Reflective vs reactive parenting

​This is an older but still interesting post on 'reflective' parenting from Psychology Today.  Reflective parenting helps parents to 'reflect' on the intentions, thoughts, desires, goals... that are motivating their children's behavior. A parenting approach that takes this reflective stance, rather than reacting to the behavior without considering what might be behind it, is proven to improve the parent-child relationship: it leads to an increased sense of connectedness between the parent and the child, and helps the child regulate his or her emotions and behaviors better.  In this approach it is not crucial that you come up with the right reason underlying your child's behavior. As the mind of another person, and also of your own child, will always remain to some extent opaque, this approach implies that it is not crucial to find the the exact right motivation of your child's behavior.  More important is to have the reflective, wondering stance towards your child's thoughts and intentions.