What About Love? - How to Raise Balanced & Happy Children Through Parenting by Love
Written by: Hoda Elsobky, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
We all hear terms like: Parenting today, the modern way, the new way of raising children, punishment and reward, fast-moving digital world, consumer-directed world, and so on. Then there is this huge blueprint of social media, where photos of impeccable happy families proliferating everywhere. I am not a ‘parenting expert’, but I do know one thing, and that is “Parenting by Love!”.
I do know that the job we do today as fathers and mothers is the most important job! It will doubtlessly have an impact on the whole world more than anything else that we do. And it will influence the lives of generations to come.
I don’t know an absolute, errorless, or irrefutable way of raising and educating children. But I do know one thing, and that is to love them positively, effectively and unconditionally. To grow children into tolerant, sympathetic, and impactful adults who can lead meaningful, fulfilled and happy lives, is in fact, what we are all after. I know one thing on this concern, and that is “Raising children by Love and with Love”.
What is parenting by love?
Raising children by love means so many things; it means to show care, lend attention, and be present with all your senses as parents. To listen, make them feel understood, and taken care of, empathize with them, and see the world through their eyes. To try and understand their emotions and to pay attention to their feelings. To build bridges of connection and of trust along with them. This is what I call raising by love; And by adding flakes of kindness, comprehension and tenderness, you are building a solid foundation and backbone that will reflect later on their personalities as adults.
5-Major Points that are not considered “Parenting by Love”:
Parenting by Love is not to condition loving them to doing a specific task you ask from them. But instead, your love is an ongoing process, an unconditional act, and a life-long attitude even when you punish them-that does not mean you stopped loving them.
Parenting by love is not derived from the love of possessing or controlling and satisfying our own desires towards them. True love is never a possession. But instead, try to provide them with doses of kindness, compassion and love.
Parenting by love does not mean that there is no discipline, severity, decisiveness in some occasions and withdrawal of privileges at other times or occasions. But it means having the right balance as a parent and using the right tool at the right time.
Parenting by love does not mean to obey and fulfill all the children desires and wants, as this will generate greedy, arrogant, narcissistic and envious children. But it means as parents, we should be responsible and wise enough to respond sensibly to our kids' proper needs.
Parenting by love does not mean to do and carry responsibilities and duties on their behalf. This will generate passive, irresponsible, egoistic and self-centered children. But instead to delegate and share the responsibilities accordingly and relatively to their age.
3-Major things to understand about your Kids:
As explained by Dr. Justin Coulson, Parenting Expert- and father of six daughters- in his book “10 Things Every Parent Needs to Know”, positive solutions for everyday parenting challenges.
Understand they are doing the best they can: Our children are most of the time doing the best they can, according to their own knowledge. Whatever they do- even if it seems illogical to us-, makes perfect sense to them. Our role is to try to get involved with them, to explore and understand the logic behind. When you get engaged with them, often you will understand how easy things can be sorted out nicely and effortlessly.
Understand they are human: They are not perfect, so we are not perfect. They are a work in progress, and they do make mistakes, exactly like we do. We should have enough courage and tolerance to guide them effectively, so they grow feeling understood, thus reflecting in their sense of empathy and compassion with others as they grow and build their own Emotional Intelligence.
Understand the context: We need to be patient enough to understand the challenges and struggles they might be facing, and that provoked the misbehavior. Usually, there are lots of missing information behind any misconduct from their part, and by digging more, you will mostly find an unmet need that provoked this bad behavior.
Last but not least, the subject of parenting is a huge topic, and there is no one hundred percent right or wrong solution. We all had and still have our struggles, our ups and downs along the journey of raising our children. But the only one hundred percent proven, direct and genuine method of parenting is, I would say:” Parenting by love!”.
Love is all you need to reap up the fruit of your long-term investment.
To learn more, follow Hoda on Facebook, Instagram and visit her website and Youtube-Channel!
Hoda Elsobky, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Hoda was born in Cairo, Egypt. Graduated from the American University in Cairo in 1994 with a Bachelor of Arts degree, majored in Economics and minor in Business Administration. Later, She received her MBA in Marketing. Her greatest interest lies in the fields of philosophy and positive psychology, with a focus on self help and wellness. Above all, she is passionated about happiness as a way of living! She have worked in multinational IT companies in Egypt, like IBM and Oracle, in sales, marketing and business development capacity, from 1994 till 2005. At that point she flew with her husband to live in Vienna for three years and then to Dubai. There she discovered her passion for writing.
