Parenting

Well, I promised a parenting discussion, so here it is! This is mostly a forum for me to get great ideas and insights from you! However, it seems rude to ask for something without giving anything in return.
I have little to offer from my own meager experience, but I did have great parents, and I do have a favorite child development author/lecturer. =)
The latter, A. Lynn Scoresby, has proffered a few ideas that Wes and I try to live our parenting lives by. We like Scoresby's philosophies because they fit with our faith and our ideals. They focus on parenting qualities we already valued (values of nurturing, leadership, teaching) packaged into a few easy to remember phrases. We also like these few principles because they're so generally applicable, not really situation specific. Pretty much all of the sass that Lucy currently throws at me can be handled by following these simple principles.
And so I give you a few of Dr. Scoresby's principles of "clear and consistent" parental leadership.
Disclaimer: these ideas are not really "new" - most of you probably already do them! My parents did them. But hey, we have to start our discussion somewhere, right?

Prepare more than you punish.
This means looking at my child's misbehavior as a sign that I need to teach something! The teaching happens most effectively by practicing appropriate behavior. I love this principle. It helps me remember that I should expect Lucy to be bright and capable of learning (she is), but I shouldn't expect her to know how to behave appropriately in every new situation (she doesn't!). So...we, like all of you, spend oodles of time talking about what is and isn't appropriate. And we keep practicing.

Here's a Scoresby example of this principle that I love (from memory, my apologies if any details are altered): His teenage daughter was out with the car one Friday night and came home late. Past curfew. She approached her waiting father and silently handed back the car keys.
My natural inclination: enact an appropriate consequence, perhaps withhold the keys for a given amount of time.
But Scorseby gave the keys back. He told his daughter to make fun plans for the following Saturday night because she obviously needed to practice making it home by the given hour. Maybe they then talked through strategies: what could you say to say to your friends? How could you more easily keep track of the time? How much time should you allow for the drive? Whatever. Prepare more than you punish.

Communicate more than you control
Key phrase here: "Let's talk this over." Like I said, these things feel natural. This one, in particular, is native to me from my own childhood. We just talked about things.
Scoresby's theory: you either spend time communicating, or you spend time controlling/disciplining. Communicating is less draining and more effective.
Obviously, there will always be situations that call for parental control, but the goal in such situations is still communication. Explain why you are disciplining/controlling.

Encourage more than you criticize
The proposal here is that we have better results when we focus on what we WANT our children to do - all the while encouraging, supporting, prodding, "you can do it!" - rather than constantly criticizing and correcting the behaviors we DON"T want. What kills me is when I hear parents throw out phrases like, "Sally isn't good at sharing," or "Bobby is mean to his brother." Perhaps those things are true, but shouldn't they sound more like, "Sally is learning how to share," or "Bobby is learning how to treat his brother kindly."

Involve and individualize
This is one I'm still learning about. The idea is to create a PLACE for each child in your family. A place at the table, a place for their stuff, a place for their play. Involvement means family activities, family stories (especially ones that highlight the role and place of a child). Individualize means try to avoid motivating behavior through competative phrases (who can brush teeth the fastest?) because it creates a feeling of sameness that makes children reach out (and often act out) for individual recognition.
Interesting!

Love more than you isolate
Sometimes "time out" space is necessary for cooling off, but the basic point is, bring them back! Discipline by keeping your child with you rather than sending him/her away. Another pretty intuitive principle, yes?

Love enough to limit
This has been helpful with Lucy. The idea is to help children limit their inappropriate behavior/emotions by helping them to recognize when they're in control or out of control. I like that. It's really easy to verbally indicate, "You're out of control right now!" or "Thanks for getting in control of yourself. Now are you ready to..." (resume whatever activity triggered "out of control.") Again, the emphasis is on practicing emotional/behavioral control.
And as I am so far from being the perfect parent, I've also found it helpful to acknowledge, out loud and often through gritted teeth, when I am out of control.

So, there it is. Almost as fun as a text book, eh?

Again, I acknowledge that these principles are fairly intuitive and widely practiced by most of the good parents I've ever observed.

What is hard is the real life, day to day application, no? And so I ask: what helps you? What did/does effective parenting mean in your vocabulary? How do you handle your child's attitude? What helps you to remain "in control" of your patience and your powers of reasoning? What principles of parenting did your parents employ? What goals do you have for your children? What methods to you use to achieve those goals?

No obligation to answer all or any of the above questions...any thoughts/ideas are welcome and appreciated!