There’s no such thing as a perfect parent. Positive parenting isn’t about getting everything right. It’s about building a strong, supportive relationship with your child so they can grow and thrive.
Rogers Behavioral Health’s Jennah Ludwig, LCSW, therapist at Rogers in West Allis, explains the benefits of positive parenting and shares practical ways to use it in everyday life.
What is positive parenting?
To help answer this, I refer to Lawrence Steinberg and his research on teen development and parenting. He says that positive parenting is essentially a collection of behaviors and strategies that foster healthy development. They often focus on improving the parent-child relationship through key practices, including:
- Mutual respect
- Attunement (being aware of and responsive to your child’s needs)
- Intentional involvement and connection
- Consistency
- Predictability
What does positive parenting look like in everyday life?
First and foremost, positive parenting includes taking care of your own emotional well-being. Research tells us that most children struggling with their mental health or managing their emotions have at least one parent who is also struggling. The opposite of that is also true. By taking care of yourself, you’re better able to positively parent your child.
Take care of yourself first
Think about the airplane analogy: Put on your own oxygen mask before helping others. When you’re overwhelmed, stressed or impacted by your own past experiences, it an affect how you respond to your child’s emotions and behaviors. Practicing self-compassion and approaching yourself with understanding, instead of judgment, can help you do the same with your child. That can boost your child’s learning, increase positive behavior change, and promote connection between you and your child.
Be a positive example
When thinking about everyday examples of positive parenting, remember to have your emotions in check before disciplining or helping your child manage their emotions. Try to be a positive example!
How is positive parenting different from permissive parenting?
It’s important to understand the different parenting styles: authoritative, authoritarian, permissive, and disengaged. Positive parenting would fall under the authoritative parenting style, which research says is often the most effective approach.
Positive parenting and permissive parenting differ in several ways:
| Permissive parenting | Positive parenting |
| Few rules, inconsistent boundaries | Clear rules, structures and expectations |
| Prioritizes being a friend over being a parent | Strong parent-child connection |
Positive parenting aims to support and nurture emotional well-being and promotes age-appropriate language to teach and guide while fostering a healthy connection.
What are some common misconceptions about positive parenting?
Two misconceptions I commonly hear are:
Misconception #1: Positive parenting means permissive parenting.
Many families tell me they think it means permissive parenting with no boundary setting, structure, rules, or discipline. Fortunately, this isn’t the case! Positive parenting seeks to balance all of that in a way that involves the child while being emotionally attuned to them. It allows the parent to teach “how and why” instead of just “what.”
Emotional attunement is the process of aligning with another person or being “in-step” with them. Remember the acronym COAL: Curiosity, Openness, Acceptance, and Love. According to Dr. Dan Siegel, MD, children need us to be curious, open, accepting (not complacent), and loving toward their thoughts and experiences to bond and progress.
Misconception #2: Positive parenting only focuses on the positives
Another misconception is that positive parenting only focuses on the positives. That’s a fair assumption given the name. Positive parenting promotes empathy in everyday interactions, redirections, and conversations, especially on difficult topics. This includes helping children navigate challenges and developmental milestones as they grow.
Positive parenting also emphasizes the importance of adults managing their emotions and well-being so they can model these skills to their children. That requires self-awareness, mindfulness, and intentional self-care.
What are the benefits of positive parenting for children and families?
Positive parenting:
- Encourages parents to have a more thorough understanding of their own mental health and needs to best support their children
- Recognizes the impact each family member has on one another
- Emphasizes being involved, connected, and attuned to your child, fostering close relationships.
- Helps prepare children to be successful and healthy adults and sets a foundation to allow continued connection into adulthood
- Teaches children to be self-aware
It’s also effective in helping kids develop coherence—a sense of connection with themselves and others. It’s one thing to recognize what’s happening inside your mind and another to recognize what’s happening around you. Coherence is the ability to make sense of both and help them work together well. This is hard work for both adults and kids, and that shouldn’t go unnoticed! It takes consistent practice, trial and error, and a lot of grace foe everyone involved. Dr. Siegel talks about the 4 S’s: Seen, safe, soothed, and secure to help with this process.
How can parents practice positive parenting during stressful times, such as busy school schedules, family changes, or conflicts?
The first step in using positive parenting is to be kind to yourself!
1. Make sure you’ve given yourself grace, time, and patience.
If you don’t, it’s very difficult to offer them to your children or to share that experience. If you find this difficult to do alone, it may be helpful to have a spouse, adult family member, or trusted friend emotionally sooth or regulate with first before helping your child manage their emotions. Fire almost never soothes fire; it often makes the blaze even worse.
2. Remember that schedules ARE busy, families DO change, and conflicts WILL arise.
Normalizing this is helpful. Don’t aim for perfection, but connection. You’re human, and so is your child. Even in conflict, they’re likely mirroring you or your past behaviors and methods of resolving conflicts.
3. Take a moment to see life from your child’s perspective.
Try to pause before asking kids to change or move forward. Children and adults regulate after feeling seen or understood. Be curious about what and how they think. Use that as a teaching moment to guide your child to see if there are kinder, more effective, or simpler ways to manage stress and big emotions.
4. If you’re noticing a repeated or worsening concern, there’s no shame in seeking professional support.
When you reach out, you’re modeling that it’s okay to ask for help.
What are positive parenting strategies families can start using today?
Positive parenting you can start using today are:
Self-care: Do what you can to support healthy eating, sleeping, social connection, and emotional well-being. This helps you manage your own emotions and models healthy living for your child.
Use realistic expectations and consequences. Make sure rules and consequences are both age-appropriate and realistic.
Example: When your child hits a sibling
Let’s look at positive parenting in the example of a child who’s hitting their siblings. In my opinion, giving a spanking is an example of an unrealistic consequence. If you’re attempting to teach your child not to hit, why would you strike them as a lesson on how not to? To use positive parenting in this scenario, I recommend:
- Check your own emotions and sensations first. Consider verbalizing this process out loud in front of your child by saying something like, “I’m feeling frustrated. I’m going to take three deep breaths.”
- Validate your child’s emotions of anger, impulsivity, resentment, or even betrayal, by saying something like, “I can see that you’re angry right now. Your cheeks are red, your fists are balled up, and you’re breathing quickly.”
- Explain why hitting isn’t safe. You could say, “Hitting hurts other people and is unkind. Hitting is touching someone without permission and that’s not okay.”
- Explain the expectation, name a realistic consequence, and provide alternative behaviors. You could say, “Hitting isn’t allowed. You won’t be able to keep playing by yourself if you continue to hit your brother. Hitting tells me that you can’t be safe on your own and need an adult to help you. If you would like to keep playing by yourself, you need to keep your hands ready for playing and not for hurting.”
- If the child continues to hit, follow through with the consequences. This will teach them that they can depend on you to be consistent and maintain safety.
What resources do you recommend?
There are some really great resources on this topic with many different viewpoints and things to consider. Check out Steinberg’s book, 10 Basic Principles of Good Parenting or Dr. Siegels’ books, Parenting from the Inside Out or The Power of Showing Up.
Rogers offers mental health treatment
If you or someone you love is struggling, help is available. Taking the first step toward support can lead to lasting change.
Call 833-308-5887 for a free confidential screening.
Positive parenting is an approach that focuses on building a strong parent-child relationship through connection, empathy, consistency, mutual respect, and clear expectations.
Positive parenting can help strengthen the parent-child relationship, support children’s emotional well-being, teach children healthy ways to manage emotions, and help families navigate challenges together.
Positive parenting can include setting clear boundaries, using age-appropriate expectations, listening to your child, acknowledging their feelings, modeling healthy emotional responses, and maintaining connection during difficult moments.
No. Positive parenting is different from permissive parenting because it includes clear rules, boundaries, structure, and expectations while maintaining a strong and supportive parent-child connection.
Positive parenting uses discipline as an opportunity to teach and guide rather than simply punish. Parents can set clear expectations, explain why a behavior isn’t appropriate, use realistic consequences, and help children learn alternative behaviors.
Everyday positive parenting strategies include practicing self-care, setting realistic expectations, maintaining consistent boundaries, listening to your child, showing empathy, and modeling healthy ways to handle emotions.
