10 Steps to Parenting Competence
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The Pathways to Competence for Young Children parenting program is designed to help parent educators teach practices that will help parents enhance their children's social and emotional development.
Take a glimpse at the 10 steps of the program, along with suggested tips for parents to try to help them accomplish each goal.
Step 1. Understanding Temperament and Behavioral Styles
Try to learn about any physical characteristics that may be contributing to your child's behavioral style.
The child may have physical characteristics that contribute to his behavior. Explain and discuss a few of the “hidden” physical characteristics that may contribute to a child’s behavioral style. These may include:
• Hyper- or hyposensitivity, excessive reactivity or lack of reactivity to touch, sound, sight, smell, and movement
• Motor difficulties, including motor tone, motor planning, and clumsiness
• Auditory and visual processing and sensory integration problems
This is a good time to have parents suggest other traits they may have noticed in their children. Sometimes these challenges can go unnoticed or be misinterpreted and can cause difficulties for a child at home or school.
Step 2. Developing Body Control and a Positive Body Image
Join your child in fun motor and movement activities.
Movement activities can be fun for children, and it is important that caregivers participate with them. Rolling over with children, running through the leaves, clapping hands, blowing bubbles, playing catch with a balloon, and dancing are all wonderful movement activities.
When caregivers join in the activities, it serves as a motivator and gets children involved. These activities can be marvelous ways to help children feel in control of their bodies. For children who are very active, these types of exercises may be crucial to helping them “let off steam” and calm down.
Step 3. Developing a Secure Attachment
Comfort your child when she is physically hurt, ill, upset, frightened, or lonely.
Explain that research shows that one of the key ways to develop a secure attachment is to comfort children when they are hurt, ill, upset, frightened, or lonely. If parents bring up the idea that this can spoil children, point out that in young children this is not the case.
With older children, it is important to comfort them but also to encourage them so that they learn not to be overwhelmed by difficult emotions and to express them in a positive way.
Explain that a parent needs to do something with his child to help the child feel better, such as talking to her in a calming or reassuring way or suggesting an activity that the child enjoys.
Step 4. Encouraging Play and Imagination
Regularly assign time to join your child in play by giving the activity or game your undivided attention.
Sometimes the process of giving children attention in this kind of context (i.e., a regularly scheduled time) can change children’s behavior dramatically. Negative symptoms often disappear when children know they can look forward to playing with special caregivers.
During play, children can experience a unique sense of closeness. They learn to feel accepted and secure as the caregiver becomes an active partner with them. For parents who find pretend time difficult, setting a timer for 20 minutes or whatever amount of time they feel comfortable with, can be reassuring because it lets them know that the play does not have to last beyond the time they are willing to spend.
Step 5. Encouraging Language and Communication
Make conversation a two-way process of communication between you and your child.
Point out that even in adult conversations, it is rare to have a conversation that goes beyond the superficial. People say nice but overused phrases such as “How are you?” “I’m fine. How are you?”
Many conversations consist of one person telling another about what is going on in her life followed by the other person doing the same without responding to what the first person has said. Unfortunately, people don’t often truly listen to one another. This can be even more the case with children who have limited conversational skills.
Point out that one of the greatest gifts you can give a child is to really listen to him, to understand his ideas and point of view, and to show him that you accept his feelings and opinions. Have parents describe situations when someone didn’t listen to them. How did this make them feel? What would have made the situation better for them?
Step 6. Laying a Foundation for Positive Self-Esteem
Model a sense of optimism and a positive view of yourself to your child.
Between 3 and 5 years of age, children increasingly identify with their parents and begin to imitate what their parents do and say, including the ways in which parents express a sense of competence and strength.
Parents should, as far as possible, try to present a positive self-image and confidence about their own ability and sense of control. It is also important to give children a feeling that things will generally turn out all right.
Pointing out positive models of people outside the home can be helpful. Have children read books or watch movies or television shows that demonstrate people who have succeeded even in difficult circumstances.
Step 7. Encouraging Self-Regulation, Morality, and a Sense of Conscience
Explain the reasons for certain behaviors that are expected and requested.
In a variety of research studies it has been found that children do not learn morality by parental power assertion methods (i.e., giving strict controls) alone. Scientists have determined that explaining to children the effect of their behavior can increase their compliance (e.g., When you hit your brother, it hurts him and he cries and needs a Band-Aid).
This is called induction, and it develops the child’s sense of conscience because it helps her see the perspective of others and develop a sense of empathy for the other person and feelings of guilt when she hurts someone else. The words and explanations get internalized and form a part of a conscience for the child later, and the child will feel discomfort if she disobeys them.
Step 8. Encouraging Emotion Regulation
Accept your child’s emotions and do not deny, punish, or withdraw from him for having the emotions.
Communicate this acceptance and coach your child to problem-solve to find ways to deal with the emotions. People tend to be more comfortable with some emotions than others. Sometimes parents find it very difficult to show acceptance of a particular emotion.
Ask parents to identify which emotions in their child they have the most difficulty dealing with (e.g., anger, jealousy, sadness and whining, fear and anxiety, intense happiness, affection). Have them describe a situation in which their child’s emotion triggered difficult feelings in them, and have them consider what was behind their response. Did they deny or punish their child's emotions? How could they have overcome their own discomfort?
Point out that continually denying emotions can create a child who is not in touch with his feelings or a child who frequently displays false emotions in an effort to remain feeling accepted and connected. This has been called creating an unreal or false self in the child. An example would be a person who always appears nice and tries to smile even when underneath he is very angry.
Step 9. Encouraging Concentration, Planning, and Problem Solving
Allow your child to experience the consequences of her actions, unless to do so would be dangerous. Then explain what happened and why.
Children can only really find out what will happen if we let them experience the consequences of what they have done rather than rescuing them all of the time. Obviously, this does not apply to situations when the child would be placed in danger, such as running across a road or touching something hot.
Tell parents, however, that if their child has been told that she will miss dessert or have a toy put away for a week if she does not do a certain thing, then these consequences should be imposed so that she learns, “If I do this, this will happen.”
It is important that the consequence follows logically from the behavior and is not unrealistic. Consequences that are illogical and unrealistic place both the child and parent in an awkward position.
Step 10. Encouraging Social Competence, Empathy, and Caring Behavior
Help your child see the effect of his behavior on others. Encourage role- and perspective-taking.
Young children up to the age of about 4 tend to be egocentric, or to believe themselves to be the center of the universe, and see things only from their own point of view. Thus, they lack a "theory of mind" or understanding of the point of view or opinions of others. In other words, to children of this age, everything is “mine” and “my way.”
Perspective-taking needs to be encouraged by pointing out how other people think and feel about things the child does or events that are happening. Children also learn about others’ perspectives through pretend play and in real-life situations when they help find solutions to family issues or discuss disagreements with a sibling or parent.
In the process of participating in the discussions, the child will learn that there are different perspectives on most issues and that usually, there is not only one way to do things or one way to feel.
