There is no question that being a parent is by far the hardest, most important and most rewarding job we'll ever have. But so many people never actually prepare for the challenge of being a good parent. We go to school for years to learn our jobs and attend trainings and workshops to keep our knowledge up-to-date, but what do we do as parents? How did you prepare to be a parent?

I'm not talking about making sure the crib is set up and that you have enough diapers, though obviously that is important. One of the best ways to fully prepare for the arrival of your new child and the challenges of becoming parents is to create your own set of guiding principles of parenting. Guiding principles of parenting are a roadmap, the big picture so to speak, that we as parents tend to forget in the day-to-day stresses of raising our children. Guiding principles are the things you and your partner believe are the most important in raising a child.

The easiest way to think about guiding principles is to think about the kind of person you want your child to be in the future, like at 25 years old. Once you have this picture in your mind of the kind of person (not occupation - but personality characteristics, morals, manners, etc.) you can begin to think backwards to determine what principles will help you guide your child to be the kind of person you want them to be. To develop these guiding principles, you and your partner may need a series of discussions, but having a set of agreed upon guiding principles will achieve two extremely important things.

The first major positive impact of developing your own guiding principles is learning where you and your partner agree and disagree on how you want your child raised. What kind of community do you want to live in? Will it be culturally and/or racially diverse? How would you deal with your child if he/she does something you don't like? Will you set limits? Where will the limits be? What will happen if the limits are broken? It is quite amazing how many parents never have this type of discussion and then find that they are parenting in very different ways with very different goals and expectations. Sadly, their children experience this inconsistency and have trouble figuring out what they are or are not supposed to do. You two will still have arguments about parenting - nothing can save us from that. But developing these principles together will ensure that the two of you are trying to get your children to the same maturation end point and that arguments are more focused on how to get there versus utter disagreement on what you both want for your child.

The second advantage is that having a set of guiding principles will help provide a framework for the two of you to view daily challenges that are always present with children. They will help you see how what you do on a daily basis helps your child grow up to what you want them to be. Eating is an excellent example. Parents of toddlers often struggle with getting their children to eat and how their children eat. Should they use utensils? Should they eat what we all eat or do they get special food? Can they use their hands? What are the rules that can't be broken and what are the things we wish they would do, but don't? Every parent answers these and all of the other eating-related issues differently - even parents of the same child. This is where your agreed upon guiding principles become so valuable.

One of the guiding principles my wife and I have is the importance of consistency, structure and routine. Children - especially toddlers - crave structure and consistency. The less they have to worry about their next meal, the freer they are to enjoy playtime, so dinner is at pretty much the same time every night and we all eat together as a family (because the importance of family is another of our guiding principles). We feel this sends the message that dinner is important and special. This sense of routine, of consistency, makes it easier for our twin 2.5 year olds to know what is expected of them at mealtime and what will happen. Of course, it is still a struggle - they are toddlers after all. One of the ways we deal with it is based on another of our principles; positive reinforcement. If you do something good in our house, you'll hear about it from at least one of us nine out of ten times. We regularly congratulate them on their ability to eat with their fork or spoon, or when they try a new food. We want them to clearly understand what we want them to do, not from lecturing - especially since they wouldn't understand - but from us modeling it and from how we respond when they do it themselves.