01/6What is peaceful parenting?
The idea of peaceful parenting is to raise your children into responsible, values-led adults, while being peaceful. So, you will enforce discipline, but without making a scene or bossing around your child or threatening them with punishments.
The idea is not about raising ‘peaceful’ or ‘quiet’ kids who are submissive. The child will remain full of energy or naughty (in a way that does not harm) or curious. It is the parent who has to change.
02/6This won’t make your kids rebellious
Many people confuse peaceful parenting style to the permissive parenting style that can often spoil the kids and make them disrespectful, impulsive and rebellious. Instead, peaceful parenting emphasizes on incorporating structure and discipline into your daily life; without being too hard on yourselves or your kids.
03/6Transitioning from reactive to peaceful parent
Sometimes, you lose your cool and your child seems impossible to deal with. You may become loud, rude or aggressive. While you may be completely right in the issue you are dealing with your child, it is your behavior that matters the most to your child. It is your duty to manage your emotions and sensibly handle the situation. As a parent, it is your responsibility to ‘teach’ your child how to handle the little things correctly — whether on avoiding spilling the water or getting dressed or clearing the toys off the floor. How you handle chaos is in your hands.
04/6How to stay calm in chaos
“We can be structured, speak with firmness, set boundaries, and have expectations. We do that from a place of leadership by teaching and demonstrating versus reacting, yelling, scolding, shaming, blaming, and punishing,” Kiva Schuler, founder of the Jai Institute for Parenting, shares with Fatherly.
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05/6Practicing nonviolent communication
“Our job as parents is to teach solution-oriented thinking. Judgment, blame, and defensiveness are all absent from nonviolent communication,” explains Schuler, adding, “Our job as parents is to teach solution-oriented thinking.”
As a parent, you must ensure that you do not shame or embarrass your child when they make a mistake or forget things. You need to help them get out of these not-so-good practices or behavior, instead of making them conscious and shaming them further.
06/6We are not perfect, but we respect each other
“Kids are so smart when we involve them in creating solutions to what’s not working, and they own it. They function much better from a place of collaboration and partnership than under a dictatorship,” explains Schuler, adding, “In this ecosystem, everyone gets to make mistakes. It’s how we clean them up that matters.”
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