By Celine Villadares
With the continuous changes and trends in our community, parents sometimes find it challenging to raise their child into a confident and secure being; prepared for the challenges outside their homes. Whilst many children tend to cope with the rapid transformations in our culture, it will always be better to prepare them for what’s ahead. Parent, raise and train a child that would be confident to face whatever circumstances that would be required of him, start him young! 🙂
MAKE IT KNOWN THAT THEY ARE VALUED:
The feeling of being securely accepted, first at home, then to the community makes up a child’s foundation to being a confident adult in the future. Now, how do you make him feel valued? Parents, when your child says something such as a simple story or an event from school, listen to them and look at them. That way, they would feel that they matter because mommy or daddy pauses to heed to their stories. It makes them feel important and loved. Respond to your child, give quality time. Remember that quality time is a way of expressing love.
TEACH THEM APPRECIATION:
Kids have different strengths and talents; make it known to your child that you appreciate his uniqueness. Teach him that every individual has their own gift and that makes it more interesting, because if everyone is the same, then it would be a boring world! Teach him the importance of diversity and how to appreciate it. A world that appreciates sees the place positively no matter what circumstances.
COMPLIMENT THEM FOR SKILLS AND TALENTS:
Just as much as showing appreciation to one’s uniqueness is important, it would do good as well to compliment and praise your child for his talents whatever it maybe. Some child can be academically smart, some can be artistically inclined, some can be socially gifted; each child has their own gifts, and so parents must be keen to observe their child’s own ability. Hone it, and show him that you acknowledge that special capability.
MISTAKES ARE FINE:
There would be times that a child would fall short of the things that he does or aspires to do, when that time comes; let it be known to him that falling short or committing mistakes is okay. As parents, your main goal is to sit down and explain to your child that mistakes are fine as long as he takes something valuable out of it. The lesson he learns would teach him much about life, and he should openly take them in order to succeed. You can even give examples through the life of certain people who had their downs before they get to succeed.
ENCOURAGE SOCIAL INTERACTION:
Just as much as your home provides a training ground for your kid to develop his confidence, the community plays an important role too. Social interaction gives a chance to your child to apply what he learns and test how he could cope with the differences everyone is endowed with. Interaction with the community helps your child to be exposed and experience things for himself without much guidance and protection from parents. This entails independence which hopefully would result to development of one’s confidence.
Raising a confident child is no easy task, but to make our community a healthier place to live, confidence results to positivity. And so, to provide a healthy place to live in for the children of the future, we must raise up positive and confident children of today. Parents, we do place our hopes in your hands. 🙂