8 Tips on How to Parent Like A Boss PART 3
If you have come this far to read the third part of our “How to Parent Like A Boss” blog, we want to applaud you. The most important thing about being a parent is to try your best in being the best parent you can possibly be for your child. We want to praise you in your determination in learning what it takes to be the best parent and we hope our tips help you to parent like a boss.
Here is our last but NOT LEAST part of our blog series “How to Parent Like A Boss.”
Give Your kids bias-proof names.
According to various studies conducted nation-wide, names play an important role in future success from your ability to get hired to your spending habits.
Studies have shown that, career-wise, people with names that are common and easy to pronounce are more likely to be more successful and names that are less common and harder to pronounce are actually more prone to be involved in criminal activity.
Although many different factors that correlate with a person’s name also play a part in the success of one’s life, it is a fact that names are important in many different ways, such as first impressions and social relationships, and overall affect the start of a person’s success.
fight fair in front of your kids.
We cannot deny it, parents fight. All the time. And kids witness it. We cannot do anything about it.
However, what we can do is that we can fight fair. E. Mark Cummings, a developmental psychologist at Notre Dame University, explains in an interview that children learn social skills and emotional awareness through observing their parents’ relationship and states that it is important for parents to show support, compromise, and positive emotions even while fighting.
"When kids witness a fight and see the parents resolving it, they're actually happier than they were before they saw it," he said. "It reassures kids that parents can work things through." Cummings also points out that children pick up on when a parent is giving in to avoid a fight or refuse to communicate. This causes the child to develop negative emotions while also demonstrating the same exact actions themselves when involved in some sort of conflict or fight.
"Our studies have shown that the long-term effects of parental withdrawal are actually more disturbing to kids' adjustment than open conflict," Cummings said. He explains that the children, in this instance, know that something is wrong, which results in stress, but they don't understand what or why, ultimately giving them a harder time to adjust to conflict and causing them to struggle in uncomfortable situations. Chronic stress can also result in children that are constantly worried, anxious, hopeless, angry, aggressive, behaviorally-challenged, sickly, tired, and struggling academically, all negative emotions.
Let their children fail.
Parents these days have been acquiring a parenting style known as "snowplow parenting," or in other words, micro-managing a child's life so that they never experience failure.
According to a poll by The New York Times and Morning Consult, three-quarters of parents of adults aged 18 to 28 book their children's doctor's appointments and haircuts for them.
Julie Lythcott-Haims, author of "How to Raise an Adult: Break Free of the Overparenting Trap and Prepare Your Kid for Success," emphasized that “snowplow parenting” is actually the opposite of good parenting. She explained, "The point is to prepare the kid for the road, instead of preparing the road for the kid," she said.
Parents should not focus on protecting their children from failure but actually preparing them. The point of good parenting is to teach children how to overcome failure, not avoid it. This ultimately leads children for greater ability to solve problems and better success.
Don't let your kids watch too much TV.
According to a 2011 study from Ohio State University, children who watch television at a young age tend to have suppressed communication skills and less communication between parent and child.
Researchers in this study found that reading was far more effective in promoting parent-child communication. "TV co‐viewing produces a relatively detrimental communication environment for young children, while shared book reading encourages effective mother–child exchanges," the authors explained. Reading books with your children encourage communication between parent and child as it involves story-telling and reiterating the content, while watching TV does not stimulate communication at all.
Read to their children.
As mentioned in our last tip, reading is super beneficial to a parent and child’s relationship. However, besides making for some nice bonding time, reading to your child has many more long-term positive effects. Numerous studies found that parents who read to their child everyday helped their child in strengthening their literary and language skills, as well as their cognitive development.
Reading books with your kid early can also develop an appetitite for reading in a child, which will come in handy down the line in school and beyond.
So even if it is one quick story before bed, we strongly encourage parents to read with your children regularly to promote better development and set them up for stronger academic success in the future.
Let Your kids make decisions.
According to mental health counselor, Laura JJ Dessauer, restricting your children from making their own decisions makes them codependent.
Making every single decision for your child, such as what clothes they wear, when they do their homework, and who they play with, can discourage them from wanting to make their own decisions, Dessauer writes in Psychology Today. "As they grow older they are likely to seek out relationships in which someone else has all the power and control," as Dessauer points out while explaining the effects of restricting a child’s decision-making skills.
So what should parents do instead? "If you LISTEN, without offering advice, your child will likely figure out some things they can do differently," Dessauer recommends.
Teach your child self-control.
If your child has a good sense of self-control, they are more likely to be healthy, wealthy, and safe.
According to a 32-year-long study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, parents who taught their children to control their impulses were found to raise more stable and strong children. Those children went on to be healthy, have more money, not engage in criminal behavior, and not have substance abuse problems.
It was also found in this study that out of 500 sibling-pairs, the sibling with a weaker sense of self-control had poorer outcomes despite being from the same family background, which proves that teaching your child self-control is crucial in raising successful children.
Pay attention to Your children.
According to a 2014 study out of the University of Delaware, children were more likely to be successful if their parents gave them "sensitive caregiving" despite being in poor conditions such as poverty. What is “sensitive caregiving”? Just another term for “pay attention to your children.”
Children who had the attention of their parents did way better in academics, had healthier relationships as adults, and were more likely to pursue higher education.
Giving your child attention seems like such a definite but little thing. But it is so important in contributing to your child’s future success, whether it be in academics or career or both.
Take parental leave.
The first couple years of a child’s life is a crucial time for parents to bond with their children. Without this bonding, children will encounter many long-term, negative effects.
A study done of European leave policies by the University of North Carolina found that parents who took parental leave were more likely to increase their infant’s survival rate and reduce infant mortality rates altogether.
Mothers who choose to take maternity leave have a much more beneficial impact on their children than mothers who do not, according to a recent study from The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn. These children go on to have higher IQs, be more educated, and make more money. So if you have the choice to take a parental leave for your child, we strongly advise you to do so. Creating a strong and positive relationship with your child is very important in parenting successfully.
