When you have children, it is sort of like having your heart running around outside your body! The experience can leave you feeling tremendous joy and exhilaration or very exhausted and painfully vulnerable. While children come into this world with their own God-given DNA structure, much of their development depends on your giving them your time, loving attention and application of skillful parenting.
It would be wonderful if each child came with their own unique parenting handbook, unfortunately, that is not the case. No matter how much we understand of general child development principles, most of us are going to have to invest in some real "on the job training" with each child the Lord blesses us with.
The most effective parental training programs will focus on the following areas:
- Understanding the unique needs of children across each Developmental Stage.
- Recognizing the Core Parenting Principles or Goals to be established for success at each stage.
- Understanding how to skillfully implement the Key Parenting Strategies needed to help children attain maturation at each level of development.
The articles that follow will help you with your "on the job training program". Please recognize there has been a great deal of writing on parenting for the last several decades. Some of it has been very good and some of it not so good. If you are going to do some extra reading we suggest you consider some of the trusted Christian authors we cite under the Children & Parenting tab in our Resource Review section. We strive to only endorse resources that are well founded on both clinical research and solid Biblical teachings. Click the link below if you want to go directly to this location:
Warm Regards,
Michael J. Miller, MEd, LPC, LCSW
http://www.christianfamilyguidancecenter.com/index.html
