Parenting a child is one of life’s most powerful experiences. It can bring tremendous joy, love, pride, excitement and happiness to our lives. It can bring out the very best in us. But, at the same time, it can challenge our patience and our ability to handle frustration. Sometimes it can bring out the anger and violence in us. All parents, no matter where they live or what their circumstances may be, need support and information. This document provides fundamental information to help parents build strong relationships with their children, and avoid reacting to them with anger and violence. It sets out the basic building blocks of positive parent-child relationships and
demonstrates how these building blocks can be used to resolve conflict constructively. This document does not provide a prescription or recipe for how parents should handle specific situations. Rather, it helps parents reflect on their own actions, and to better understand their children’s actions. It also shows parents how they can actively use this knowledge to guide their children as they grow, while building strong relationships to last a lifetime. This guide takes readers through a series of steps toward understanding how parents can effectively guide their children and build strong, healthy relationships with them. Each step builds on the ones before it, so it will be most helpful to read the entire guide in sequence. This approach is based on principles of children’s rights, research on physical and humiliating punishment, and four principles of effecting parenting - focusing on long-term goals, providing warmth and structure, understanding how children think and feel, and problem-solving. The following chapters explain each of these components of the approach.