The How, What and Why of Consistent Parenting

As a parenting educator and family counselor with many years experience in observing behavioral problems it is apparent to me that many parents who struggle to maintain peaceful children and calm households live with inconsistency, unpredictability and few boundaries and limits. Through the various media today, parents are exposed to a great variety of parenting styles, pressures and expectations, many of which just add to growing feelings of guilt, inadequacy and stress for parents who are just trying to get it right.

Helen Williams is a family counselor and parent educator fromNew Zealand currently living in Dubai, UAE, where she runs a busy practice called Counselling Dubai. As well as counselling clients, Helen runs regular Consistent Parenting and Becoming Authentic workshops. Helen has four children and is a proud grandmother. Helen believes that being a consistent parent is both vitally important and totally necessary to ensure a happy family life. However, becoming a consistent parent is rather like trying to push water uphill if we are not consistent within our selves. Consistent Parenting Advice addresses HOW to adopt a firm, clear, consistent parenting approach, while enabling parents to enhance and increase their emotional well-being and become consistent themselves.
www.consistent-parenting-advice.com
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Coupled with the poor limit setting and contradictory boundaries which fuel out of control behaviour, these feelings of guilt and inadequacy flow through into their parenting style, creating significant problems in the ordinary daily routines of bedtimes and meal times.

It's therefore not surprising that temper tantrums and anguish, over tiredness and anxiety seem to rule their days.
Numerous parents write to Consistent Parenting Advice.com asking for help. They do so usually because the light has gone put of their parenting experience and they are struggling to enjoy their role as parents.

These parents are often totally perplexed that their family life resembles a war zone instead of the calm, warm and stable environment they had hoped to foster. They often say they feel they have failed through their own mistakes. Most of the ‘failures’ are about ordinary daily events such as sleeping and eating and for toddlers, about listening to and carrying out simple instructions.

Many recount how, through sheer exhaustion, they have just given in time and again and now they are reaping the sad rewards of their own making. I have also observed that the majority of parents who come seeking help are usually warm, loving, intelligent people, doing all they can to provide security and happiness for their children.

The questions they ask are always about how to maintain an effective parenting style. An effective parenting style is one that is consistent and creates calm parents and well adjusted children. These are the perfect ingredients of a happy family.

Let's look at what a consistent parenting style is.

Firstly, what consistent parenting is NOT!

Because people tend to think of being consistent as equivalent to being structured, ordered and systematic, then parents who like the concept of spontaneity and going with the flow feel that the consistent parenting experience is not for them. Let me challenge that idea!

A consistent parenting style is not about being stuck, and unchanging. Nor is it about carrying out rigid routines and schedules. It is not about being authoritarian and inflexible, or about being rigid, dictatorial and domineering. Let go any notion that consistent parenting will be stodgy, boring and humdrum.

Instead, because consistent parenting creates more control for both parents and children, there is much more spontaneity and magic, adventure and surprise in families who practice being consistent. Why?

Because children who are calm and centred and not struggling and fighting against ordinary daily routines, or using energy to manipulate their parents, have a far greater capacity for challenges and adventure, as do their parents! In fact a consistent parenting style is far from being unchanging!

What consistent parenting IS!

What does it mean to be consistent? It means being reliable, dependable and constant. It means incorporating both love and limits in our parenting.

It means saying what we mean clearly, being firm with our intent, and then being consistent with our actions. It is about being loving, firm, reliable, authentic, dependable, trustworthy and constant when responding to your children and when setting expectations ion terms of behaviour.

Being firm, clear and consistent creates both sociable, happy children and calm, contented parents. Age appropriate behaviour is expected along with clear standards and firmly set boundaries.

Children are encouraged to think for themselves and are also encouraged to push and question about safe boundaries. Firm control, but without a high level of restriction, creates socially responsible children who are able to control their aggression and who become self confident with high self esteem.

Consistent parents want their children to be assertive as well as socially responsible and self regulated and motivated as well as cooperative and compassionate.
Being consistent requires making a decision to change your approach to consistent parenting and sticking to it - surprisingly, it usually only takes a short time to change even some firmly embedded behaviour.

It pays us to remember that on a daily basis a child is constantly asking by their actions and reactions,
"Is this how I use power?"

It is unnecessary to get angry with them when we create consistent boundaries and serve fair consequences to answer this question. Consistent parenting is about being loving, calm, centred and responsive as parents. It means being consistent in striving for the best for ourselves and for our children - looking after our emotional maturity as parents - recognizing when we could do better and acknowledging when we have done well in our parenting.

And yes, it is possible, even for parents who struggle with being consistent in simple habits. The pay back from adopting a consistent parenting style is so superior that it becomes its own steadily self-reinforcing reward.
Read more about Consistent Parenting and how to implement a consistent approach at www.consistent-parenting-advice.com