It doesn’t matter what your background is or where you live in the world. If you have children, any proud parent will want to make sure their kids have the best start in life. Raising children can be one of the most challenging things any adult will ever do.
There is no instruction manual that tells parents how to bring up their children. They just have to bring them up as best they can and hope for the best in most cases! Experience is one of those life skills that you just can’t buy. It’s something you have to learn through trial and error.
If you have experience of bringing up kids in the past, you will doubtless want to pass along some pointers to your kids when they get older. Doing so will help them to avoid making any catastrophic mistakes if they ever become parents themselves!
But what if you’ve not had the opportunity to benefit from any wise words from your parents? It’s not all bad news. If you’re a new parent, here are some handy tips that I’ve learnt along the way to help give your kids the best start in life.
Tell your kids that you love them
From the moment they are born; it is important you tell your children that you love them. You should do this on a regular basis, and, of course, you must mean what you say too!
The feeling of being loved and wanted will give your children the confidence they need to succeed at anything in life. Parents that seldom express love and affection can cause emotional damage to their children. Those kids will grow up feeling insecure and questioning their abilities all the time.
Enforce discipline – but don’t be a tyrant
All children need discipline. It helps them to grow up being responsible and caring members of society. Unruly children often bring such behaviour into adulthood. And it’s those kids that end up “going off the rails.”
You don’t need to be a tyrant to enforce discipline in your home. When your kinds exhibit bad behaviour, criticise their behaviour – not them. For example, if they’ve been quite grumpy today, tell them that you love them but hate the way they behaved today. Don’t tell them that they are little <insert expletives here>!
Nurture their creativity
Everyone likes to express themselves in different ways. Stifling a youngster’s creativity can cause them to have feelings of resentment towards you as they get older. For instance, banning them from learning to play an electric guitar and forcing them to learn the piano instead.
Credit / familyclan
Support their career choices
We might want our kids to have the best chances of getting into law school, for instance. But if they want to become a landscape gardener instead, don’t force them to give up their dreams to satisfy your ambitions for them!
They need to think about what they want to do in life. You can guide them along the way, but you shouldn’t force them into a particular path of your choosing.
Good luck!