What Are the Foundations of Sound Child-Rearing?

Children's lives are a very exciting journey, but one filled with difficulties and bumps. This is how they learn and develop along the way. To feel at ease, they also need tools that help them, especially during difficult times. Parents can provide their children with these tools. Of course, the sooner we give them these tools, the better. We can also provide them later; they are suitable for every age, even when the child is older.

In this article, we will present a series of stages in raising children, through which we will introduce the tools we should equip our children with through parenting so that they can face life's difficulties.

What does raising children involve?

There are fundamental parenting principles that parents should know and understand in order to raise a child with a healthy mindset and emotional well-being. These include:

• Teaching a child about privacy.

Privacy is one of the fundamental concepts in raising children. It includes teaching a child about privacy in their personal life and regarding their body. This means that not everyone should know personal matters concerning us or our family. Privacy also extends to the child's body: children should understand that our bodies are private and that no one is allowed to touch them. Just as we have privacy, others have their own privacy, which we must respect and not violate.

• Teaching a child respect.

Children should understand that respect is not limited to respecting others; it is fundamentally connected to respecting ourselves. In other words, we should teach our children that respecting others is tied to self-respect: treat others in the same way you would like to be treated. Parents can teach children to respect themselves and those around them by using moments when a child treats someone disrespectfully as opportunities to show them how to interact and speak with courtesy and respect.

• Teaching a child to apologize and the importance of owning their mistakes.

Children should understand that a brave person is someone who acknowledges and owns a mistake, apologizes for it, and takes responsibility. Only a coward runs away from facing a mistake and refuses to admit it. Acknowledging mistakes shows that we are strong people who can take responsibility.

Essential child-rearing tools for positive parenting.

Among the tools we will discuss throughout the stages of positive child-rearing are:

• Believing in children's abilities.

This means believing that they came into this world equipped with all the tools and mechanisms they need, and that the parents' role is simply to help them, discover who they are, and give them room to use these tools. Most importantly, parents should not pity them during their journey of growth and development. We know that what our children go through is difficult, but that is less important than our belief in their ability to overcome it.

• Accepting children as they are.

The second tool, which is both one of the most important and one of the most difficult for parents, is accepting their children. This begins with the parents, who should not base their assessment of their children's success solely on themselves. This requires them to let go ofthe egoin everything concerning their children. Every child comes into the world with difficulties. The parents' role is to help the child progress at the pace they can manage, not the pace their parents expect of them.

At the beginning of the parenting journey, every mother and father expects their child to be perfect. Over time, however, they discover that their child faces many difficulties. This is entirely natural, because every child is born into this life with certain difficulties. The parents' role is to free themselves from the image of the perfect child they imagined, see their child as they truly are, accept them as they are, and love them as they are. This should be independent of the child's abilities, academic results, social skills, appearance, or any other difficulties. If a child feels that their parents accept and love them as they are, they will be happy most of the time.

I mentioned earlier that I liken children's lives to a journey, and the parents' role in raising them is part of that journey. To me, parenting is a complete path along which parents pass through different stages. In this article, I presented one of those stages: accepting our child and loving them unconditionally. I also discussed two tools that can help parents achieve this stage.

In this article, we will limit our discussion to these two tools, and it is important for parents to recognize the value of providing them to their children. The discussion will continue, and I will address the remaining tools in future articles.