Bob Lancer's Essential Parenting Solutions

One of the most fundamental parenting solutions is to have realistic expectations. If you expect a child to behave well all the time, without you having to deal with inappropriate behavior at all, you have unrealistic expectations that will lead you to feel resentful of your child, helpless and out of control. You also set your child up to feel like a failure.

For a child to behave as well as possible, the parent needs to respond as well as possible to the child's inappropriate behavior. Your child needs you to be in charge of your responses so you can align them with the responses your child needs from you to behave appropriately.

According to traditional, authoritarian child raising, being in charge means absolute parent control and total child obedience. But children do not respond well to this. For the child to behave well, she needs to feel a certain measure of freedom, power and self-determination

Before you can apply correct parenting solutions to specific child behavior problems, you need to determine how much freedom, power and self-determination the child needs to behave appropriately.

Of course every parent wants his child to behave appropriately without correction or direction. However, expecting this to happen inevitably leads to child behavior problems.

You need parenting solutions because you will encounter child behavior problems. Your child will behave in ways that disappoint you, annoy you, infuriate you, and shock you. This balances the fact that your child will behave in ways that delight you, amaze you, dazzle you with her brilliance.

To set yourself up for success, anticipate your need for parenting solutions. You can feel in charge in your relationship with your child only to the extent that your expectations of your child’s behavior match your child’s real ability.

You set yourself up to feel frustrated and out of control by counting on your child to behave impossibly well.

Your expectations can work for or against you in relation to your child's behavior. Effective parenting solutions include the enlightened application of the power of expectation.

Expect great things from your child. Expect great parenting solutions from yourself. Ultimately, both you and your child will tend to live up to your highest expectations. For this to happen, though, you must make your expectation unconditional, and remain dedicated to fulfilling that expectation.

This means that even when your child displays a behavior that deeply disturbs you, you do not lose faith your child or yourself. You reject ideas of yourself and your child that trouble your heart with disappointment. You continue believing in your child, and in your ability to come up with the parenting solutions your child needs from you to thrive.

One of the most crucial parenting solutions involves parenting with alert awareness focused on the present moment. Expecting your child to behave well is great, but you also need to provide your child with the response she needs from you right now in order to behave well.

Here, then, are the important parenting solutions we have covered in this brief article:

1.Parent with alert awareness in the present moment

2.Parent with positive expectations

3.Anticipate the fact that you will face child behavior challenges

4.Focus on providing your child with the measure of freedom, power and self-determination your child needs to behave well

5.Be in charge of your responses to your child's behavior (don't blindly react emotionally)

As you apply these parenting solutions your child will not behave perfectly all the time, but you will be responding to your child's behavior in line with what your child needs from you to behave well.

For more essential parenting solutions check out Bob Lancer's parenting CD's, and his breakthrough book: Parenting With Love, Without Anger Or Stress.