Positive parenting skills – not something you’re just born with! They need to be learned and developed over time. Unfortunately, as far as kids are concerned, the landscape is constantly changing. Just when you think you’ve got it figured out, they morph into some other hideous creature that you don’t recognize and you’ve got to learn how to subdue! (Just kidding about the hideous creature – who would ever say that about their kid?)

You can get positive parenting skills in many places: Books, friends, classes, online courses, and many more places. In fact, just surfing the web can give you lots of ideas. Some of our favorite parenting books are Parenting Teens with Love and Logic and For Parents Only. These 2 books will give you lots of helpful advice when it comes to dealing with teens. For Parents Only is pretty cool because it gives you information from a teenager’s point of view – the author interviews several hundreds of teenagers to get their opinions, good stuff.

A good website with lots of great parenting articles is minti.com. This one is full of articles written by experts – parents themselves! Anyone can contribute. Here’s an article called Rules, Boundaries, and Older Children from another great website with tons of good parenting advice.

The best product we’ve found so far that gives us positive parenting skills that are effective, long lasting and cover a huge range of parenting issues is The Total Transformation by James Lehman, MSW. The strategies he uses are simple to learn. They also deal with the heart behind the behavior which is where the long lasting piece comes in.

One of the tips that seems universal and had an immediate effect in our family was the Disconnect technique. The premise of this is to stop communication with your child if they become abusive or disrespectful.  Make it a power vacuum, and you’ll be amazed how fast things change. Communication should not resume until the child takes responsibility for their behavior. It is like a pressure release valve for the parent too. Screaming matches be gone!

This tool is just one of many that he outlines in this CD and DVD set. If you have a household that could use some peace and sanity, you need to read more here. Feel free to browse around this website and take away anything you need. We parents need to stick together!

For many more tips and techniques on parenting tools, check out The Total Transformation. It’s one of the best child behavior programs I’ve ever seen – it worked for our family, I’m sure it can work for yours!