Relationship First Parenting: How to Improve Cooperation and Build a Lifetime Connection

By Melody Schmitke

Want more cooperation from your kids? Want to stop yelling and threatening to gain compliance? Want a better relationship? Want a create a lifelong relationship?

Gentle parenting is for you!!

Through three simple effective techniques you can improve connection, cooperation, and life with your children.

Connection, empathy, and finding solutions that meet everyone's needs are all you need for a lifelong relationship.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Melody Schmitke
• Release date: Mar 12, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005484828

Melody Schmitke

Melody is a parent of eighteen years and parenting coach for Gentle Parents Unite Facebook group for three years, giving thousands of people advice on becoming a gentle parent and how to care for yourself as a parent.

Book preview

Relationship-First Parenting

By Melody Schmitke

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Resources

About the Author

Introduction

My kid doesn’t listen to me: the all-too-common refrain of the modern parent. "I have to yell at them to get them to notice me."

Does that sound familiar? Are you struggling to be heard?

It seems as if our world is noisier than ever. We have more demands on our time, energy, and attention. Our kids are just as affected as we are. Even more so, as their brains are still under development.

Let’s be honest, our kids are not waiting for us to give them direction. I sometimes think parents forget kids have their own lives and wants and needs. I think that because I often forget. They don’t necessarily care about what we care about — bedtime, cleaning up, getting to school on time — whatever. It’s not that they are lazy, it is just that their brains are not completely developed. We will get into some reasons children resist various activities, including fun ones.

Another aspect of stress around getting kids to listen is expectations. Often, when we say we want our kids to listen we are expecting obedience, total compliance. Obedience should not be our goal, mostly because you cannot achieve compliance; all you will find down this road is frustration and escalating power struggles. And it’s worth knowing that obedient children don’t stand up for themselves, are more likely to succumb to peer pressure, and are more likely to be taken advantage of by people who do not have their best interests in mind. They may become teens and adults who struggle with decision-making. Abusive people and bullies seek victims who are compliant and don’t stand up for themselves. Obedient children are less likely to take responsibility and have resilience.

What I mean by getting kids to listen is working toward cooperation. Gentle parenting is a relationship-based goal. Our relationship with our kids is most important and foremost in our minds. Parenting with relationships first requires a mindset shift from us-versus-them to a collaboration of minds.

Parenting is thought of as comprising three types: punitive/authoritarian, authoritative, or permissive. Because gentle parenting doesn’t include the imposition of consequences or firm boundaries, people from the other two camps often lump gentle parenting in with permissive parenting. But gentle parenting offers a fourth dimension to parenting options: collaboration.

Choosing a collaborative model rather than the more common authoritative or punitive model is radical. Gentle parenting with a relationship-first approach requires a great deal of relaxing control and trusting our kids and ourselves. If we grew up with control, we may feel relaxing control over our children will lead to a life of chaos and negative outcomes.

Parents may ask, How will kids learn if we don’t give them consequences and have high expectations? Visions of juvenile delinquents dance in our heads, fueled by what authority figures claim will happen. Using fear, the authoritarian approach claims to control us for our own good, leading us to fear that parenting without boundaries will result in kids running wild; staying up all hours; binging on soda, pizza, and candy while swinging from the ceilings and simultaneously zoned out on video games.

While my kids spend a fair amount of time playing video games (often with me), we also take walks, go to the park, and cook together. Video games and junk food