Parenting concerns

Overview
For many people, parenting is one of the most rewarding experiences of a lifetime. Being a parent is not without struggles and challenges, however. Many factors can set the stage for conflict, including a child's desire to assert himself or herself, develop a personal identity, and test parental limits. Unrealistic parental expectations, conflict with the child's other parent or authority figure, rejecting a parent's values, and a failure to define adequate parental boundaries or communicate clear and consistent limits can also lead to conflict. A child's response to peer or social pressure or stressors the child or parent is experiencing may also play a role.
Sometimes parents have emotional reactions to issues with their children, react for secondary gain (such as wanting excessive control), or simply overreact, which can lead to unwitting reinforcement of an undesired behavior. Parental boundaries may also be an issue, such as interacting with your child as a peer rather than a parent.

A variety of parenting issues are common at certain stages of a child's development. For example, during infancy, you may be concerned with ensuring your baby's physical safety, getting your baby to sleep through the night, and learning how to deal with crying spells. When your child is a toddler, you'll likely have power struggles that may result in temper tantrums or breath-holding spells. As your toddler learns to assert himself or herself, you may hear "no" a lot. Fears and nightmares are also common. (Toddlers may have active or developing imaginations, but they're generally not yet able to distinguish fantasy from reality.)

When your child is a preschooler, you may find that he or she needs structure combined with an opportunity to "burn off" energy. Social development and learning at this stage often happens through play and stories. Concerns for school-age children may include making friends, developing ethics and a sense of justice, and meeting academic challenges. Adolescents need help reaching psychological, economic and legal independence. At this stage, your child may challenge your parental values. You may be concerned about development of sexual identity and sexuality, driving safety, and substance use or abuse.


Characteristics
Parenting is a tough job. Physically, you may experience stress-related physical complaints, such as fatigue or changes in sleep or eating patterns. Psychologically, you may worry, have a low frustration tolerance, and feel guilty, inadequate, irritable or overwhelmed. Socially, you may be reluctant or ashamed to ask for help. You may blame others inappropriately, experience disturbances in your relationship with your significant other, and insult or label your child. You may have increased absenteeism from work or engage in physically abusive behaviors.
Sometimes, parenting can be more than you're able to handle at the time. Symptoms such as sleep disturbances, decreased energy, changes in appetite, anxiety, depression, inability to concentrate and hopelessness may warrant further evaluation by a health care professional.

As with all physical symptoms, consult a medical health care provider to rule out a medical condition. If these or any other symptoms cause you distress that doesn't seem to improve, seek additional help and support from a mental health care professional.


Coping strategies
When you have a parenting concern, consider your child's age and developmental stage. Make sure you have appropriate expectations for your child. Then, look at the specific behaviors and whether the problem is present in more than one setting, such as at home, at school or on the playground. If it occurs in only limited settings, look closely at the specifics that may be causing the behavior problems. Also consider your response to the problem thus far, including what's been effective and what hasn't. If you're married or in a signifcant relationship, look at the impact the problem has had on your relationship with your spouse or partner and whether you're united or divided on the issue. It's important to be supportive and keep your relationship strong in order to deliver a consistent message to your child.
At any age, remember the importance of consistent expectations, limits and consequences. If you set contingencies on your child's behavior, follow through appropriately. Use clear, appropriate consequences for undesired behavior and link consequence as closely as possible to a specific behavior. You may want to allow natural consequences to occur as long as they're appropriate. Generally, the goal of healthy discipline is to provide minimal attention to undesired behaviors and maximum attention to desired behaviors. Rewarding a child for good behavior is often effective. Ineffective interventions are a common pitfall, such as threatening to withdraw love or repeatedly taking away privileges or giving "time-outs" even though they produce no change in the child's behavior.

Also consider reinforcement as a way to strengthen the likelihood of a desired response. Through positive reinforcement, you add a positive stimulus to increase a desired behavior. For example, you may allow your child to have more phone privileges when his or her homework is complete. Through negative reinforcement, you remove an unpleasant stimulus to increase a desired behavior. For example, you may eliminate a child's grounding when his or her homework is complete.

For infants, discipline may mean saying "no" firmly when the baby reaches for an unsafe item, then redirecting him or her toward acceptable playthings. For toddlers, provide clear and consistent rules, and repeat them often. Offer opportunities for your toddler to make simple choices between two or three alternatives when appropriate.

Preschoolers also need clear and consistent rules that are repeated often. Allow sufficient time for them to prepare for transitions between activities. Preschoolers typically want to do things themselves and need opportunities and time for this. Preschoolers also need acknowledgement with explanation. Instead of general compliments or directives, more specific wording is often useful. For example, "Your picture is great. What a creative idea to use the red paint!" or "No, you may not have any more candy right now because too much candy can give you a tummy ache." An effective form of discipline for preschoolers are occasional "time-outs," in which you remove your child from the situation for a few minutes, give a message, and teach him or her about consequences. Time-out length should be about one minute per age.

School-age children need the opportunity to express themselves and make choices. Use discipline as an opportunity to explain consequences and help your child learn to solve problems. For adolescents, set rules and expectations that are mutually agreed upon whenever possible. You may want to allow your teenager to determine the consequence for misbehavior in certain situations. Discuss long-term consequences of behaviors, and allow your teen increased independence according to his or her maturity and judgment.

If you're struggling with a parenting issue, don't be afraid to seek outside resources for additional help. Parenting education classes or support groups may be available in your community. Family therapy or individual therapy may also help you sort through concerns and deal with deeper issues if needed.