The best blanket a child can have is parents. Raising a happy and healthy child is one of the most challenging job a parent can have and also one of the most rewarding.
Parents serve as the primary role models for the development of their children. No doubt, the children need to be fed, clothed and have roof over their heads but they also need love, support, boundaries, guidance, to be valued and to be listened to. So, the parents must respond empathetically to the critical development needs of their child. For good parenting, parents should understand their child’s point of view. Parents should act as a caretaker and friend both because they are the ultimate epitomes for their children. Good parenting requires a combination of specialised skills, good character and right attitude which may be naturally inherent in an individual or may be acquired by reading books and articles about good parenting or by looking at somebody who’s a parent role model.
A well-loved child has a tank full of love, emotional health, less behaviour issues and less need for peer and teacher attention. They are like little sponges. From talking and reading to infants to enunciating values (best done in conversations around the dinner table), parents exert enormous influence over their children’s development. They are, however, not the only influences, especially after children enter school. But it’s important that parents give children a good start. Parents should recognise that kids come into the world with their own temperaments,
and it’s the parents’ job to provide an interface with the world that eventually prepares a child for complete independence.
You should be involved in your child’s life. Being an involved parent takes time and is hard work and it often means rethinking and rearranging your priorities. It frequently means sacrificing what you want to do for what your child needs to do. If you don’t manage your child’s behaviour when he is young, he will have a hard time learning how to manage himself when he’s older and you aren’t around. Any time of the day or night, you should always be able to answer these three questions: ‘Where is my child?’ ‘Who is with my child?’ ‘What is my child doing?’. The rules your child has learnt from you are going to shape the rules he applies to himself. Of course, there is also such a thing as too- little parenting too, and lack of parental engagement often leads to poor behavioural outcomes in children. Ironically, harsh or authoritarian styles of parenting can have the same effect.
Self-esteem and success are directly related to each other. The most important developmental task in childhood is the acquisition of self-confidence, emotional stability and a balanced way of dealing with life’s challenges and frustrations. If they get a nurturing environment, they develop into winners. If during this
decisive period they face failure or rejection the result is collapse of confidence. Such children suffer from insecurities and always doubts themselves.
Believers are achievers. Parents can turn their children into believers by carefully nurturing their self-esteem. Remove ‘if, can’t, impossible’ and every other negative word from your child’s vocabulary. Replace negative thoughts with positive attitudes. Every child born into this world is a new thought of God and ever fresh and radiant possibility.
Your relationship with your children is the foundation of their relationship with others. Children should be made to understand that the world doesn’t exist to fulfil their needs alone. Sometimes they may not get what they want because others may have an equal claim to it or because it will infringe on other people’s rights of wellbeing. This is important lesson by which we can raise children with well-rounded and balanced personalities.
Hence, parents should learn the ABC of parenting ie Avoid over expectations, Be patient, Control your emotions towards your child.