Nurturing

 I am excited to share some parenting practices with you on my blog. I will be using The National Extension Parent Education Model (NEPEM) which was designed by a team of parenting educators assembled by the U.S. Cooperative ExtensionService. The purpose of the model is to unite the parenting education initiative and offer a model that parent educators can utilize to structure their programs (Jrank Articles, n.d.).

With NEPEM as the foundation for my next three posts, I will focus on guiding and nurturing our children and taking care of ourselves in the process.

Nurturing

To nurture a child refers to expressing affection, supplying basic childcare, communication, and providing a cultural belief system (Jrank Articles, n.d.). 

It's no surprise that parenting requires nurturing and it is even a natural God-given trait to nurture, so nurturing should be simple, right? Because of the stresses of life nurturing and taking time to meet the needs of our children become more difficult. Nurture takes time and because of the busy world we live in giving time takes intention. 

One intentional way we can nurture our children is called Emotional Coaching. Throughout this post, I will be looking at Dr. John Gottman & Dr. Julie Gottman's Discuss and ideas on the "Tools for Parenting with Emotion Coaching". The basic principle that Gottman (2012) talks about in his Youtube video is how the way parents listen and speak to their children helps with their emotional development. He describes three tools and steps to help build emotional health in children.

1. Listen: Really try to listen and understand the child in a way that results in you interpreting their feelings and helping them put them into words.

2. Validate: Let your child know that those feelings are okay and they have the right to feel them.

3. Dignity: Always treat the child with dignity.

These tools and steps are especially important during the preschool stages. It is very helpful for a child to have age-appropriate emotional development when entering public school with peers and teachers. Gottman (2012) reveals that these practices are also beneficial to the teacher-child relationship and can build trust between the student and instructor. 

In another Youtube video on the Gottman Institute Youtube channel Gottman (2009), talks about the emotional influence of the child's parent on the child When parents do not have a good emotional connection at a very young age the child internalizes the connection and is emotionally affected. The child may become withdrawn emotionally which carries over into their cognitive and intellectual development. 

The biggest contributing factor to withdrawing emotionally is the idea that others will not respond in the time frame or way the child needs them to. Children also feel less safe and secure about exploring the world around them which is paramount for good emotional health.

In this Youtube video Gottman (2009) gives parents 5 steps to a positive emotional connection.

1. Noticing emotions and taking the opportunity to connect with the child. Especially at a young age children will freely show emotion, how you respond to that emotion sets the stage for future emotional health.

2. Validating emotions and being compassionate and understanding. A child looks to their parent for understanding and attention, when you don't take those moments to teach and listen the child will stop seeking you out.

3. Helping child to label their emotions and put words to how they are feeling.  At an early age, children are learning all sorts of things like walking, feeding themselves, talking, etc. It makes sense that understanding feelings would be a part of the child's development.

4. Helping children to understand what they are feeling. Feelings are another new concept that children are learning. We can't expect them to be born knowing what feelings are and appropriate ways to express them, it is a learned behavior.

5. Setting limits, includes addressing misbehaviors that may have occurred. An important aspect of good authoritative parenting is setting boundaries and limits. Emotional coaching is an authoritative style of parenting that includes limits, boundaries, and addressing behavior.

A very basic principle of emotional coaching is that children learn how to connect to and with others from their connection to their parents. Parents are the first people that children connect with and that connection sets the stage for all future connections. An early patient-loving connection with an infant is the beginning of what will be years of emotionally coaching your child (Gottmon, 2009)

References

Parenting Education - the national model of parenting education. The National Model Of Parenting Education - Development, Child, and Effective - JRank Articles. (n.d.). https://family.jrank.org/pages/1247/Parenting-Education-National-Model-Parenting-Education.html

YouTube. (2009, November 13). Emotional health | dr. John Gottman | relationship advice. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmsDTT3xgjo&t=1s

YouTube. (2012, April 18). Dr. John Gottman & dr. Julie Gottman discuss tools for parenting with emotion coaching. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3uPPEtyX_I&t=7s