Parenting is both an art and a science, and it can be challenging to discern how to guide our children in their earliest and most formative years. The days can feel long when our littlest ones are emotionally overwhelmed, tired, irritable, confused, and frustrated. Parents often feel the same strong emotions their kids are feeling, which makes it that much more difficult to “be the adult.”
One helpful framework for guiding your precious child through the early years of his or her development is the “Four C’s of Positive Parenting”: Care, Consistency, Choices, and Consequences. These principles provide a roadmap for nurturing confident, emotionally healthy children.
Here at Wishing Well Preschool, we seek to partner with you in the nurturing and positive development of your children. We invite you to sign up for a virtual tour or contact us to learn more today!
1. Care
Care means showing unconditional love, support, and empathy toward your child. One way we do this is by taking the time to listen to our children. While their strong emotional outbursts can be frustrating, and sometimes inconvenient, it will go a long way if we pause to show them empathy. This may sound like, “I can see you are very angry, that must have really hurt your feelings,” and then offering a hug.
Sometimes, we may need to offer a loving boundary instead. For example, if a child does harm or we need to redirect an inappropriate behavior, we might say, “I can see you are really frustrated, but you cannot hit your sister. I think we need to take a couple of minutes to cool off,” and then separate the child for a few moments so they can calm their big emotions before coming back to apologize.
You can count on our staff to be warm and affectionate with your little ones, while also providing structure throughout their day. This combination helps your children feel safe to explore and learn new things, while forming new friendships.
2. Consistency
Consistency offers predictability and structure—key ingredients for a child’s sense of safety. This does not mean tha
t you do the exact same thing at the exact same time everyday, but that there are certain rhythms to your day with which your child becomes familiar. Perhaps you have a morning routine that includes eating breakfast, brushing teeth and taking the dog for a walk together. A bedtime routine might include a bath and a story. Predictable routines are comforting for kids and help build confidence and trust.
Consistent rules and expectations are also important for building a sense of safety, trust and confidence in young children. It is sometimes difficult to be consistent in this way, but it is incredibly difficult for children to keep up with rules that are always changing. If they know what is expected of them, they can become successful in meeting those expectations over time.
At Wishing Well, we provide predictable schedules, familiar caregivers, and stable routines to help support children’ s transitions and learning.
3. Choices
Empowering children with age-appropriate choices helps them build autonomy and confidence. This does not mean our children have a choice in every matter. They are not mature enough to make most decisions. But, offering limited options (“Would you like the red shirt or the blue one?”) gives children a sense of agency while still staying within a caring, structured boundary.
Some children will undoubtedly push the boundary and want a choice in something not offered. Sometimes a third choice is not an option, but sometimes this becomes an opportunity for them to learn that if they ask nicely, we can make an exception. There are a great many times in parenting little ones that we have to say, “no.” It is probably why our two-year-olds say it as often as they do. A good rule of thumb in positive parenting is “if at all possible, say yes.” It’s easy to get into a negative rut, so if saying yes is safe, helpful or wise, err on the side of a positive choice!
Your child will have many choices at Wishing Well– in activities, snacks, or play partners,for example- helping to cultivate decision-making skills that benefit their emotional development—all within the safety of guided supervision.
4. Consequences
Consequences help children understand the results of their actions, and so they are incredibly important in providing safety, teaching responsibility, and fostering empathy. Our kids need to know if they do something wreckless, like touching the stove, they can get burned. They need to learn that if they make a mess, they need to help clean it up. They need to know that their words have the power to hurt people.
Consequences should be fair, logical, and age-appropriate—designed to teach rather than punish. If they are not, we risk harming our children with shame instead of teaching them that we all make mistakes, but we can learn from them and make amends.
At Wishing Well, we seek to teach children about consequences through predictability and positivity so they learn responsibility in a loving and supportive environment.
Wrap-Up: The Four C’s Make a Difference
By weaving together Care, Consistency, Choices, and Consequences, we can work together to create a nurturing yet structured environment where your children feel loved, understood, empowered, and guided both at home and at school! Contact us for a tour today.