If you are the parent of a disrespectful or violent teen, your life is probably different than most parents. You are probably experiencing high levels of stress and frustration. You may be angry at your inability to resolve the problems with your teen. You may begin to question your parenting skills.

It’s likely that if you are the parent of disrespectful or violent teen that you feel as though you have nowhere to turn and no resources available to help you resolve the problems. When you have a disrespectful or violent teen, everything in your life can be tense. There is no “down time” because you are often running from one fire to another, from school behavior issues to family fights to violence to rule-breaking. It’s enough to make the best of parents want to tear out their hair.

There is hope, though, and it’s important that before you get to the point where you are no longer a healthy, functioning parent, that you reach for that help for your disrespectful or violent teen and for yourself.

One of the best resources parents have for their disrespectful or violent teens is the school. Your school’s counselor can be not only a resource but a source of referral to other resources in your community. When you are concerned about your teen’s out of control behavior, you may want to either deny it or try to hide it, but the best thing you can do is be up front about what is happening. You are not a failure just because you cannot find the right answers for your teen.

If the help you receive from your teen’s school counselor isn’t enough, there are still many other resources. Because it is difficult to tell what is causing your disrespectful or violent teen to behave the way he or she is behaving, it can be helpful to start with your family doctor or pediatrician. Your doctor can eliminate medical causes as well as potential drug and alcohol related behaviors. Your doctor can also refer your teen for additional evaluations with specialists if needed, and help you identify issues. Many times, your family doctor or pediatrician will also have other ideas about where you can go to get help.

Although the stigma is not what it used to be, many people hesitate to seek mental health treatment for their disrespectful or violent teen for fear of being labeled. Mental health services, however, provide you with a vast array of services for your disrespectful or violent teen. Depending on the circumstances of your situation, they can provide outpatient counseling for your teen, you, and your family. If the situation is dangerous or your teen needs more intensive services, they often have inpatient programs as well.

Often, all you need to make it through another day is someone to tell you that you are a good parent, that you are doing everything you can do, and that the stress and anguish you are feeling as a result of your disrespectful or violent teen will not last forever. Don’t give up before you reach out. There is help for you, no matter what your situation.

So you want to become a great parent?

Simplicity is the best choice for becoming a great parent. My children love to learn from me and they feel proud of what I know. I simply encourage them to do simple things that really matter and this could also gain the self-confidence of the child.

Here are 5 simple parenting tips which I love to share with you…and it is this:

1. Encourage your children to meet new friends especially in their kindergarten. It is so grateful to see how open your child is to meeting someone new. It is a great way to increase their communication skills and become sociable.

2. Teach your child that a “genuine SMILE” can get them anywhere in life.

3. A great parenting skill is to understand how the mind of the child works and integrating some of this simplistic fun in your own life. Children love to play and they know very well how to entertain themselves. Parents should try to understand their enjoyment and in addition, need to enjoy with them.

4. Try more new things in order to improve your parenting skills and let your children know that they could do the same thing as you do. Parents should allow their children to try more different activities such as basketball, pianos, dancing and etc. This is a way that children could experience what they really enjoy and what they are good at.

5. Teach your children to love learning. Children are curious in many new things and it is great to have them explore new activity into a learning pattern. Parents could bring their children to the library or museum to pick their new books or learn other educational stuffs that makes them feel fun of.

Warning: Do not neglect the above simple tips!! Be sure to take this advice seriously if your children love to learn from you and feel proud of what you know, these are the basic steps you must get through!

Child rearing is an experience that makes adults out of grown-up children, called parents. As soon as a child is added in the life of a couple, everything changes. Suddenly, the baby becomes the focus of their lives. Everything revolves around the needs of the baby. The first formative years, from age birth upto five years lay the foundation of the whole life of a child. Mistakes made in child rearing during this time can sometimes be irreversible.

One of the fundamental principles of parenting is to appreciate the needs of a baby. If the needs are misunderstood, the responses of the parents will lead to damage in the bond between the baby and the mother. One of the earliest needs of the baby are- food, sleep, being clean and a sense of safety. Once these needs are met, the baby is a happy baby. The first three needs are physical but the need to feel safe is where there is a difference of opinion among experts. In cultures, where babies are free to sleep with parents and where the mother is available to cling to during any time of the day, the baby feels safe. In cultures where babies are made to sleep in separate rooms, and most of the waking life is spent in creches, there is a shift in the baby’s perception of safe relationships.

Spending time in creches has the advantage of bonding with different person/s other than the mother, which may be looked at as the start of making the individual independent. But the frequent change in caregivers gives confusing messages to the subconscious. The more the changes in the number of caregivers involving less touch, the more the nervous system feels unstimulated. At the end of the day, the baby’s needs for safety are prime after feeding and cleaning has been done. Touch plays a major role in providing the baby, a sense of safety. The more the tender touch is available, the safer the baby feels. Sensorial satiation is what makes a child grow up to be a stable individual.

When a baby does not get sensorial satisfaction, then the baby starts to develop various problems, one of which is hyperactivity. In my own observations, a child who has had the kind of touch that is available to a child reared full time by a mother in India or in Nigeria, he or she is likely to be more stable emotionally. In this case the behaviour can be easily controlled because the nervous system has absorbed the sense of safety in the subconscious. The hyperactivity happens because the nervous system has not reached its level of satisfaction. Children in India are of lesser weight than a baby born in Western Europe. Yet they develop motor skills like crawling and walking and talking earlier than children in the Westren countries. My conclusion is that the sense of safety by touch by mother is the key to this difference. In India, in families in which the baby gets touch -experiences the whole day by family members, even if the mother may be working, motor skills are learnt earlier.

As the baby grows up to understand language, the next step is to teach the baby ways of life. A normal baby who feels well loved, will behave well and will not show any problem behaviour. Any reprimand by the parent, by a well bonded child, is taken seriously and obeyed. The more the child feels loved, the less are the chances of misbehaviour.Love is the best foundation for discipline.

When a child is to be reprimanded, it needs to be done immediately after an event and not ten minutes later. A child has a short memory span. So correction has to be immediate. This way the child can learn to associate the event with the consequences. It is important to let a child know what the expected conduct needs to be rather than giving out for undesirable behaviour.

Spanking or beating is not needed to correct a child. They are counter-productive. If you want a behaviour to discontinue, let the child know of its consequences. For example, if you do not want a toddler to go near a burning candle, then you have to hold the child’s hand and bring it to a safe distance from the flame, so that the child can feel the heat. Once a child knows the fire can burn, they will not go near the flame. Such experiences demand hard work and alertness on the part of a parent. But it is worth it if you want a healthy and well adjusted happy adult as a child.

Experience teaches a child. Words do not mean much, till they are associated with experience. In order for a child to learn, every mistake and its consequences have to be explained in simple language without going into too much details. And everything needs to be based on truth. If a child observes parents being untruthful in any area of life, no matter what you tell them about truth, they will learn to be untruthful.

Copyright Pradeep K Chadha 2006

When you found out that you were going to be a parent, did you feel you were prepared for parenthood? How did you prepare to become a parent? What school did you attend to acquire the best parenting skills? Do you feel you are doing a good job as a parent? It is so unfortunate to know that parenting is one of the areas in our society in which no one is required to get some sort of formal preparation. Most of us go into parenthood blindfolded with no clue as to what’s the best way, approach, or method to raise a child. Did someone take some time to give you some positive parenting tips? Most of us go into parenting following what we learned while growing up. But what if our parents did not implement the best strategies on us? What if during our childhood all we faced was neglect, abuse and lack of love? Is that what we ought to teach our own children?

As a parent you must decide what you want and don’t want for your child. Do you wish for your child to endure the same things you did when you were growing up? Or do you want to provide your little one with a nurturing environment where love, respect, patience and respect dominate everything around him? Many parents do not realize that the problems they face with their children reflect their own lack of skills, strategies and discipline methods. So what is it that you are missing when it comes to raising your little(s) one that is not working? There are several factors such as your approach, methods, attitude, and views that contribute to a child’s bad behavior. Some positive parenting tips can help you understand what you may be missing when educating your little one.

First of all, what is your approach when your child starts crying, doing a temper tantrum, biting, pushing or hitting? The approach you take can seriously determine whether he stops or continues with such bad behavior.

Next, what methods do you use to help your child change or modify his bad behavior? Do you simply get mad and punish him or do you allow him to explain what his problem is? Again, your approach will guide the outcome of your child’s behavior. Some positive parenting tips can make a difference on your approach, view, methods and attitude about raising your child.

Being a parent can bring you satisfaction and despair at the same time. When your child displays the best behavior possible it gives you a feeling of pride and joy. But when your child displays the opposite, it gives a parent a feeling of despair and failure. Any parent can accomplish a great job raising a child. All it takes is the desire to modify ones behavior, attitude and views about child rearing and of course some good positive parenting tips.

Also, what is your view about how you deal with your child’s upbringing? Do you believe that you should follow the same strategies your parents used? Or do you have your own believes and attitudes about how to raise your child? You have to remember that there is a big difference between the time when you were little and now.

It’s amazing, how many parents, years ago, managed to successfully rear their children, without the help of ‘parenting skills’- a concept completely alien until comparatively recently. There’s no doubt whatsoever that the arrival of a new baby, with all its needs, can be overwhelming initially, turning a previously balanced and structured regime into one of chaos. There are some parents who find it almost impossible to cope, particularly if the mother is unlucky enough to suffer from post natal depression. Even a mother who is fit and healthy is sometimes frightened by the responsibility she bears for attending to the wants of a new baby. The mother quickly realises that this little scrap of humanity is totally dependent on her which can at times seem daunting.

However, with the number of books on baby care, plus clinics and medical facilities available, a new mother has help undreamed of only fifty years ago. In addition, she has numerous labour saving gadgets including washing machines, disposable nappies, bottle warmers etc. which all contribute to making her life easier than that experienced by her mother. But it appears all these advantages are not enough to enable mothers to bring up their children without lessons in ‘parenting skills’. Incredible as it may sound, the basic ingredient required for bringing up children are two words, ‘common sense’. It has to be admitted that it takes time to come to terms with the arrival of a new person in a household but it doesn’t take rocket science to learn how to rear that new baby.

Common sense should provide enough guidance along with the informative books and medical help mentioned previously. Even people with no experience with babies can successfully bring up a child without lessons in ‘parenting skills’. All these’ parenting skills’ are after all, when examined, based on common sense. It doesn’t take much imagination to know when a baby needs feeding, changing or is tired. It takes practice but soon becomes second nature. Some mothers feed ‘on demand’, others prefer a strict time-table. Obviously whichever system works is the one to adopt; there’s certainly nothing mysterious or difficult about it. As the baby settles down, puts on weight and shows signs of growth, the easier things become. Some babies will always cry more than others which can be distressing for the parent but again, using common sense, mothers begin to recognise what’s upsetting their baby and so take the necessary steps to deal with the problem. Then the baby begins to flourish and, at this stage, can bring tremendous happiness and joy to the parents as they watch their baby develop with its own personality. There is nothing more rewarding.

Quite frankly, most ‘parenting skills’ are innate, there to be used when called upon. All children need understanding and love, particularly love which most parents are only too happy to display. Always being there for their children is the most reassuring stand any parent can take. Obviously, as a child grows, it’s important for him/her to discover there are right and wrong ways to behave and responsible parents will ensure their children learn these differences. Encouraging children to do well is fine as long as parents don’t make the mistake of pushing their offspring into situations which make them unhappy. All children are naturally curious and this curiosity helps them to learn and should never be discouraged. Equally important, however, no parent should allow their children to be burdened with unrealistic expectations. Each child eventually finds his/her level of intelligence. Forcing a child to exceed that level can be exceedingly damaging to a child’s development.

All the above points are simply based on common sense and, if used wisely, will almost always result in producing a child who is well-balanced, secure and able to cope with the trials and tribulations of growing up. This will also give huge pleasure and love in the process to his/her parents. Rocket Science? Not at all!