Every parent’s dream is to raise a child that has a great character when he grows up. The big question is how to build that character from young? Nowadays, our society places so much emphasis on self-gratification and ‘look-out-for-yourself’ economy. Below are several practical ideas that can be put into motion to assist you in nurturing your child.

#1: Be a good role model for your child
Your child observes you everyday. Hence, you as a parent need to set the best example for them to follow.

#2: Assist your child to achieve success
Your child will go through a plenty of disappointments, illnesses, frustrations and challenges while he is developing. Your job as a parent is to pay attention to problems when they occur and prevent them from getting serious. Punishment is necessary but should not be excessive. Always evaluate specific situations and consider how to improve on them. Hence, you can make the journey easier for your child to behave like a good person and continue to be motivated to be one.

#3: Parents should follow the same set of rules
If you wish your child to follow the rules you have set for him, you as a parent must adhere to the same rules. Your child is more likely to turn out fine and of good character when he sees you as a happy and successful individual. He is more willing to follow the path you thread.

#4: Making mistakes are normal
Help your child to understand that making mistakes are part of growing up. Assist him to tolerate feelings of disappointments and imperfections for messing up. Remind him to learn from the mistakes, to move on and to focus on the other things he has accomplished.

#5: Give rewards and penalties wisely
Our world is full of examples of rewards and punishments. Even as adults, we are penalized for speeding, for coming in late to work, for not getting a job done perfectly enough, etc. On the other hand, we get rewarded with bonuses or incentives for good performance. Therefore, use the same concept of reward and punishment wisely with your child.

#6: Maintain a close relationship with your child
Always maintain a strong bond with your child to help him weather the good and the bad times. He will remain close to you even after you reprimand him for bad behavior. He will realize that it is because you love him that he is being scolded or punished.

#7: Always remind about good and bad behaviors
Always tell your child why doing or saying something is bad and why. Each time you catch him, it is your responsibility to correct any wrongdoing. Identify bad behaviors and virtuous conducts and give the reasoning or explanations.

If you conducted a survey asking people what are the criteria that makes for a wise and successful parent, you would probably get a varied answer. It is understandable as even child experts have different views in this matter. Hence, you will find in this article all the necessary requisites to make a wise and successful parent.

Read through the list and see whether you meet all the criteria. Don’t worry if you don’t as this gives you the opportunity to improve on your parenting skills.

The wise, good, successful and superb parent fulfills the following criteria:

• Able to provide a nurturing and happy environment for your children to grow (a stable home).

It is a fact that children from a stable home will grow up to be productive and conscientious adults.

• Able to provide the necessities in life (material needs), i.e. food, shelter and clothing.

A certain comfortable level of needs must be met to ensure proper growth and development.

• Able to provide advice, emotional support, guidance and unconditional love among other things.

Children with all their emotional needs being met are conditioned to become better adults. Children who grew up in a loving environment becomes a loving person.

• Able to provide safety, structure and protection.

During the growing-up years, children need to feel protected, safe and secure. They need to feel some solid family structure in their lives that they can depend on as they go through childhood anxieties.

• Able to provide proper rules to introduce discipline and responsibility.

Children need to learn abut rules, about limitations and what is right or wrong. These valuable experiences will teach them to be a discipline and responsible adult. Rules are made to curb them from doing bad things and at the same time, they learn about taking responsibility for their actions.

• Able to provide unlimited opportunities for their children to learn and make mistakes and learn back from those mistakes.

Opportunities should be given or created to improve their social skills, leadership skills, discipline and self-control. Children learn things from the home, the school, their environment and most importantly from their own unique life experiences. The more situation or opportunities they encounter, the more valuable experiences they will gather. It can be good or bad experience. They learn what life is all about and this builds up their character.

• Able to provide opportunities for their children to be who they are and does not force their own expectations on them.

Children need to be allowed to be who they are and feel loved for it. They should not feel pressured to conform to their parent’s expectations.

• Able to provide quality time to be spent with the children, talking and listening and doing things together.

Parents must get close to their children by spending time and doing things together. Parents who spent quality time with their children will form stronger bonds compared to those who don’t.

• Able to provide spiritual and moral guidance.

Children who were brought up with a strong spiritual background and good moral guidance are more likely to grow to be a virtuous person.

• Able to provide encouragement and give praise when necessary.

Your children will face a lot of challenges and disappointments while growing up. As a parent, you can give your support, encouragement and praise at appropriate times. Your children will learn to pick themselves up and move on in adverse situations.

Be a good role model

The above criteria are all essential. However, most importantly do not forget to provide a good example or role model to your children. Research has shown that parents who are responsible and hardworking tend to have children who are responsible and hardworking. Parents who are happy and easy-going tend to have children who are happy and easy-going.

On the flip side, parents who are short-tempered creates an unstable atmosphere at home which rubs off on their children. Parents who lack social skills will not be able to show and teach their children how to interact and relate with other people. Therefore, always keep in mind the influence you have on your children.

The parent’s reward

What is the end result of being a wise, good, successful and superb parent? The parent’s reward is in having children who are responsible, honest, mature, intelligent and dependable and having good emotional (high self-esteem) and social skills development. How many parents long for their children to have all these good qualities? I believe all parents want their children to possess all these good and excellent qualities.

Parents who have worked on their parenting skills and fulfill most of the criteria above shall no doubt have more confidence in their children. As parents, we never went to a parenting school and what we learn is mostly from the school of ‘hard-knocks’, learning from mistakes and experience. In addition, we also pick up things through observation and from our own childhood experience. You should realize that parenting is not an exact science and there is no a one-size-fits all formula for successful parenting.

In summary, my goal as a parent is the same as your goal and that is to provide a conducive growing up environment that enables the child to learn, make mistakes and make the most of herself. From the whole process, I hope that my child grows up to become a responsible mature adult.

Please share your ideas of what makes for a wise, good and successful parent. Your views and comments are most welcome.

photo credit: freeparking

Becoming good parents to your children is not easy. Most of the time we use methods that we learn from our own parents when we were young. We also apply knowledge that we pick up along the way or have read somewhere. Nobody said it was easy and most often than not, we learn through the whole parenting experience of what method works and does not work.

Ultimately though, parents have similar goals in what they expect from their children through their parenting skills. Parents hope for among other things, to have children who know responsibility, respect and compassion. Parents want their children to grow up to have good self-esteem about themselves, to be self-reliant, to be a good and helpful person, etc.

My own helpful tips for parents are:
1. Teach them to fish
2. Be a good role model
3. Respect your children

Teach them to fish

Teach your children about the idea of doing things by themselves to achieve or complete a task. Parents tend to complete a task or bow in to their children’s demands. If the parents do everything for their children, the children will come to expect this in every situation. Once your child has reached pre-school age (3 – 4 years old), they are old enough to understand instructions or requests. You can request them to do simple chores or tasks like putting back or arranging their toys, books, shoes, clothing, etc.

These will teach your children about responsibilities and being proud of themselves for being able to do something that the adults normally do. It will be easier for them as they grow up to accept more and more of life’s responsibilities.

Be a good role model

The person closest to the children is the parents. So be a good role model for them. Act the person that you would want them to be when they grow up. You may face some slip-ups from time to time but most of the time, play a good role and show a good example. From personal experience, it is a hard thing to do sometimes. We sometimes get home from work bringing all our problems and are certainly not in a good mind-frame to handle or listen to the children’s problem. Just remember that we are the parents and the children naturally turn to us to help them, to advice them or just to listen to them.

Respect your children

Children are very smart and catch-on very fast. They learn and pick-up a lot of things during their growing years. Starting at a young age, they start to show their individual, unique personality.

As parents we should give them room to grow, to make mistakes and not to expect perfection from them. Your expectations must be reasonable and agreeable to them. To expect more than they could give will put on unnecessary pressure on them and it will make them miserable and become rebellious.

Simply put, be flexible and constantly get their feedbacks. Become their friends or best buddies and they will always hold you in good regards.

The above are my tips to assist you in your parenting journey. You may have your own methods or tips to guide you in becoming successful parents but there is no harm to give mine a try.