Collaborative parenting is in many ways a 180-degree progression from the authoritative way of raising children that many children of the 80’s and 90’s were raised. In continuing to learn from the generation before us, we too are working to improve the way we parent our children. If the goal of parenting is to raise healthy, happy children that have a strong family connection the secret sauce to ensuring this comes in the form of mutual respect, collaboration, and communication that collaborative parenting offers. The research shows that these three elements can pay dividends toward a common family goal – strong connections.

John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth and their Attachment Theory might not be something you’ve heard of but is a major developmental objective for children to develop with their caregivers, mainly their mothers since they typically act as the primary caregiver in many families. Being able to develop an attachment relationship with caregivers isn’t hard for children to do. However, creating a secure, healthy attachment relationship and reaping the benefits of such relationship is dependent on the parents, their parenting style, and availability of the parents. So, let’s break down attachment and how to provide your child with the care they need to insure a secure attachment.

I made a social media post about filling your own cup and it got me thinking about the importance of taking care of ourselves as parents as much as we do with our own kids. Later that afternoon, I coincidentally, stumbled upon the scientific reasoning behind why filling up your own cup is vitally important since we oftentimes succumb to the pressures parents face to be perfect parents while putting our needs second, if not totally unmet due to excessive levels of sacrifice parents subject themselves to.

November 13th is World Kindness Day, but we don’t really need or shouldn’t need a day to remind us to be kind to others as well as to ourselves. We often get asked, do you need to teach kids how to be kind, and if so, how do you? Although kindness is an abstract concept we have outlined three ways to teach this social concept to children.

Children are naturally persistent and when parents think of qualities we want our children to sustain into their adulthood, persistence is a key quality. But persistence can be tricky when children don’t take no for an answer and push to get what they want. Its times like these that parent have a clear choice in how to manage a child’s persistence while also maintaining respectful communication that doesn’t break a child’s will and doesn’t drive a parent mad!

Ever notice how one family member can feel stressed, anxious, or fearful and it’s as though the feelings were contagious, and other family members start to feel the same sort of emotion and dysregulation? Those are mirror neurons at work. Our feelings and moods are in some ways contagious! And children are just as susceptible to feeling parents or caregivers emotions and moods, as parents are susceptible to feeling our child’s dysregulation. So it’s important we stake steps to regulate our emotions and teach our children to do the same.