Helpful Tips For Young Parents: What Are The Essentials?

Published 12 October 2021 at 14:54

Tickikids Blog Dubai >  After-School Activities >  Helpful Tips For Young Parents: What Are The Essentials?

When young couples become parents for the first time, their whole world seems to turn upside down. As cute as babies are, they’re still high maintenance and demand almost 24 hours of constant attention and care. The most challenging part is that all they do is cry. As they get older, parents face different challenges. One of the best and worst parts of parenting is that your children always expect you to have all the answers, but the truth is you’re struggling just as much as they are.

Parenting is many things: a mixture of confusion, mistakes, trial, and error, but the most important thing is that it’s derived from pure, unconditional love for the little ones. It feels like it’s too much at times, but it’s absolutely worth it, and this is why we bring you this article. Here are some very helpful parenting tips that are essential for young parents to know.

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Make Your Kids Feel Loved

No matter how young your kids are, they always pick up on the vibes you give. Children can feel your love as early as the first few months, and even before that. Hugging and kissing your babies gives them a feeling of safety and warmth that calms them down and helps you connect with them. As they grow, make sure you always express your love to them, and not just through words. Something as simple as a smile means more than you think to your child. To them, a smile serves as reassurance that they’re welcome to talk to you about whatever they want, ask you their little questions, and play with you because you’re their favorite person.

Get the Right Equipment

Your children’s safety is a high priority, which is why you need to get all the tools needed to keep them safe. An example of the most important baby and toddler equipment is the car seat. When they’re still little, you need to make sure they’re safely tucked in their seat when they’re in your car, so you can freely drive and not worry about their safety. You can check online for the different brands and user reviews if you’re not sure which ones to choose. When you decide on the best one for you, you can always check their website to buy the products you need online. Some tools are necessary to enhance your children’s skills and help you rest assured your child is safely playing. One thing toddlers especially need is the highchair that they can sit on and eat when you first introduce food to them.

Be Positive

People usually point out what their kids do wrong and take the good for granted. It’s critical that you recognize the good things they do as well to boost their confidence. This also helps them look for the positives more than the negatives. It also helps make them feel encouraged to do more good, rather than feel scared of making mistakes. One of the biggest mistakes parents unintentionally make is that they only acknowledge when children make mistakes, without rewarding them for the little good things they do - which are in fact huge things to them. Children then grow up to only focus on their flaws, which lowers their self-esteem and negatively affects their lives later on. Positivity does wonders, so do your best to be as encouraging as possible.

Be Silly with Your Kids

It doesn’t matter how silly people think you are. What matters most is how happy you make your children. Being silly with them helps you connect with your kids and make them trust you as well as bond with you. Another great thing about playing with your children is that it makes them feel that you’re their friend as well as their parent. It’s also one of the most effective ways to connect with them and earn their trust. Many parents tell their children that they can trust them, but they will never believe you until they can see you trying to earn this trust through actions they can believe.

Never Resort to Violence

In some cultures, it is believed that hitting, yelling, or calling your child names is how you get them to listen to their parents. What violence does really is inflict fear and negative feelings towards parents, besides it drops their self-esteem, leads them to become violent with their peers, and they can never trust them. It can also be the reason why they develop extremely unhealthy habits as they grow up and resort to violence with their significant others when they become adults.

Studies show that children who get hit by their parents end up feeling alone, and can never really talk to them about any personal issues or problems they’re facing. What they do is confide in kids just like themselves, who are definitely not reliable, or may find the wrong adults to talk to. This is besides the psychological scars children build that grow with them through the years. Some people may think, what’s so bad about a little spank? The answer is that it’s so much worse than you think.

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Dedicate Time for Them

Life can be crazy busy, and sometimes you can realize you don’t have time to even have your meals properly. The good news is this isn’t the case every day, so make sure you always make it up to your kids. One good option for that can be to dedicate the whole weekend to them if you’ve had a crazy busy week. This time you make for them should be all about them, which means you should take them to places they like, do the activities they choose and give them your full attention. Obviously, you need some time for yourself to power through the next week, so give yourself a little of that, but make sure the majority of the weekend is for your children.

Show Them They Can Trust You

As children grow up, they pull away from their parents. It’s natural for them to start having their own character and want to keep some things to themselves. Respect their privacy and never try to snoop around behind their backs to find out what they’re keeping from you. The best thing to do is to talk to them and encourage them to come to you when they need to talk. Ask them about their day and how they’re doing, without making them feel like they’re being interrogated. When they’re sure you trust them, they’ll come to you eventually and confide in you. Let them feel they are welcome to come to talk to you, and they are also welcome to not tell you something they’re not ready to share.

Trust Them No Matter What

One of the most common mistakes that parents make is that they get too worked up when their kids make mistakes. To grow up and become strong, independent individuals, children need to make mistakes and learn from them. This doesn’t mean you should be less strict. The best way to help them learn is to help them feel responsible for the mistakes they make and fully understand and accept their consequences. Whether these consequences are the natural outcome of the mistake, for example, if they lose or break their toy that’s it, they have to live with that, or the consequence is you grounding them in any way, make sure they know you love them and nothing can change that.

The older they are, though, the bigger their mistakes are. When children start becoming teenagers, their mistakes become much more serious, and consequently, more dangerous. As parents, you will want to do your best to protect them, and that’s a basic instinct, but you need to control your over-protective instinct and let them discover the world on their own a bit. Look out for any signs of alarming behavior, urge your kids to confide in you.

Let Them See Things for Themselves

Sometimes you’ll need to be brave enough to let them go through an experience. As painful as it is to watch them suffer from something difficult, you have to let them experience it and only be there to support them. It is a necessary process for healthy growing up and building a strong character. This is one type of tough love, and it’s even tougher on you as a parent. Unfortunately, you have to have the courage to let them experience pain because that’s what you involuntarily signed up for as when you had them.

Set the Rules Early On

Implementing your rules as early as possible helps your child get used to them, so when they grow up they set their own rules for themselves. The younger your child is, the easier it is to get them used to your rules and let them learn self-discipline. As they grow up, they become more aware of their personality and want to be able to make their own decisions. The rules you set for them early on are the ones that stay with them, and they somehow subconsciously follow.

Less Telling, More Showing

Instead of telling them, they have to be respectful of others, show them in action how polite and respectful you are with people, and they will copy you. Make sure your actions are in perfect sync with what you ask of them, so you don’t lose credibility. Asking your children to act in a certain way and doing the opposite confuses them and breaks a bit of their trust in you.

Make Sure You’re Consistent

Whether you’re being consistent in the way you act or with implementing rules, consistency makes things clear for your children as well as makes you reliable in their eyes. Wavering your rules and actions makes children confused about what you expect of them, which is another trap the best of us fall into without knowing it. Your rules and actions must be in complete sync with each other, while you’re constantly making your expectations clear for your little ones and following your own rules.

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Parenting is many things, and it’s definitely overwhelming. You must understand that there is no such thing as a perfect parent. Part of being a great parent is letting your children understand that it’s ok to make mistakes. It’s ok to make mistakes and learn from them. It’s also completely natural to learn how to be a better parent through making mistakes, and seeing the impact of those mistakes, in order to be able to avoid them and be ready for new ones. The best thing about being a parent is seeing how wonderful your children grow up to become, and how much they look up to you no matter what. You’ll figure things out as you grow with your kids, so enjoy every bit of the experience.