The Incredible Power of Positive Parenting

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It's no secret that parents can help to shape and foster their children's intelligence. Many studies have been conducted to show that a child can become smarter with the right environment and learning tools at his disposal.

Because of this, we focus on buying educational toys, board games, and books for our two boys. I want them to learn while they are having fun. In my opinion, making something educational also entertaining is the BEST way to engage a small child!!

Lately, I have also been reading into the positive parenting style and it's ability to boost brain development even more than toys or educational surroundings. With positive parenting, your child will thrive and his intelligence will skyrocket, all because you choose to focus on the good!

Positive Parenting and the Hippocampus

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We all know that being positive can help to relieve stress you may battle with daily. When you choose to smile rather than hold onto anger or worry, life is just easier!

When it comes to parenting, remaining positive boosts your child's brain by strengthening the hippocampus. The hippocampus is located on both sides of your brain, as part of the temporal lobe. It is responsible for memory, emotional response, and learning.

The size of a child's hippocampus is directly related to the kind of home life and environment he is raised in. It has been found that children who are raised in a loving, nurturing environment will have a larger hippocampus than children who were not raised this way.

The larger the hippocampus, the more intelligent and mindful a child can be. Since the hippocampus deals with memory retention, a child with a larger hippocampus can learn more and retain information better than one with a smaller hippocampus. Those that come from positive, caring home lives also tend to be more compassionate and caring than other children.

Positive Parenting Benefits Your Child's Emotional State

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Not only does positive parenting help grow a child's intelligence, it also foster his emotional state. When our children see us stressed out and worried over a situation, they can pick up on the emotion and feel it themselves. They usually do not know how to deal with these "grown up" emotions, so they may become anxious or act out in an attempt to handle their feelings.

In the brain, dealing with these negative emotions can hinder a child's ability to learn. For example, if a child is typically left to fend for himself, he will likely grow to have negative views on the world. Rather than focusing on learning and school, he may struggle with anxiety and feel that he can't trust anyone but himself.

Children from negative home lives tend to score lower on tests and do not have the attention spans of their classmates. It may take longer for these kids to grasp new concepts and skills. They may misbehave more than they sit quietly in class, furthering their inability to learn.

What about Discipline in Positive Parenting??

Some parents think that positive parenting must mean there is no disciplining the child. However, this is not the truth. Since the word "discipline" actually means "to teach" to "to train," positive parenting focuses more on guiding children on the right path to learning responsibility rather than delivering negative punishments.

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Positive parenting requires an abundance of patience and compassion when your children misbehave and don't understand the effects of their behavior. In the long term, however, this parenting style helps your children understand how to behave. It sets expectations of your children and makes them want to act right.

Long Term Benefits of Positive Parenting

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Studies have shown that positive parenting has lasting effects that are simply amazing! Results found that children who were raised in the positive parenting style typically raised their own children in a nurturing, loving home environment.

The study also found that homes with a lot of negative parenting techniques usually carried over to the children's own parenting style. It's a vicious cycle.

And before they are old enough to parent their own children, those that grow up in a negative environment are more likely to act out and engage in illegal activities as a teen or young adult. They are more at risk than those from positive parenting homes to enter the juvenile system.

Wrap Up

Positive parenting is all about fostering a welcoming, loving environment for your children. With this kind of home life, the child is allowed to be who he or she is within the safety of parameters set by the parent.

Kids benefit from positive parenting by doing better in school, getting along better with their peers and having happier moods. Studies showed that children who were raised with positive parenting experience far less diagnoses of depression than children who were raised in homes where negative parenting styles are used.

Sources for this post:

https://positivepsychologyprogram.com/positive-parenting/
https://www.livescience.com/18196-maternal-support-child-brain.html
http://today.oregonstate.edu/archives/2009/sep/positive-parenting-can-have-lasting-impact-generations

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