Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Parenting-Encourage our kids; boost their self confidence


Encouragement is the process of focusing on your children's assets and strengths in order to build their self-confidence and feelings of worth. Here are some points that will help us parents building our children's self confidence through constant guidance and encouragement.


1. Focus on what is good about the child or the situation. See the positive.

2. Accept your children as they are. Don't make your love and acceptance dependent on their behavior.

3. Have faith in your children so they can come to believe in themselves.

4. Let your children know their worth. Recognize improvement and effort not just accomplishments.

5. Respect your children. It will lay the foundation of their self-respect.

6. Praise is reserved for things well done. It implies a spirit of completion. Encouragement is given for effort or improvement. It implies a spirit of cooperation.

7. The most powerful forces in human relationships are expectation. We can influence a person's behavior by changing our expectations of the person.

8. Lack of faith in children makes them anticipate failure.

9. Standards that are too high invite failure and discouragement.

10. Avoid using discouraging words and actions.

11. Avoid subtle encouragement of competition between brothers and sisters.

12. Avoid talking qualifiers to your words of encouragement. Don't "give with one hand and take away with the other".

13. The sound of encouragement are words that build feelings of adequacy:
"I know you can do it."
"I appreciate what you did."
"It looks as if you worked very hard on that."
"You are improving."


(I was going over my files and i came across this literature about parenting which was handed to me by my colleagues in the parent's council of MCGS. I find the details helpful so I decided to share...)

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