The most important 'nutrients' our children need are unconditional love, acceptance, and validation. The daily grind of getting out of the house on time, finishing up homework, and getting to bed at a decent hour, can put us in a place of giving conditional love, rejection, and invalidation. It is at this point that we have lost everything.-Heather Forbes

I gave this blog the title Parenting with Love. I'm thinking some will say well yes, of course we parent with love. We love our children and want them to grow into healthy, strong, contributing adults.

However, when we are parenting a child with difficult behaviors we've been told through many parenting books, other parents, and well meaning family what we need to do in order to change the child's behavior. I've come to a different understanding . Over my years as a professional, as a parent and in an effort to help Nathan I've taken time to read and study much of the information that is out there. As many of you know there is a lot of information out there and most of it focusses on changing our child's behavior. The key is if we focus on relationship and not on our child's behavior we can be the parents we want to be. As a result we can connect with our children and help them to grow.

I spend a lot of time thinking and talking about the relationship piece. It seems so simple to say that we need to focus on the relationship with our child. In reality though many things get in the way. Our children are "out of sorts". We are stressed. Things need to get done. The list of things goes on.

A change in focus is all that is needed. Clear priorities can make it happen. Looking within ourselves to see what is driving us can make it happen. Understanding what is driving our children's behavior can make it happen. This is all challenging and exciting! But it's so very worth the effort. Join me in the adventure of parenting with Love!