Positive parenting: Four tips for providing nurturing care

But raising children doesn’t come with an instruction manual. It can be challenging to know how to help your children grow into successful, thriving adults—especially when some of us didn’t grow up with healthy parenting modeled for us. 

Although there is no one-size-fits-all formula for parenting, positive parenting is an evidence-based approach that provides many parents with guiding principles to help them navigate their parenting journey.  

What is positive parenting?  

Positive parenting is an evidence-based approach that is centered on building a loving, trusted relationship between a parent and child, which is proven to be a child’s most powerful protection against trauma.  

Rather than using corporal punishment, threats or other control- and fear-driven methods, positive parenting focuses on empathy, connection, unconditional love and clear, consistent boundaries to teach children life skills, emotional regulation and resilience. 

Research continues to show that positive parenting promotes stronger parent-child relationships, improves children’s mental health and academic performance, and reduces behavioral issues.   

Growing up with loving parenting fosters healthy childhood development by:  

— Building strong neural pathways that support memory, learning, language and social skills. 

— Supporting a child’s healthy emotional development, serving as a buffer against toxic stress and building resiliency.  

— Nurturing secure attachments—the ability to form healthy, trusting emotional bonds—which leads to high self-esteem and healthy lifelong relationships. 

Read more about the importance of emotionally responsive caregiving.   

Four ways to implement positive parenting:  

1. Create a safe environment through active listening. 

Active listening shows your child that what they feel, think or say matters, strengthening your relationship and building your child’s self-confidence.  

Plus, feeling heard and understood boosts a child’s ability to identify and manage their emotions, which leads to healthy emotional regulation and facilitates better mental health throughout their life.  

Tips to improve your active listening skills:   

— Give your child your full attention: Make eye contact and use body language that shows them you’re fully engaged, including getting on their physical level (i.e. kneeling for young children).   

— Ask open-ended questions: Instead of asking a yes-or-no question—such as “Did you have a good day?”—try questions that encourage them to process and share their inner thoughts and emotions. For example: “What was the best part of your day?” or “What was the hardest part of your day?”  

— Validate their emotions: Rather than immediately offering guidance, acknowledge their feelings first and reassure them you’re here to listen.  

Read more about how to create emotionally safe environments for your child’s healthy brain development.  

2. Use age-appropriate, positive discipline methods.  

Using positive discipline methods is an effective positive parenting strategy, fostering children’s healthy development and helping them internalize values that will guide them through life. 

Examples of positive discipline methods include:  

— Positive reinforcement: Reward desirable behavior with praise, attention or other recognition to increase the likelihood that it will happen again. For this method of behavior modification to be effective, be sure to use specific praise immediately after the behavior occurred.   

• For example: You ask your child to clean up their toys. As soon as they finish storing them correctly, you might say, “Thank you for packing up all your toys so neatly!”   

— Logical consequences: This discipline strategy ensures the outcome directly relates to the punishment, which helps teach a child responsibility. Logical consequences include repairing damage, losing a privilege related to misuse or even redoing a task.   

• For example: A younger child might draw on the wall, and the logical consequence that follows is that child has to clean the wall. An older child may refuse to wear mittens when they play outside, so the logical consequence is that they have to come inside. 

• When choosing logical consequences, remember to follow the 3 R’s:   

■ Related: Is the consequence directly connected to the misbehavior?   

■ Respectful: Is the consequence delivered calmly, focusing on the behavior itself rather than shaming or punishing the child?  

■ Reasonable: Is the consequence fair and proportionate to the child’s age and action? 

3. Encourage healthy autonomy and problem-solving. 

By providing age-appropriate choices for your child to make, you can help them develop self-confidence, resilience, critical thinking skills and healthy emotional regulation.  

Plus, encouraging them to make choices and respecting their decisions can strengthen your parent-child bond and solidify you as a safe, trusted space. 

Examples on how to encourage healthy autonomy:  

— Ask leading questions. Instead of solving a child’s problem or providing instructions, ask “What do you think we should do?”  

— Offer routine choices. To help them exercise their decision-making skills, offer age-appropriate choices for them to control their routines and express their individuality. For example, you might ask: “Do you want to read this book or that one before bed?” Or: “Let’s plan what we want to do this weekend. Would you like to go to the library or the movies?” 

— Model problem solving. Children learn by watching the loving adults in their life. You can help develop their problem-solving skills by thinking out loud, demonstrating how you evaluate and choose between options. 

4. Practice self-care. 

Parenting is a full-time job, but maintaining your own well-being is crucial in such an emotionally demanding role.  

Without a healthy self-care routine, you can slip into burnout or exhaustion, hindering your ability to fully and effectively take care of your child.  

But by practicing self-care, you can care for your own needs and model healthy coping strategies for your child.  

Children have “copycat cells” (also known as mirror neurons) that allow them to mimic the behaviors they observe in adults.   

Need help on creating a self-care routine? Read our comprehensive guide on self-care for caregivers.  

How you can help children grow with positive parenting  

The research is clear: Children thrive when they feel safe, seen and loved by the adults in their lives.   

When you support evidence-based approaches, like positive parenting—which SOS’ teaches in our family strengthening model—you’re helping another child thrive with the priceless gift of a loving parent.