*collaborative post*
Today’s guest post is all about building your child’s strength of character. Parenting isn’t easy and none of us our perfect, I know I’m not! Remember, there are many different ways to be a parent and it’s up to you to choose what advice you want to follow. This guest post is full of advice on how to help your child develop into a confident and happy human.
How You Can Build Childhood Strength of Character
Almost all experts agree it’s essential to build childhood strength of character in your kids. It isn’t easy, and mistakes can be made. Yet by simply teaching life lessons and providing a rich transition from birth to formative years, you can help your children become respectable adults.
Provide Opportunities for Experiences
Exposing your kids to as many valuable experiences as possible is a great way to help them grow emotionally, mentally and even physically. For example, holidays and experiences at places like activity centres, camps and scouts will help them mature with useful skills. Further, they will make new friends and make magical memories they will never forget. There’s nothing quite like your first campfire under the stars. Or riding a horse through a forest for the first time.
Childhood Strength of Character from Values
Since the beginning of time, people have used stories to teach life lessons. Even now, we still do it. Some of the best moral codes and lessons in life come from what you’ve done yourself. And you can use the things you do wrong to teach your kids something. When you talk about your life and the outside world, you teach moral and ethical lessons. The Invisible String, The Rainbow Fish, and What Should Danny Do are also great books for teaching values in life.
Teaching Forgiveness in Children
It’s important for kids to know how to be kind, forgive, and show compassion. Encouraging your child to forgive is an important life skill that will make it easier for them to get through childhood and adolescence. Keeping anger and resentment in your life can cause anxiety and depression in both youngsters and adults, and it has a big effect on your mental health as you get older. Stress shuts down your repair systems. The inflammatory response and cortisol also increase.
Discipline Children Appropriately
Most parents don’t enjoy child discipline, and it can be a challenge to get it right. But it is a necessary part of ensuring children learn boundaries, socialise correctly and learn right from wrong. So, here are some expert tips for discipline if you are a little unsure of how to handle it:
- Stand firm with your kids and try not to back down by giving in to demand.
- Distinguish between small issues and large issues, and discipline accordingly.
- Keep a positive tone during tantrums so as not to punish using fear.
- Set clear rules and boundaries, and always discipline if they are crossed.
- Even when they have done something bad, provide unconditional love.
When you discipline your child, you teach them self-control. Your child will understand the consequences and how to be responsible if you discipline them in a fair and consistent way. The goal is to teach your kids how to deal with their feelings and actions.
Praise Children with Positivity
One of the best ways to teach your kids good values is to praise them when they do something good. For example, if you see your kids doing something good, like keeping the door open for somebody, you should praise them for it. Positive reinforcement, like clapping, giving high fives, or even giving rewards, are psychologically proven ways to build this kind of strength. Over time, you can teach your children how to act in a good way in social situations.
Friendship Helps with Childhood Strength of Character
Your kids need to learn how to get along with other kids their own age at school. It’s also important for them to know what real friendship is and how to be a good friend. This will help people build healthy relationships and cut down on the bad things that happen when people aren’t social at school, like being picked on and feeling alone. Both of these things can have a big effect on children. Anxiety and depression can start as early as age six.
Be the Role Model You Wish You Had
If you have good character, you can teach your children a lot about what’s important to you. So, it’s always a good idea to show by example the choices and actions that are important for being a good person. If you are truthful, kind, and polite, your kids will notice and try to be like you. They will also see how this behaviour brings happiness, peace, and satisfaction to their family. And how it helps to improve their social standing in the wider community as a whole.
Summary
You could fill volumes of books with reasons why and ways to build childhood strength of character. The subject has been studied for centuries by renowned psychologists. Yet you can help your kids with new experiences, appropriate discipline and being a good role model.