Active Parenting by Michael Hopkins

 As you may have noticed from the article title this post will be about parenting. I would like to preface this by saying that I am not a parent and my intention is not to tell anyone how to parent. I am simply sharing a way of parenting I found through studying a book by Michael Hopkins. I haven't proven this to be effective in my own life due to the lack of being married and having children. I'm sure there is a place to find the statistical effectiveness of this practice and if you are interested I invite you to look for it.

The practice I wish to relay that Michael Hopkins addressed are the importance of needs in children. He listed 6 needs which are; contact, belonging, power, protection, breaks, and challenge. I'll break down what each of these means.

Contact: Any sort of contact to let the child know that you know they are there. One example of this is physical contact. This contact should be given freely to children. They shouldn't have to earn contact from a parent.

Belonging: Children need to feel like they are contributing to the family. This can be in any way from setting the table to vacuuming. They need to feel like they are helping the family in some way.

Power: This can be misunderstood easily. A better way of wording this is a need for control in their life. They need to be able to make choices appropriate for their age. This can also give them to opportunity to learn from the consequences that will come. As long as they are not dangerous for the child. Which takes it back to age appropriate decisions.

Breaks: Children need time to recover. This can be associated with a college student working on homework. The college student needs to take periodic breaks in order to keep their focus on their schoolwork and not becoming burnt out. The same applies to children. It's okay for them to take an occasional break when they are learning and growing. It will help them be able to focus again on what they are learning without becoming tired or bored of whatever they are learning.

Challenge: Children need a challenge in order to grow. If they aren't challenged by anything then they won't grow like they need to. A child will never learn to walk if they don't challenge themselves and stand up. It's important to allow children to challenge themselves in healthy ways to grow.

I hope you enjoyed reading this post. Now that it's December I can say Merry Christmas. So Merry Christmas! Enjoy this time of year. It's one of my favorites to see how happy and joyful people are this time of year. Merry Christmas!