These goals should be challenging and should require effort on your child’s behalf. But they should be goals that your child can achieve. Once your child successfully meets this goal, he’ll have a better self confidence and a better understanding of true happiness.

Point Out The Positive

This is a sure way to build your child’s confident and help her be happy. And even more important than the pat on the back is why you’re praising your child. That’s encouragement for her to do it again.

Choose Praise Words That Set High Standards, But Not Too High

Words like “perfect” and “super” are okay, but they can often set standards that are unobtainable. Instead phrases like “hard worker” and “smart” set expectations that are well within your child’s reach.

Allow Your Child to Correct Mistakes

We all err, but the true test is how to handle it. Equip your child with the right attitude, and he’ll be a better person for it. He’ll feel happy with the outcome when he’s corrected the situation himself.

Find Positive Role Models For Your Child

As parents, you should definitely be an example to your child. But she should also be able to look outside the home and find people who support her. And some kids, especially teenagers, feel more comfortable talking to someone other than a parent. If you already have a support network in place, you can feel confident your teen is getting the right information and she’s growing into the person you know she can be.

Discuss behavioral problems about your child when he’s not around. Hearing a conversation about himself can tear down his self esteem and will lead to unhappiness.

Related posts:

1. Child Anger Management – The “Positive” Way

We should do all that we can to make sure that our child will have the best opportunity to make it in this world.

A child who exhibits the character trait of respect, for himself and for others, will have a better advantage than a child who does not. I hope this article will supply you will a few techniques to help your child develop this very important character trait.

If you want to teach your child to be respectful, you must begin so by exhibiting this particular character trait. You cannot successfully teach a child to do something that he does not witness from others. Your child will not do as you say, but will do as he or she has seen done by others.

You must be respectful of others. Your neighbors, the mailman, the preacher, and especially your spouse. You must be able to accept the ideal and opinions of others, though sometimes you may disagree.

Remember that your child is always watching you. For a child to be successful in this life, he must learn to get along with others in a civil manner, and to respect the different ideas and behaviors of others even though they are different from his own ideas and behaviors.

If you want to teach your child to be respectful, you must also respect your child. For your child to be able to respect himself, he must be respected by his parents. Your child learns by watching you.

You can show your child respect in different ways.

1. Listen to Them

Don’t interrupt when he is talking. Be open to his ideas, and allow him to express himself. Don’t supply a critical remark. Don’t critique what he is saying.

Allow him to say what he needs to say, and give him time to do so.

This does not mean to allow your child to be disrespectful to you. When conversing, the conversation should be a two way interaction. You say something, then the child says something, without the parent being critical. This empowers the child with self esteem which is a building block for showing respect to others. You are respecting your child, and by so doing you are teaching him how to respect himself and others. Very good!

2. You Cannot Allow You Child to Treat You Disrespectful

If you do, you are teaching him to treat others the same way.

Never allow your child to say hurtful, offensive, aggressive things to you or others. If your child is already in these behaviors, it is going to be hard to stop.

The first step in preventing or correcting your child from exhibiting negative behaviors is to never allow your child to observe such negative behaviors.

The second step is to never give your child the opportunity to ‘practice’ what he has seen performed. If your child begins with disrespectful behavior, send him to his room using a calm voice. Allow him time to think about what he has done, then enter his room and speak to him in calm tones, allowing him also time to respond.

State firmly that disrespect will not be tolerated within this home.

3. Allow Your Child to Make Decisions

You can begin by giving your child the choice between two good alternatives. Avoid being the decision maker concerning everything your child is to do. Providing choices shows your child respect, which is also teaching him to be respectful.

Never allow your child to hear you say harsh, negative things about others. You can disagree with the behavior and opinions of others, but don’t show disrespect while doing so. You may disagree with your child’s teacher, but don’t criticize the teacher in front of your child.

Teaching your child to obey the teacher even when there are conflicts of opinions is teaching your child to respect all authority figures. To criticize a teacher and confront them on every issue is teaching your child to rebel against the teacher, as well as others. By not respecting your child’s teacher, you are hurting your child for a life time.

Teachers are not going to do things correctly every time. Teachers make mistakes. When parents aren’t supportive of teachers and understand to the fact that teachers do make mistakes, it is teaching the child to be disrespectful.
The teacher and the child enter this tug of war. The experience is not good for the teacher; not good for the child.
When your child comes home and is not happy about what is going on at school, encourage him to cooperate, and be ‘nice’ to his teacher. If there appears to be a big problem going on at school, don’t say anything negative in front of your child. Go to the teacher and speak with her ASAP.

If a problem, like a dandelion, is ‘up-rooted’ when it is first begins to appear, the problem won’t become a bigger problem.

Teachers are there for your child; they will appreciate your input and concerns.

Follow these suggestions also apply to the preacher, to the neighbor down the street, to grandparents, to the school bus driver, and to your spouse.

Related posts:

1. Teaching Your Child About Conflicts

Just imagine the way they speak, the way they do things and the way they carry themselves.

You’d think that, where did he or she gets all these confidence from when they are still so young?

We all want our children to grow up enough of self confidence and self esteem. But more often that not, I realized many parents didn’t know what to do to instill confidence in their children.

So, here are 4 ways to help you child to build up self confidence and self esteem.

1. Give The Child Opportunities

By giving your child a lot of opportunities to help you, it encourages them to become more independent and be responsible. For example, you can let your child to choose which fruit she wants to eat at the grocery store, or have he or she get something for you at the shelves in the store. It can be any tasks.

Just remember to start with small and simple tasks when they are young.

And as they grow up, you can increase their responsibilities by assigning them bigger tasks.

2. Always Show Your Appreciation

Whenever your child accomplishes a task, show them that you appreciate it. You don’t need to always buy gifts or bring them out for a good meal. Just a few words of encouragement will do sometimes, or you can give them a pat on the back and say “Well done!”

The more important thing is to show to the child that you are really sincere in your words, and you really mean it.

3. Don’t Set Them Up For Failure

I’ve seen this happen with many parents. If you know your child can’t run well, don’t force them to participate in the 100m run at school because you’d like to see them run.

Or if they have no interests in music, don’t force them to attend a piano class just because your neighbor’s child is good at it. Forcing your child to do something which they have no talent or interests in will lead to rejections, and rejections will eventually lead to low self confidence.

This is true especially for young children as the rejections they have had during their childhood will forever haunt them.

However, if you find your child is talented or very interested in something, you can either sign them up for a class or encourage them to venture more into it.

4. Stop Comparing!

All children are different. Period.

Never compare your child with someone else’s, or even with their siblings. You have to accept the fact that every child is born different. They have different interests, different talents, different thinking and behaviors.

For example, don’t say words like :

“Why did you fail your Maths exam when your brother used to get A+ all the time?”

“Why can’t you behave and be obedient like John?”

Question of The Day

What are you doing to help your child to build you self confidence and self esteem?

Do share it with us here!

Related posts:

1. How to Raise A Happy Child
2. How to Help Your Child Improve Their Self Esteem

Are you using the weekends to spend more quality time with your children?

If you are a working parent, then the only real, quality time you have left is on the weekends. On weekdays, you will usually be tired, or too busy to spend a lot of time with your children, what more quality time.

Before I share with you a very simple ways you can spend quality time with your children for this weekend, I want you to ask yourself again;

Have you spent quality time with your children this weekend?

We are all limited to 24 hours a day. 48 hours for the weekend, only. 24 hours, or even 48 hours is not much of time.

Don’t waste them! Even just for a few minutes!

In order for you to spend quality time with your children, you have to plan well ahead. Think of what you are going to do tomorrow, think of where you want to bring them for the weekend, decide whether you are going to have dinner at home, or outside.

Let them know you have plans for them on the weekends so that they can really look forward to it.

There are a lot more examples that I can give you. But the crucial key here is to plan ahead of time. Don’t wake up the next day and start planning what you want to do for the day. That usually does not work effectively.

I’m sure you have heard this phrase before; it’s quality that matters, not quantity.

And this is very true when it comes to the time spent with your children.

If you can, make it a “my children only” weekend. Turn off your mobile, shut down the computer and switch off the TV set. Don’t let other things which are not important to distract you from spending quality time with your children.

When your child sees that your are dedicating your time to be with them, it will be a quality time. What’s the use of your child sitting beside you all day while you are busy surfing the Internet or watching TV? That’s just make them more emotionally depressed and feeling left out.

This weekend is not yet over. At least there is still Sunday tomorrow.

Now, before you go to bed tonight, talk to your spouse, or ask your children what they would like to do together with you tomorrow.

Start from there and plan.

Let me know if you have had a great weekend!

Related posts:

1. The Power of Communication

As a parent, career person and partner, it seems as though your plate is so chock-full of responsibility, that it has become second nature to you.

Yet have you stopped to consider that when it comes to your child, he or she doesn’t learn about it – rather, your son or daughter has to be taught it?

If you have young children at home, it may be difficult to picture them handling responsibility like the teens and adults. And yet this is exactly the age where you should be instilling such values so that responsibility doesn’t become a dirty word; rather it will become an instinctive behavior for life!

So what are some of the best methods for teaching your child about the importance of responsibility?

First, it’s important to let your child know that by being responsible with chores, homework, etc., they’re actually helping out the family as a whole. Children love belonging to a group or unit, and if you stress how important their task is.

Even if it’s just helping you dry the dishes or picking up dirty laundry off of the bedroom floor – your child will see the bigger picture of what responsibility’s all about: that other people are depending on him or her to perform a task in a certain way.

Get your child involved in daily household activities that are age-appropriate in order to highlight this point. For example, have an older child wash your car or ask your toddler to help you pick up any toys that are laying about. Make sure to give your child lots of praise for a job well done!

Another effective way to teach responsibility to your child is to create a chore chart. This is very similar to the charts that are used in schools, where teachers place gold stars next to a student’s name for a right answer or great grade.

This chart should detail each child’s chore and when it should be completed. Have incentives for when your child gets a chore done.

For example, instead of gold stars, you can create a chart around a points system, where a certain number of points will get your child rewards like a small toy, a trip to the movie theater or a favorite movie. This positive reinforcement will soon teach your child to view responsible behavior as second-nature!

Essentially, teaching responsibility to your children boils down to making them feel as though their contribution matters around the household – and it does! So next time your child completes a chore or picks up after themselves, heap lots of praise on him or her.

This way, they’ll not only learn all about responsibility, but they’ll feel so great about themselves that they’ll want to help out around the house all the time!

Have you try to do the above yet?

Share with me your results from doing these!

Related posts:

1. How to Teach Children Responsibility
2. How to Teach A Child Anger Management
3. How to Teach A Child Anger Management

So what makes a good parent?

It’s really subjective to say what makes a good parent, really. Each and everyone of us have different opinions and ideas.

Today, I’ll share with you what I think that makes up a good parent.

I invite inputs from you at the bottom of this post. Share your ideas, experience and thoughts with me.

Okay, so what makes a good parent?

The fact that you want to know what makes a good parent and are looking to learn from the advice of others is a great start!

These are a few of many ways of what I think makes a great parent.

Have A Healthy Marriage

One of the best things you can do for your children and family is to have a happy and healthy marriage. But sometimes, things get really though and we all know this is not always possible.

However,you can do your best to provide a model for your children as to how to be in a healthy relationship. If you do not have one, bring good examples of friends and family members into their life who can be a good model and mentor them as they grow older.

If you need to strengthen your marriage, I highly recommend checking out the book by Dr Lee Baucom.

Be A Satisfied and Self Fulfilled Parent

I noticed that it is incredibly common for women, especially, to ignore their own emotional and physical health to be there for your children. I know this from my own experience throughout these years of bringing up my children.

I feel that it is extremely important for your children to see you stimulated, learning, fulfilled and happy.

If you are feeling fulfilled and happy, you will find it is much easier to deal appropriately with your children.

If you are unhappy you will be much more likely to use criticisms and anger.

Honesty Is The Best Policy

Be honest with your children.

If they are not the best artist in the world, you don’t have to tell them the art is amazing. Tell them how you feel, if they tried really hard, tell them that you like the artwork, but you love the effort behind it so much more. If there was no effort you can always say, “I like it, but I LOVE you, and it reminds me of you, so it’s going on the refrigerator.”

If you don’t know the answer to a question they ask you, don’t make it up. Use it as an opportunity to look up the answer together. Maybe take them to the library or even to the Google search engine. Do things together.

If you are angry at them and are feeling like you can’t control your anger. Tell them you are angry and so that you need to take a break. They can wait in their room or on a chair while you calm down and decide what to do.

Being honest with your child creates learning opportunities. Make sure to not reveal things which they are too young to handle.

Ask Forgiveness For Mistakes You Made

We all make mistakes, even good parents !

However, good parents will admit their mistakes and ask for forgiveness. Asking for forgiveness can happen before, during, or after the mistake. Admitting to mistakes will show your children that its ok not to be perfect and how to act responsibly when they mess up (because inevitably we all will.)

Ask for Help When You Need It

When you are noticing a problem with your child that you don’t know how to handle, do not ignore it. Ask experienced parents for help. This can be your own parents, or others that you respect.

If your child is dealing with depression, self image problems or behavioral problems do research on those specific issues. Although you should not blindly trust all professionals, there are many ways to deal with an issue that may be helpful in your situation.

You can check out Mark Hutten’s program if you ever need a professional with years of experience to help you.

Use Discipline and Positive Reinforcement

In my opinion, good parents will reinforce positive behaviors and discipline negative behaviors. While I do not in any way encourage physical disciplinary techniques, I think it important to have boundaries in a home.

So, there you go. That’s what I think about what makes up a good parent.

What do you think?

Related posts:

1. How to Be An Easygoing Parent

Disciplining a child is every parent’s dilemma.

By providing too much to your child, it can leave him or her feeling inadequate or bristling with emotions her or she can’t understand.

By not giving enough discipline, the child has no standards that he or she is held accountable for.

There must be a balance. But how do you do it? How do you know that what you’re is not too much, or not too little?

How much discipline should be invoked is dependent upon the disposition of your child. It’s different for every child and every parent. It simply means that you need not discipline your child the same way your neighbor does.

For example, if your child’s personality is on the meek side, reprimanding him or her frequently would do little good. A stern talking to is preferable than a time out or a pat on the butt. In addition, positive reinforcement for your shy child may encourage him or her to adhere to a format that caters to his or her disposition.

Now, what if your child is a stubborn one?

This is where it usually becomes tricky for most parents.

Does your child resent you for making them clean the mess they made? It is important to realize that despite what you child says at the time of reprimanding, he or she needs to know that their behavior will not be tolerated.

For example, a time out or taking away of a toy, and sticking to it, makes the child understand that their actions have consequences. To reiterate, it is imperative to stick to your guns. If your child knows that you will back down to them, then why should they listen to you in the first place? Go think about it.

Besides, it is very important to have open communication with your spouse. Both of you must be in agreement to the degree of punishment. Once the punishment has been handed down, both of you must abide by the decision, even if one of you disagrees with it.

There will be time to discuss it after the discipline has been done. The important thing to understand is not to disagree openly about the action taken on the child, unless it is detrimental to the child.

Did you know children are smart? Really smart I would say. If they see an opening, they will try to pit one parent against another. It is pivotal that both parents are unified in their decision.

While what I’ve just said above may seem obvious to some people, not everyone does it. I have seen first hand parents disagreeing about one of their decisions in front of their child. That should be done in private. I have disagreed with my husband before, but did not say anything until we were alone and able to talk about it.

Don’t you think so? Tell me what you think by leaving a comment below.

No related posts.

Here’s the question:

How do you stop your child from talking back at you?

I’m getting increasingly frustrated at my 4.5-year old boy talking back with words like “Shut up”, “I’m getting tired of this”, “I’ll hit you back”, etc. He does not obey time-outs (would not remain in the corner).

I prefer not to use any sort of corporeal punishment. He spends a lot of time (every weekday) at daycare, and its possible some of the bad words are coming from there.
What do parents use nowadays to earn respect of their young children?

Here’s the answer :

You need to gently explain that we don’t say these types of thing in our house, that isn’t the way that we talk with one another. Because it isn’t a nice way to speak with one another.

Remind him that you don’t say these things to him, and then let it go. Try not to make it into an even bigger deal than it is, or he will just do it more.

When I raised my daughter I never hit her when she was growing up. I taught her that if she didn’t behave I’d take some thing away from her that she liked. And that she wouldn’t get it back if she didn’t behave. So that she learned that it is better to be nice and be able to keep toys that she liked.

Do not threaten your child with calling the police. You child shouldn’t ever be made to be afraid of the police. I say this since some day your child may need the police and you don’t want him to become afraid of them. You need to teach your child that police are their friends, when they may become lost or should there ever be and accident. You wouldn’t want your child to run away from some one who could be the only one that will help him.

You need to be very patient with your child.

You also do not need to earn your child’s respect, since you are the adult in the relationship. He is the one that should be respecting you not the other way around.

He has to obey your rules. You do not obey his so that when he doesn’t follow your rules, there will be consequences for his actions. Either time outs, which are no longer than his age. Like he’s 4.5 years old, then he would be placed into time out for 4 and a half minutes and no longer, unless he doesn’t listen. Then he would have to sit there a little more time.

Or you can take away one of his favorite toys, that he wants to have around him. Once you take it away, tell him that if he is a good boy and listens to you then he will be able to have it back again once he does what you say.

Once you take the toy away do not break weak and return it to him if he crys, or you will only be showing him how to disrespect you and how to get his own way.

You have to be strong. Put the toy in a closet where he can not reach it. Stay strong and don’t let your child manipulate you, the best to you and your child.

For more Q&A and information how to deal with a child talking back, go here.

Related posts:

1. Stop The Fighting With Talking, Can You?
2. Dealing With Talking Back
3. How The Heck Do I Stop My Child’s Bad Behaviors?

Stay Calm

When a child is upset and acting out, your job is to keep him safe. You may feel uncomfortable with the noise and behavior, and want to leave early, and you certainly can make reasonable attempts to leave early.

It’s not reasonable to expect that a child is going to stop screaming and crying if you yell or threaten him. Again, he will only get more upset to see you looking as though you are losing control.

The fact is, you probably can’t make him calm down. Know that that is okay. Again, you need to keep him safe, and step in if he puts himself in harm’s way. Otherwise, understand that he needs to vent his anger and will only act calm when he IS calm.

Young children can’t bottle things up.

Remember Your Deep Breaths

Tell yourself that you are in control here, even though your child is not.

Tell yourself that what you are doing is teaching him a lesson about behavior that he will remember, and that this is a learning process.

Tell yourself that this behavioral change is going to take longer than just one day, but that if you stay strong just this one day, you’ll be that much closer to seeing your child’s behavior improve.

Model Calming Behaviors

Since you are staying calm in a difficult situation, model that skill for your child.

You can say things like,

“Let’s take some deep breaths to stay calm.”

Or,

“Let’s count backwards from 10 to help us think about something else so we calm down.”

Have a pair of stress balls for each of you and say,

“Let’s squeeze the stress ball to help us get our anger out and calm down.”

Repeat, Starting From All The Ways Mentioned, Everyday

Sometimes, you might find yourself stucked in between or halfway through. But remember, persistence is the key to success!

If you follow these ways to a tee, but your child still misbehaves, ask a professional.

Take your child to his pediatrician and describe the behaviors as well as what you have been doing to prevent bad behaviors and redirect your child, and for how long you’ve practiced this. He may be able to find underlying medical causes for why your child is behaving inappropriately.

Ask your child’s teacher for ideas on how to improve behavior, or if it’s a new school year, ask his teacher from last year, since she knows him better. She may have tips that are more specific to your child that will teach you how to cope with emotions that cause bad behavior, as well as help you create a system for helping your child improve his behavior.

I hope what I’ve shared with you yesterday and today will help you in your parenting journey.

If you love what you read, or if you have any comments, or if you want to share something with other parents, feel free to drop me a comment below.

Related posts:

1. The Ways to Improve A Child’s Behavior – Part I
2. 8 Ways You Can Improve the Quality of The Time You Spend With Your Kids
3. Marriage Advice: Seven Easy Ways to Improve Your Marriage

Good values.

Respect for the parents.

But how far are we from achieving this?

What would you to do improve your child’s behavior?

Read on…

Make Your Expectations Known

Did you know children behave better when they know what your expectations are?

If a child runs around the grocery store and you say,

“That’s it, no candy.”

That’s when usually a tantrum starts. This is because the child is frustrated. He is probably thinking something like,

“I didn’t know I could get candy! What was I supposed to do?”

Instead, what you can do is to tell the child BEFORE you arrive somewhere what EXACTLY the behavior you expect of them.

Remember, children don’t know it all. It’s up to us to teach them what “Now, behave!” means.

“When we go in the store, I want you to stay close to my cart. Walk, don’t run. And you need to keep a quiet voice. Leave things on the shelves.”

Make yourself clear.

Reward Your Child

Rewarding is somewhat different from bribing.

A reward is something that you’d like to give your child anyway. It is small, and reasonable. In the above example, after you set your expectations for behavior in the grocery store, let your child know that you have a cookie for them in the car if they behave and do those things.

Bribing your child that he can stay up an hour late (when you know that will just make him overtired and is therefore not good for him) is not a reasonable reward because it creates a new problem. If they are overtired they are less likely to be able to behave the next day because they will be cranky.

Keep The Child Busy

Depending on the child’s age, he might not be able to sit quietly for 30 minutes in a shopping cart, or at dinner.

Have realistic expectations for their behavior and keep them occupied. Give him a toy to play with, or a game, or something to color. Or play a game with him like “I Spy” which requires no materials. Just make sure it is a toy or game your child enjoys, and he will WANT to behave.

If your child has something to do that he likes, he’ll be less tempted to “make his own fun” at the expense of behaving badly and breaking your rules.

Give Them Warnings If They Break The Rule

If you child crosses the line with his behavior one time, tell him,

“This is your reminder (or warning). If you do that again, you won’t get your reward.”

I find this works well because it shows the child that you remember exactly what you asked of him in terms of behavior, so you are serious.

It also lets the child know that you are understanding that we all make mistakes and that you care and WANT him to succeed, so you’re willing to give him a chance to learn and improve his behavior.

Follow Through.

After the one warning, if the child continues to behave badly, you need to let him know that since he decided to break the rules, he will not get his reward. Say this calmly. You don’t need to say it angrily or loudly because he’s already going to be disappointed, which is the point. If you yell or get angry, it escalates the situation because the child feels like things are getting out of control.

This might lead to a tantrum.

This is when the deep breaths and patience need to be employed.

So what do you do next?

Stay tuned for Part II tomorrow.

P.S – But if you can’t wait, you can find out more about this system a family therapist use with his clients (parents who had a hard time with their child’s behavior).

Related posts:

1. The Ways to Improve A Child’s Behavior – Part II
2. 8 Ways You Can Improve the Quality of The Time You Spend With Your Kids
3. Marriage Advice: Seven Easy Ways to Improve Your Marriage