Parenting isn’t easy. It takes tears, sweat, effort, learning, failing and constant retrying. But if done well, parenting is also one of the most rewarding experiences a human could ever go through in life. Thousands of experienced parents share excellent advice and parenting tips on Reddit. We scoured parenting-related subreddits and chose the best parenting advice and parenting tips for parents all over the world.
Always Explain Things to Your Children
One of the best parenting advices given on Reddit recently is this: treat your kids as people and explain things to them (of course, according to their age). They can listen to you, they pay attention to what you say and they process information. Don’t just ignore them as creatures unable to understand anything. If you put some effort and try to simply explain things in a rational (but understandable to them) way, you will see a ton of difference in their attitude and learning curve. Here is a great comment by a Redditor on this topic:
Yes! You are their primary source of information on social settings. Schools cannot teach your kid to be kind, caring, interested in books for eg if they are not seeing this at home. My daughter actually thanked me for always treating her with respect last weekend because I ask her opinion and listen.
Clearly Tell Them Expectations Before Expecting Anything From Them
We often snap at our children for not coming up to our “expectations” in simple day-to-day matters – examples, not behaving in front of the guests according to your expectations, not obeying the rules (unsaid) in gatherings, etc. But we have to understand that children aren’t born with the knowledge of expectations or rules in the society. It’s your job to communicate with them and explain the expectations to them. They cannot meet expectations unless they are aware of them. Here is an excellent quote from a Redditor who talked about this parenting advice:
Children can’t meet an expectation unless the expectation has been explained to them. Children aren’t born knowing what appropriate behavior is. They are sponges and can pick up a lot from seeing and hearing things but being told straight out what the expectation is for any given situation cuts down on power struggles and makes setting limits and boundaries easier.
Listen to Your Children to Develop a Bond With Them. Let Them Explore
If you want to develop a bond with your children, you will have to stop judging them when they share something with you. If you snap at everything and start giving lecture to everything they share, they will never share their real problems with you when they grow up even when they need it. It takes effort to develop trust with your kids. Here is a great comment from a Redditor summing up this advice:
Allow the kids to experiment and explore who they are as long as it’s not something that will cause harm to themselves or to others. If they want to try other fashion styles, like the goth style, allow them. If they want to try makeup, let them. If they want to try scrapbooking, let them. Or if they suddenly don’t like something anymore, such as anime, even if it was an interest that you shared with them and enjoy doing it with them, allow them the freedom to change and be, because that’ll allow them to be more authentic with you instead of a fake version of themselves with you just to make you happy.
