The Compassionate Alternative to Discipline That Will Make You a Better Parent and Your Child a Better Person

What Is Smart Love?

9 Principles of Smart Love

A Child Is a Child
Learn to see the world through your child's eyes. Give up the illusion that your child is a miniature adult. You promote a child's growth better by embracing immaturity than by fighting it.

Foster Optimism
A child brings loads of hope and good cheer into this world. Teach your child to look life's obstacles squarely in the eye, but never, ever scare your child into becoming a pessimist.

Cultivate Inner Happiness
The greatest gift you can give your child is a sturdy fortress of inner happiness. Outward happiness always will be fleeting and uncertain without this inward foundation.

You Are Your Child's Ideal
If you come across as perpetually unhappy with your child, always acting tough and talking negatively, then your child will expect and want that unhappiness--and will do whatever it takes to get more of it. Do not teach your child to seek unhappiness.

Happy Children Behave
Parenting is not "behavior modification." Cultivating your child's inner happiness is what really leads to good behavior. Chances are your child will behave better if you spend less time trying to change his or her behavior.

Provide Quantity Time
On one side are all the reasons you do not have any to give. On the other are the great rewards you and your child will reap when you manage to do so. Make the effort. Quality Time does not make up for a lack of Quantity Time.

Attention Breeds Independence
Lots of loving attention will make your child independent. Let go of those worries that you will spoil your child, or make your child needy and dependent, by providing too much attention.

Capture the Middle Ground
No parent should feel stuck between being a pushover and a disciplinarian, between letting everything go and relying on the "quick fix" of discipline. You can find a happy medium.

Use Your Head and Trust Your Heart
Always remember: Your parenting instincts are good ones. If your head tells you that tough discipline is necessary, but your heart is not in it, take heed. The foremost expert on parenting is the one you see in the mirror.

A Surefire Recipe for Successful Parenting

All parents want to raise a happy, successful child, but there is little agreement about how best to reach this goal. Over the years, parents have tried dramatically different recipes. They have put their baby on a schedule, or they have fed on demand; they have let their baby cry herself to sleep, or they have picked her up as soon as she cried; they have stayed home with their child, or they have entrusted her to day care and gone to work; they have taught their baby letters and numbers, or they have left her mind a clean slate for her teachers to write on; they have given their child whatever she wants, or they have made her earn what she gets; they have made their child do chores, or they have asked little of her around the house; they have demanded good grades, or they have let their child find her own level in school.

These contrasting parenting strategies arise from quite different views of the nature of children and childhood and the roles of parents. Some parents view their child as naturally social and their job as allowing her the space to thrive, while others think that their child is by nature out of control. Some parents are convinced that their child is morally innocent, while others believe she is wily and manipulative. Some parents see their child as inclined to be dependent and needing help to leave the nest, while others are convinced their child needs constant attention and guidance.

Whether you are the parent of a newborn or an adolescent, the parent of one child or five you may worry about making the correct response to your child when she cries, makes demands, is frightened, wants constant cuddling and other attention, or won't do what is good for her (for example, she refuses to eat her vegetables, go to sleep, do her homework, or come in at curfew).

As parents and as mental health professionals we have lived and struggled with these same fundamental issues. The discoveries we made in the course of decades of researching the subject of the true nature of the child, as well as the question of the necessary ingredients for a child's healthy emotional development, have given us a new understanding of children and childhood, which, in turn, led us to create guidelines that all parents can use to parent lovingly but knowledgeably and effectively. Hence the term smart love.