who feel loved simply don’t whine, or stay glued to their phones, or get angry, or withdraw, or feel worthless. I know this from vast experience. They acquire a real reason to live. They become happy and creative. Why? Because they have ENOUGH of what they need most—the love of a parent.

Your problems—and your child’s problems—were created over many years. How fortunate that solving these problems can happen much more quickly. Change takes focus and practice, but loving is certainly not more difficult than the way you and your child are living now.

As you learn to be loving, you will feel so much happier yourself. You will enjoy the privilege of watching your child naturally and freely acquire the self-worth they need to be confident, creative, and happy.

You will experience the peace of a loving home, the confidence of being a loving parent, and the joy of raising children who are loving and responsible. What could possibly be better?