What is it to be a good parent?

Educating children is not always easy!

In addition there are no recipes to be sure to do everything right!

However, there are certain ingredients that are essential for the soup to be good.

Here are a few….

While our children in their early years have our full attention and we mean everything to them, how can we imagine that one day, poof, they are no longer at home and stand on their own feet?

Once I was at the rink with my kids, a grandfather waiting at the side said to me, “You signed on for 20 years! “. It seemed like an eternity to me…

Yes, the love of a parent is different from love for his spouse… we love, we show him the way so that he knows how to leave us!

As Khalil Gibran says so well, in his famous poem: “Your children are not your children, they are the sons and daughters of Life for Life”

So, if we made a job description of the parent, one of the points would be to stop being essential, to teach them to think and do for themselves and then to let them walk so that they become who they really are. Here is the number 1 ingredient!

What if before this departure we did a backward tracking?

The house is not intended to be Club Med, but laughter, good humor and play contribute to reducing stress, the return of positive energy and the well-being of all.

Why play with our children?

These moments of relaxation and “letting go” are the ingredients of the notion of attachment and the building of strong and long-term bonds with our children.

We don’t have to play “every day” but from time to time put yourself on the floor at their level, make your double bed a ring of somersaults, bake a chocolate cake, dress up together! Ten minutes of games to reconnect with your child after a day of absence has a good chance of avoiding a conflict for you within the hour that follows! A sweet ingredient to put in large quantities!

Yes, we know how to relax but we also know how to say “no” in happy families!

And we can say no, in a respectful way, with the right tone of voice, with the right words and at the right time. It can be learned!

Applying rules consistently increases the parent’s credibility. These rules can also, as soon as the child is old enough, be discussed with him to be sure that they are applied!

There are situations where the child will have no choice because the imposed limit protects him from danger, but paradoxically the rules can also reassure and secure him.

If the “no” decision is fair and legitimate, and you’ve said it in a respectful tone, without a shadow of a doubt, your child will follow you. A slightly bitter but necessary ingredient …

And then by showing them that life is knowing how to think and do for themselves, knowing how to laugh and have fun but knowing how to respect the rules, you have been a model for them… if you have applied these principles for yourself!

I think you’ve already noticed… your child will be more willing to do what you do than what you say to do!

If you are a happy parent he has a good chance that he will be a happy child, if you are generous he will someday be so (even if today he slaps his sandbox pal on the head who wants his shovel!), if you criticize, he learns how to criticize, if you know how to recognize the beautiful things that life brings to you, he will learn to appreciate life!

And finally, “unconditional” love is the most beautiful ingredient you can put in this beautiful soup!

“Unconditional” love is to love your child with his qualities and his faults, without conditions… This love is at the heart of everything!