How can parents raise their children to be nonviolent? Here’s an important rule for you to embrace and integrate into your parenting practices—non-violent children are nurtured, not mandated.

The most important variable that influences whether or not your child will grow to be non-violent is the quality of the emotional connection that you develop with your child. Quite simply, it all hinges on instilling in your child a sense that they’re deeply loved and respected.

How best to instill a sense of love and respect?

1.) Create an emotionally safe relationship with your child. This means that your child must feel that it is safe for them to express their feelings to you without you censuring, limiting, or judging their feelings. By making it safe for your children to express their feelings to you, they will be both practiced and more comfortable expressing themselves when they’re feeling troubled by events and circumstances in their life.

2.) Fulfill your children’s emotional needs. Children need to believe that their emotional needs matter. All too often children get the message that their emotional needs are an inconvenience that parents don’t have the time to decipher or consider. But be mindful of how fragile your children are. Know that their need to be loved, accepted, affirmed, and validated by you never ever lessens. If your children don’t experience love and affirmation at home, they will simply seek love and acceptance elsewhere—oftentimes in ways that are dangerous to the well-being of themselves and others.

3.) Provide clear and strong limits that are consistently applied. Your children need for you to articulate what’s appropriate and what’s not appropriate behavior. And they need you to do so consistently. If they sense that you’re not paying attention to them, they will do everything they can think of to get your attention—again, using ways and means that can be dangerous to the well-being of themselves and others.

4.) Create a strong emotional connection between yourself and your child is teaching your child how to effectively resolve conflict with others. This means that your child must learn how to 1.) Take responsibility for their behavior, 2.) Acknowledge to others when their behavior negatively impacts others, 3.) Acknowledge the negative impact that their behavior has on others, 4.) Make amends to others when their behavior negatively affects others.

Although the creation of a strong emotional connection with your child is a complex, taxing undertaking, the four elements listed above form a solid foundation for such a bond. Without this your foundation, your child will be greatly disadavantaged when it comes to coping with adversity and taking responsibility for their actions. With such a foundation, you are insuring the fact that your children will be less vulnerable to acting out and resolving the adversity in their life in a violent way.

Bridge Builder’s Checklist
1.) Commit to making your relationship with your child emotionally and physically safe.
2.) Commit to speaking to your child’s feelings rather than their logic.
3.) Commit to empowering your child to claim and freely express their emotions.
4.) Commit to resolving interpersonal issues with your child rather than ignoring them.
5.) Commit to setting limits for your child.
6.) Commit to attaching consequences to your child’s misbehavior.
7.) Commit to making the fulfillment of your child’s emotional needs a priority.

For more information about how to develop a strong healthy emotional connection with your child, read Dr. Frisch’s, Psy.D. free online books, Entering the World of Your Child: How to Nurture Your Child’s Spirit and Building Better Bridges: Creating Great Relationships With the People Who Matter Most.

G.B.U.

Steve