10 Family Discipline Practices of Kids Who Turned Out Well

Excerpted from
The Successful Child: What Parents Can Do to Help Kids Turn Out Well
By Martha Sears, R. N., William Sears, M. D., Elizabeth Pantley

Successful kids come from families of all races and religions, from families in all kinds of neighborhoods, and from families up and down the economic scale. They may have two parents at home, or just one parent actively involved in their upbringing. Some of these families live in rambling homes with a bedroom and computer for each child, shelves full of educational toys and books, and a family calendar filled to the brim with after-school activities and travel. Other families raising successful kids make do with the pots and pans from a tiny kitchen cabinet, and the children share a small bedroom. This family makes frequent trips to the local library and makes a learning experience out of a trip to the Laundromat. Wealth is clearly not a requirement for raising good kids. Many young children are not able to tell you from which economic level their family hails, knowing only that their lives are happy and fulfilled.

The home environments of families raising successful kids are also varied. Some of the families interviewed for this book have the neatest, cleanest home in the neighborhood; in others, the family pet can easily get lost in all the clutter. Some families have an orderly life with regular mealtimes, bedtimes, and chores, but others seem to thrive on the chaos of an ever changing array of activities. The families have different weekend rituals. Some spend every Sunday at church, while others spend it at the baseball field, on daylong bicycle journeys, or quietly at home.

No matter what the home environment, the families of kids who turn out well are remarkably alike when it comes to the way parents and children interact with and relate to one another. In this chapter we discuss ten parenting practices used by the families of children who turned out well. In the chapters that follow, we'll talk about the qualities that these practices nurture in children.

We have gleaned this list of top ten traits from interviews with parents of successful children. We have also drawn upon letters written to us by parents specifically for this book, letters in which parents describe their relationship with their children. We have further relied on the experience gained over thirty years of pediatric practice and more than thirty years of raising our own eight children.

Gin you put all these practices into action all the time? Probably not. Lifestyle, economics, medical and social problems, and individual personality differences also play a role in the choices you make about raising your children. Yet this parenting style is more about how you do what you do than specific do's and don'ts. Most parents can adapt most of these practices to their families' circumstances. We hope that you learn from these families and employ as many of these practices as possible.

1. Practice Attachment Parenting

Top on our list of factors that influence how children turn out is the parents' overall style of childcare. Notice that we say overall. It's the predominance of good, responsive parenting over distant, unconnected parenting that makes the difference. All parents make mistakes, and certainly this book was not written by perfect parents. The overall message you send your kids is what matters most.

Parents who are crying hard to turn out good kids are emotionally invested in their children. They can be hard on themselves when they feel that they have fallen short of their parenting ideals. A dad once called me, feeling guilty about having lost his temper and slapping his child. I knew that he was basically a loving and nurturing father, but on that one occasion he just snapped. I reassured him that his overall gentle and nurturing ways with his children were far more important than this one incident. His child might certainly remember the slap for a long time - because it was so different from the way his father usually treated him. I suggested that he talk with his child about what had happened, acknowledge that he was wrong, and apologize. He could turn the bad moment into a teachable moment - one in which both Dad and his youngster could learn something about anger and how to handle it.

Attachment parenting (AP) is an approach to raising children rather than a set of rules. It's a way of caring for your baby that gets the two of you connected. As children grow, attachment parenting focuses on guiding children in a way that respects their needs, feelings, and level of development.

The most concrete, easily described parts of attachment parenting apply to babies, because raising successful kids begins with the connection between parent and child - and that connection is most easily made during infancy. Babies are biologically programmed to learn to love caregivers, and caregivers are at their best when they respond to babies' needs. Becoming attached to your child is certainly an ongoing process, and you can work on becoming more attached at every stage of development. But we have found that parents who get off to the right start with their babies have an easier time making parenting decisions as the years go by.