The number one key in love-based parenting is seeing your relationship with your child as the priority. Our children are able to read our energetic messages that we are sending them more than our words. How many times have you been calm and collective, on the outside and boiling on the inside in response to an unwanted behavior? Which one do you think your child feels?
We have been taught to focus on behavior and if we can stop them through consequences, punishing , timing out or withdrawing love, then the goal has been met. Unfortunately, what has been compromised is the loving relationship with our child. Instead of seeing us as understanding and capable of taking care of their needs. They quickly learn, that they are responsible for making us happy. This motivates children to please or on the other hand become defiant and aggressive and act out. Both, are ways of coping when their needs are not met.
Love-based parenting requires us to look at our relationship with ourselves. We must look at our agendas and see if our needs, for them to behave, are more important than their needs to be seen, heard and validated. Children are naturally dependent on us and it is our responsibility to meet their needs. This doesn’t mean that our needs are not important, it is critical though, to see that we can take care of our needs and not put them in the hands of our child. When we do this, we are making them the parent. So, through this journey, as a loving parent, we will be led back into our own childhood and how our needs may not have been met. The beauty, as an adult, is that we have the full capacity to get those needs met, in a mature way, and therefore we can show up for our child as the loving adult they need. Example tomorrow! 
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