‘The home is where everything blossoms’ Sue Atkins

I was delighted to be interviewed by The Home Renaissance Foundation a think tank, that promotes a greater recognition of the work that goes into creating healthy and congenial home environments where individuals grow and develop, so it is in society’s best interests to look after & nurture the home environment.

“This morning we have had the enormous pleasure of interviewing one of the UK’s best parenting experts: Sue Atkins. Her multitasking approach to parenting has led her book “Raising Happy Children for Dummies” to become an Amazon best seller. Her expertise has also allowed her to branch out into broadcasting, public speaking, and work as a parent coach. Her enthusiastic way of helping parents is more than worthwhile to mention in BeHome blog.

Save Childhood Movement, a childcare lobby, has warned that British schoolchildren are among the most stressed, unhappy and sedentary in the developed world – what are British parents failing to do?

Nowadays parents are busy, have hectic schedules and are worried about money with the recession. But they need to make sure to eat with their children and to spend time together. Having dinner with their children, asking them about their day and conversing with them over a meal is so important!

Parents need to also start praising their children to boost their self-esteem and create happy children.

How can happy parents create happy homes? As a parenting expert, how do you think the confidence of parents can be boosted in order to ensure that children are more secure?

Happy positive parents bring up happy, positive, relaxed children because children follow their parents.

Most parents are trying to do their best they can but sometimes they don’t have good role models. We need to empower parents with their own confidence in themselves. And this is what I do in my work, I try to raise the confidence of the parents in the way they play with their children, in the way they spend time with their children and in the way they look after their children.

In the Home Renaissance Foundation we are convinced that a well-run home has a huge impact on the development of children’s characters and indeed on their preparation for life; it is here that they learn values of sharing and honesty, and develop responsibility as well as a decision-making ability.

Everybody’s hierarchy of needs are met when there’s a sense of security and a sense of safety; it’s an answer for that hierarchy of needs. To start with the basics is to start with your family and your home. Children going through their parents divorce often feel very unstable and unsettled for quite some time. Also, children that haven’t got consistency or even those that haven’t been given boundaries are not very consistent, and don’t know where they are. And when they don’t know where they are, they feel frightened and react in different ways.

So I very much think that the home is where everything starts from. From there you can grow, you can blossom and you can reach your potential.

How can the responsibilities of sharing the housework in a family improve the children’s skills?

Being in a family is all about team work, and I call it the WE mentality of the family but not the game that you can play at TV! If you have that ‘looking after each other’ mentality, doing things for each other, sharing responsibilities; then children grow up with responsibility, they learn how to care for others with empathy, they grow up independent; and they grow up knowing that they are contributing. Everything that they do is safe as well and contributing to the family’s health and well-being.

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