.png)
Bringing Up Great Kids
This course explores a number of important topics around Parenting. Above all, it gives you a chance to think about children, parenting and how you can provide children with the experiences you want for them as they grow up.
It will help you answer some of these questions.
• What does it mean to be a child?
• What do we expect of children? Is this realistic?
• What experiences do we want childhood to be about?
• How do we want children to experience adults in their lives?
• How do I want children to experience me?
• What messages are we giving children about their priority in our lives and in our community?
As adults, we shape our community through the values and attitudes we promote and tolerate.
Children’s experiences influence their relationships, their beliefs and their behaviour. The experiences we give our children will stay with them forever.
Understanding Brain Development
Knowing more about your child’s developing brain is a great way to understand how children think, feel and behave. Young children have limited ability to think and be reasoned with – they can’t link their feelings, thoughts and behaviour in their early years. The sections of the brain responsible for these areas are not ‘switched on’ in early childhood.
Understanding how children’s brains develop gives us insight into the questions parents often ask….WHY?
Why do they do that?
Why don’t they listen?
Why do I have to say the same thing over and over?
Understanding Your Child's Emotional Development
When we talk about emotional development, we are referring to children’s growing ability to
identify and understand their own feelings
accurately read and understand the feelings of others
manage the way they feel
shape the way they behave
develop empathy for others, and
build and keep good relationships with friends, family and others.
Children’s ability to manage or shape the way they feel is a critical part of their development & often the source of parental concern.
Children don’t start life with the ability to control how they are feeling. They are easily overwhelmed by strong feelings need parents to help them to calm down and learn to self regulate.
Young children frequently get frustrated because there is a large gap between the things they want to do and what they are actually able to do.
By the time they start school, with healthy role modelling and guidance children are more aware of their own feelings and the feelings of others. They are better able to link their thoughts & feelings and use words to describe their feelings. As such, they become better able to change and shape the way they feel.
Children’s ability to change and adapt their feelings means they are more likely to tolerate their own frustration better, put off getting things they really want and are able to calm themselves down.
Being the Parenting you set out to be
Our experiences of growing up in our family of origin are an important basis for the values and beliefs we hold about children, parenting and families. As parents, we often repeat what we know best. Most often what we know best is drawn from our own experiences.
We all start out as parents with many ideas about parenting. We have hopes and dreams for our children and ourselves as parents. However, sometimes things get in the way of us being the parent we want to be.
Sometimes we can feel stuck in patterns of responding to our children that we don’t like, without really
understanding why it happens.
All parents have times when they find themselves doing or saying things to their children that are against
their better judgement. “I don’t want to yell at my children, they just push my buttons and I get so mad I can’t seem to stop myself.” At these times parents often feel they are letting themselves, their partner and their children down.
Emotions can take over and get the best of parents at times. Understanding where these feelings are coming from allows us to change
how we respond to our children.