There are many things that you can do as a parent to cultivate positive self-esteem , values and virtues in your child.
Here are some tips on how you can use positive parenting to nurture your child.
Spend time with your child. Talk with him about his friends and accomplishments. and what challenges she will face.
Find out what he is interested in and make effort to appreciate or join in his passions.
Be involved with your child’s school. Go to school events; meet or communicate with your child’s teachers.
Encourage your child to join school and community groups, such as a team sport, or to take advantage of volunteer opportunities.
Help your child develop his own sense of right and wrong. Talk with him about risky things friends may pressure him to do, like smoking or dangerous physical dares.
Help your child develop a sense of responsibility – involve your child in household tasks and family budgeting.
Meet the families of your child’s friends and your child’s friends.
Talk with your child about respecting others. Encourage your child to help people in need. Talk with him or her about what to do when others are not kind or are disrespectful.
Help your child set his own goals. Encourage him to think about skills and abilities he would like to have and about how to develop them.
Make clear rules and stick to them. Talk to your child about what you expect from her when no adults are supervising. If you provide reasons for rules, it will help your child to know what to do in those situations.
Use discipline to guide and protect your child, instead of punishment to make him feel badly about himself.
Be affectionate and honest with your child, and do things together as a family.
In the last installment on Behaviour Modification I mentioned about dealing with my pupils who were “fresh“. In this post I will be addressing a very common bad attitude- Impatience.
How many times have you been guilty of saying this sentence- ” I want you to do it NOW!!”
I personally am guilty of doing very frequency while teaching in class. In this world of ours everyone is striving for instantaneous gratification or acknowledge.
With the growth of online shopping, fast food delivery services and more and more applications having the “one-click” approach most of us have grown accustomed to having instant results. This can spell disaster especially while bringing up our younger generations and teaching them the virtues of Patience.
Impatient kids /adults want things NOW. They are not inclined to wait for their needs/wants to be attended to. They can’t care less about the feeling and needs of others as they selfishly demand that everything /everyone adhere to THEIR schedule and fancies.
Borba has a 5 step plan on how to create Impatience.
Step 1- Make your Kid Wait- and Don’t Give In
The time which you make you kid wait can be pre-determined by their age and the seriousness of the issue on hand.
When dealing with my 2yr old pestering me to let him bring him out to the park to play I will let him wait till I have finished my task at hand (doing the laundry) before taking him out. I would explain to him that I will need to finish hanging up the clothes before we can go. If he is willing he can help out with it or the only other option is to occupy himself till I am done.
No amount of whining and scream will make me finish my chore faster. In fact the more he whines I will deliberately take a slightly longer time then usual just to teach him that it is important that he learns to wait.
Step 2- Stretch Your Kid’s Patience Little by Little
Borba has some interesting tips on calming the child down when they are being impatient.
Freeze– Don’t move until you feel in control
Hold your breath– the child is to hold their breath as long as possible then take deep breaths.
Count– This is commonly used technique for cooling down. You can count along together with
a younger child.
Sing– For young toddlers get them to sing their “A-B-C’s” or other simple songs.
Stretch– For older children they can pretend to be a scarecrow or leaf falling
slowly to the ground.
Once your child has learned to control his temper he will slowly learn how to wait and be more patient.
Step 3- Teach them the difference between “Needs” and “Wants”
Delayed gratification can be in action for this. Checking off the dates on a calendar or showing a countdown chart to the “delivery date” of a much wished for toy will let the child learn the difference between “needs” and “wants”. If the child forgets about the item it will only show to himself that he really didn’t “need” the item after all.
Step 4 – Take a Stand Against Interrupting
I really hate it when my pupils interrupt me while I am delivering my lessons in class. It breaks my train of thought and it takes me several moments to compose myself before I can continue with what I have planned to do.
I will acknowledge the child’s question or presence and kindly tell them to wait till I have finished writing on the board or giving my instructions before I am able to address their concerns.
It is important ,especially for younger kids, to spell out to them the time frame that they have to wait. You also need to point out ” inappropriate times” whereby it is unacceptable for them to interrupt. Ie: When someone is busy in the toilet or asleep.
Step 5- Reinforce Patience
Give your child some postive reinforcement. It does wonder in instilling the preferred behaviour in the child.
” Thank you for waiting for your turn. I can see that you are being patient.”
” I noticed that you were being patient with your brother when you let him play with the toy first.”
It will take some time before you can see an improvement in your child’s behaviour.
If you really want your child to show the virtue of patience you must first show that you are patient- Dominique
By modeling to your child that you too can take turn and wait to be served you are showing that he can do the same too.
With both the adult and the child working on being less impatient it will do wonders in improving the bond between parent and child. Let’s try it out today!!
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