Each of us has our own parenting style that is unique to our particular personality characteristics and philosophies on how children should be raised. Generally, these styles encompass some basic ideas on discipline, relationship building, and expectations. Often our parenting styles are greatly influenced by those we experienced at the hands of our own parents when we were children. We are likely to incorporate into our own style some aspects of our parents' styles. For example, most of us have had the experience of finding ourselves repeating key phrases our parents used, or maybe employing a disciplinary technique that is most familiar to us.

Since this is opening article for The Successful Parent, it seems appropriate that we begin our discussion by trying to identify some of the most basic ingredients of the parent-child relationship. In other words, if someone were to ask "What are the three most important aspects of parenting?", what would our answer be? To my way of thinking, the basic building blocks of all parent-child relationships are love, limits, and empathy. Okay, that sounds great, but what exactly does it mean? Let's look at some basic definitions and then consider how each element contributes to children's overall development.