Tips on Improving Your Home's Emotional Climate

There are all sorts of families. Some are noisy, others are quiet. But no matter what kind of families and parents there are, the home has to be a place of love, encouragement and acceptance for kids to feel emotionally safe and secure. It also has to be a source of boundaries and limits. Here are some suggestions to improve your home's emotional climate:

1. Watch What You Say. When parents consistently blame kids in exaggerated ways, children feel overly guilty and ashamed and withdraw emotionally. That's why criticism should be done constructively. Cite causes that are specific and temporary.

2. Provide Order and Stability. A predictable daily framework, clear and consistent rules, and an organized house make the whole family more relaxed and comfortable. This spells emotional equilibrium and gives reassuring and familiar support during times of conflicts.

3. Hold Family Meetings. Regular family meetings give each one a chance to air and resolve grievances, as well as share good news.

4. Encourage Loving Feelings. Researchers have found that parents who spend time playing, joking with and sharing their own thoughts and feelings with their kids have children who are more friendly, generous and loving.

5. Create Rituals. Setting aside special times of the day or week to come together as a family gives the children a sense of continuity. Which stays with them as they change and grow. It could be Mass and lunch as a family every Sunday, for example.

Spanking

Here one article I found at the library. Spanking can bring problems later. A domestic abuse expert from University of New Hampshire says that spanking children affects their sex lives as adults. A professor concludes that children who are spanked are more likely as adults to coerce partners to have sex, to have unprotected sex and to have masochistic sex. Other studies have shown the link between spanking and physical violence, while their research is the first to show a link between corporal punishment and sexual behavior.

They suggest pediatrician and child-rearing experts to warn against spanking, and also want lawmakers to take a stand by dedicating state money to teaching parents about the dangers of corporal punishment.

"The best-kept secret in child psychology is that children who were never spanked are among the best behaved" - Professor Murray Straus

(Here in the Philippines, sometimes when I ride a jeep back from work I would witness some mothers would spank their children if they would make a slight mistake or would trip themselves walking and I would tell myself if I would have a child, man I'm never gonna do that)