10 Rules Kids Wished Their Parents Lived By

We love these radical parenting principles Vanessa Van Petten and her Teen Team has put together!  Vanessa runs RadicalParenting.com a parenting blog written from the kid’s perspective with 80 teen writers. Their goal is to give teens a voice.

Radical Parenting Principles by Vanessa Van Petten

1) There are no ‘perfect parents’, formulas, easy answers or a ‘right’ way to parent.  There is a right way for your family, you have to constantly strive to find it.

2) Live the You-Them-You Perspective. Learning to see how the other side feels is one of the most difficult ideas to master.  Adopting this yourself and teaching your kids to think about their needs and then other’s needs is a wonderful way to teach children gratitude and perspective.  We hope to give you tools to do this.

3) Constantly challenge what we think we know.  ‘Radical’ means to question the status quo and what isn’t working.  This is how we grow as a family and as human beings.  Find your mirror, whether it is our blog, a radical parenting friend, or your spouse to examine patterns and habits that are not working.

4) Stay open-minded. We never know what another person is really thinking. 

Read the rest of the Radical Parenting Principles here.