Set small goals to set success.
It is well known that success breeds success and the more a child feels capable and experiences success they quickly build their confidence which feeds into more success. A child’s daily experiences can help build confidence and encourage further achievement if they are more likely to try new things.
Encourage your child to develop successful habits. It is well known that success breeds success and the more a child feels capable and experiences success they quickly build their confidence which feeds into more success.
Teachers know that when a child gains a sense of success and achievement they are generally happier and more inclined to take a risk and to not worry when they make a mistake. Once they feel capable of success and have demonstrated it to themselves, taking risks is a comfortable process and they’re not worried about making mistakes as their emotional stamina is strong enough to deal with failure.
Attract success. A child should have regular incidences of success both at home and at school. They can be intermittent but they come as part of the child’s daily experiences. Remember ongoing success continues to feed into that sense of well being.
Do you notice how often in small ways your child is successful and if so do you acknowledge it? For example, when your child learns to skip, do headstands, write sentences correctly, play fairly and well in a sports team etc. these are successful occasions. There are many occasions to show how they are successful. These are small incremental steps but build a body of success.
Tell your child that they have had a success when you notice it and talk about the positive feeling associated:
‘You must be so pleased with yourself that you can now get your pen license from school. Well done. What a success.’
A wise person looks to achieve goals that are within grasp. It is all about not sabotaging your sense of possible success. It is about being realistic. You can help your child choose goals that are within reason. Certainly no harm in stretching their thinking but take care that they are not setting unrealistic expectations doomed for failure.
A child who goes after smaller and more regular goals begins to feel very confident and will wisely choose goals that take them a step ahead.
Think about how a child learns to walk. Through trial and error they learn and gradually they push themselves a little harder. What joy for them and everyone when they finally walk. Something drives them to keep going as they move from crawling to sitting up, etc.
Working towards a goal should be a happy experience and should not come with too much stress and anxiety. Too much pressure on a child will make the goal too unreachable and unjustifiably a child will feel a failure. Small steady chunks to achieve reasonable goals is the best way forward.
Teach your child that celebrating success is important along the way. Make it a family habit to regularly talk about the small successes that your child makes. Be noisy about it and it will appear an expected and natural part of life.
Setting a goal that is a long way away means that you need to help your child take small steps to get there. For example, their goal is to learn how to sew and they want to make a dress. You will take small steps in teaching them and applaud the small improvements along the way. So much to learn but with increased knowledge and experience on the sewing machine the final garment is a product of great pride and success.
Finally, be observant and notice those small, incidental, successful steps your child takes and they will do the rest!
‘Success is not final, failure is not fatal:
It is the courage to continue that counts.’
-Winston Churchill
Is your child comparing themselves to others?
A child is always on the go developing their sense of self-worth and building foundations that reassure them of their worthiness. They don't need to focus on others around them who are doing better or who perceive to be more successful. Read here for some suggestions to help you work with your child in offsetting unfortunate comparisons and how to build their self-esteem.
When we start to compare ourselves unfavourably with others it becomes obvious that we are lacking in self-confidence. Comparing ourselves to others can be all about how we look, how happier others are or perhaps how more successful people are around us. We notice the differences and we become unhappy or dissatisfied with ourselves.
A child is always on the go developing their sense of self-worth and building foundations that reassure them of their worthiness. They do not need to focus on others around them who are doing better or who perceive to be more successful. Finding the grass greener on someone else’s turf or forgetting about your own strengths is a forerunner to ongoing doubt and failure. There is simply nothing going for judging yourself against others.
Such negativism also destroys your beauty within and others see the bitterness and stagnation that can creep into your life. It can be given the name, resentment.
There are many influences that can cause us to compare with others.
Advertising invites us to compare and buy the best. Social media is all about creating perfect images that we would all like to be. Consider all the growing businesses for plastic surgery that will change the way we look and create someone else’s image that would make us feel better!
Body image is a massive area for children in which to take control. We think about how fat or slim we are compared to what society thinks is beautiful. We tend to relate body image to self-esteem. For a child this can be a concern as they become quite anxious about what others think about them. Unfortunately, as the child grows they see that many people judge others by what they wear, what they say and how they portray an image. To fit into a child’s social world, they may think they need to change to feel good about themselves. We know this as group pressure.
We need to teach our children to love their own body, no matter what shape, size or colour it comes in. It is their business and they need to be happy with themselves. We reinforce these concepts by demonstrating ourselves how we treat our body and how we see beauty in many forms and not the prescribed view of beauty through social media etc. If we want change we introduce change driven by our own desires and not controlled by media hype. This is such an important message to give our children.
Here are some suggestions to help you work with your child in offsetting unfortunate comparisons.
Encourage your child to think of others and applaud their efforts. Be the person who affirms others successes and talks about their achievements. It is a mature and sometimes brave act to celebrate other people’s achievements as it demonstrates that you care about others. It is also a mature chance to learn from them. What can you take from their success story that will be helpful to you?
Remember to teach your child to be self-encouraging. They need to learn that they can be great motivators for themselves. Talk about some great self-motivators such as Ash Barty whose self-discipline comes from her self talk which is so positive. Also, teach your child to think about what they are good at. Get them to write it down and talk about it quite often as a family. Naming the good stuff is so valuable and seeing it written is more inspirational.
Often people that look confident are confident. Once people see you being more sure of yourself they pay more attention to you. Once a child sees that others see them as confident it tends to feed off itself.
Take care that we avoid negative self-talk when something goes wrong. It is easy to self-blame and call yourself dumb or stupid. When your self-talk is positive you are giving yourself permission to be successful and it works!
We need to teach our children to simply be the best they can be and this will be and should be enough. You applaud their effort to improve but above all their expectations are enough. Often we become anxious about what we are not, rather than having confidence in who we are and what we have to offer. We need to value what we have to offer. Reinforce with your child how happy you are simply with them and you would expect nothing else.
Tell them: I love your uniqueness.
“I appreciate your generosity.”
“I can see your thoughtfulness.”
Name and claim these individual traits in a loud voice that make your child the very best.
Finally, it is not an easy task helping your child overcome the temptation to compare but nonetheless you are instrumental in creating and building a very positive self-image of your child that acts as a strong foundational tool in building self-worth and positive well-being into their future.
‘Why are you trying so hard to fit in when you’re born to stand out.’
-Oliver James
Perfectionism...to be discouraged in our children
A child who is a perfectionist does not feel free to make any mistakes and we know that mistakes are an important form of learning for your child. If the child feels too anxious to make mistakes their confidence drops and all sorts of behavioural complications can enter the scenario. Read here to navigate the world of perfection in your child.
This can be a problem for some children who really struggle to accept anything less than perfect. How frustrating this can be for them as they never seem to be at peace unless they are correct 100% of the time. For themselves, they set very high standards. They also see that other people value them for how much they have achieved rather than for who they are. These are unsafe values upon which to be basing your sense of self. A child who is a perfectionist does not feel free to make any mistakes and we know that mistakes are an important form of learning for your child. If the child feels too anxious to make mistakes their confidence drops and all sorts of behavioural complications can enter the scenario. There is no joy in working from perfectionism and it can be seen as early as young children not writing a sentence for fear they make mistakes.
Teachers are very astute when they find students reticent to have a go or reluctant to put themselves forward. They realise the more they allow the child to step back and make no attempt, the more poor conditioning steps in and the harder it is to get them back in the groove of doing activities.
At home there are ways to help the child begin to overcome this problem.
Consider:
Firstly and most importantly consider if you are a perfectionist. You can have a major influence on your child if they see you operating as a perfectionist.
Show your child how you work through problems. Let them see that making a mistake is a way of learning.
When they show you their work, affirm its worth. Remember it is the effort you are affirming and not the quality of the work as a final product. This habit should start with very young children to be successful.
For these children, competition is important but within reason. Very young children are often keen to show you what they have done be it a drawing, sand sculpture etc. This is a tender age for building the understanding that you are impressed with all their attempts.
Keep installing the value of ‘have a go’ and telling your child that through trial and effort learning occurs happily.
With older children, it is worth talking about some great successes such as Einstein who based his life on learning from taking risks and mistakes.
Use practical examples in your own life when things went wrong and still you learnt.
Wherever possible take away the pressure to succeed. That may mean talking to your child’s teacher about potential problems that could stem in the classroom. It could mean putting your child in situations where there is not an obsessive focus on success. Healthy competition is important but some environments may be not suitable for your child who becomes fixated on being perfect.
When a challenge comes your child’s way, we do not talk about meeting that challenge for fear of failing. We meet it to simply have a go and improve in some capacity.
‘Have go at swimming backstroke. You will learn so much from just making an attempt.’
‘Well done you made a great effort and for the first time swam a little on your back.’
Here it is about picking up on the effort and noticing a difference. There is no focus on being perfect.
Children who have a tendency to be perfect often prefer to stay in their comfort zones. This give them assurance and they don’t need to try as they may fail. Give your child various opportunities to try different things. Take them out of their comfort zones and challenge them to do different things. This could be through sports,family holidays etc.
Sometimes children feel under pressure when the issue of success comes up. For example, school tests,sports event, social event etc. Preparing the child before the event is helpful by reminding them of the time they had a go and it worked out. Also reinforcing how you award the effort not so much the outcome.
Try to avoid being an overprotective parent. Such a model limits the child’s opportunities to take risks and discover their own potential.
Finally, as a parent whose child has perfectionist tendencies try to be more relaxed and let your child see how the value in life is about not fearing the unknown and learning to embrace some risk and challenge. Let them gradually feel the joy of simply exposing themselves to change and feeling success from the experience.
‘Focus on progress not perfection’
-Bill Philips
Teaching your children to be planners
Organisation is always a challenge for children as they grow. Also, as parents, some of us are less organised people in planning events etc. It’s just in our nature how we approach planning. This article tells us that planning can be learnt, which is so beneficial for children’s success in self-management. The earlier they value being a planner, the more they gain through being organised and in control of what they are doing.
Taking time to plan something well shows that a person is making choices about how they want to be in control of their actions. They come to understand that they will have more successful outcomes by being a planner. Planning well gives you a vision into what you are expecting as an outcome. To be productive is to plan well. For example, if you plan your trip well for the school holidays you feel reassured that it will be successful and that you have a clear understanding of what to expect. There are fewer unfortunate surprises.
There are developing skills in learning to plan well and children will get better at it and more accurate in their planning, reading situations better etc. as time goes. They will make mistakes but grow in confidence about sharpening the planning process.
Teachers know that planning their lessons well is the key to the quality of teaching. Without effective well-planned lessons, teachers easily lose control of the outcomes. They understand that the quality of their planning will impact a child’s learning.
Read here to help your child be a dedicated planner.
They are also keen to teach children the importance of planning and when assignments are on the agenda, teachers will spend considerable time with children discussing their plan. Sometimes pieces of work are marked on the quality of the planning demonstrated by a child.
When we teach our children to plan important events etc., they begin to value the process of planning as a way of managing their world and feel in control. They are setting the directions themselves. Once they feel the success of their planning, children will want more control of their actions.
Here are some thoughts on helping your child become a dedicated planner.
Demonstrate to your child how you plan for important events, occasions etc. Allow them to share in some of this planning. Is planning an important part of your work life?
There are various ways to plan and everyone develops their own style. Talk about what tools you use to help you plan. For example, are you someone who takes notes?
Do you plan your events on a computer? Do you revisit the plan?
What resources do you use in planning?
When your child talks about important events that they will participate in, talk about what plans they have in place to make it successful.
When planning we all need time for this and talk to your children about how much time they will give to the planning process.
Talk about successes you have had from careful planning. It is also worthwhile to talk about the trial and error in planning. This is also an important process we go through before discernment.
A wise person sees planning as a natural part of putting order and structure into their world. Teaching our children, the value of planning gives them an important tool in guiding their directions with personal satisfaction and confidence.
“‘Good teaching is more a giving of right questions than a giving of right answers.’
-Josef Albers”
The great potential of our children
School is such a great place for bringing out the best in children.
Each day teachers motivate, stimulate and drive children’s thirst for learning. They are experts at bringing out the best in the children as they know that within each child there is so much potential. The more they develop and ignite their gifts the greater learning will occur on so many levels.
How about home?
Do we recognise those great gifts and the potential of our children? Some potential is very obvious. If a child is good at Maths that is quite clear to everyone. However, there are many potentials that we need to bring out of our children and certainly, we need to recognise the more subtle potentiality that appears from time to time.
Here is a list upon which to reflect when highlighting and affirming potential gifts in our children:
Some of our child’s potential is very obvious. Some is not and we must recognise it and celebrate it.
Notice how your child treats others. Do they demonstrate a well-developed style of treating others with kindness and understanding? This shows the development of compassion and sensitivity.
Does your child have skill in engaging with all children and being inclusive in play? This is quite a gift and potentially shows leadership in a child. Great leaders are inclusive.
Is your child well organised and likes to set goals? Such a gift shows the potential of being a well-balanced and self-disciplined person.
Is your child a great listener to others? Such a gift leads to the potential of being an effective adult who listens with intent, patience and tolerance for other’s opinions.
Does your child show patience in a special way? Oh, what a gift is developing here. Such potential leads to a well-balanced person, tolerant and wise.
Is your child noticeably aware of others that are less advantaged? This shows that a child will potentially develop strong compassion and fairness in life.
These are some examples where your child can develop into a warm and caring person with substantial emotional maturity.
This article is about looking for the potential in your child to develop into a well-rounded human being. Think about all the subtle examples of your child’s behaviour to others and themselves.
To live to your full potential is all about using your gifts and greatness for the common good. Let’s encourage our children to see their potential as an opportunity to grow wisely and sensibly.
“Free the child’s potential and you will release them into the world.”
Teaching our children to take on responsibility
This is all about giving them gradual independence to manage themselves. As they grow in independence they will certainly come across situations where they are uncomfortable, exposed to failure and feel generally unsatisfied with their efforts. These are all-natural feelings. Sometimes as parents we think by taking the responsibility away from them, they will have less pain and besides what if they make a mistake? How will they feel?
As the child grows in independence, they also grow in taking on their own responsibility for things. This teaches them to own the situation. There is much satisfaction with a child when they start to take responsibility. This gives them a sense of self-worth and a feeling of growing up as a real person. There is nothing more enriching than having that feeling of making decisions yourself.
Our role as parents is to support this gradual development and watch with joy our young one taking on responsibility.
Teachers know that in order for children to learn effectively they need to take ownership of their learning. During the school day, teachers will provide situations where children will make informed decisions on what they learn and how they learn. At parent-teacher interviews, there is nothing more satisfying for a parent than to hear that their child is a responsible learner. This has come about by gradually learning to take risks and to make responsible choices for themselves.
Teachers know that success only comes from accepting responsibility.
You will be amazed how small opportunities to take on responsibility will increase self-esteem once they are successful in showing responsibility.
Consider the following thoughts to build stamina in your child with regard to taking on responsibility:
Consider your own life situation. Are you a person that models responsibility and ownership of situations? Talk to your child about why this has been important to you over the years.
Do you have a list of chores at home that your child must do as part of the family routine? Could these chores grow in responsibility as the child gets older and demonstrates their growing strength in this area?
If you are having a holiday, get your child involved in the planning and being responsible for certain duties. Perhaps they take ownership of packing their bags, researching venues etc.
Talk about the responsibility of doing tasks at school. We know that leadership develops in children who show strong skills in being responsible. School captains are chosen from those children who demonstrate strong skills in being responsible. Teachers frequently set up monitors in classrooms on a rotation basis giving children responsibilities to manage.
Talk about how you value your child’s growing awareness and interest in taking on responsibility. Take care not to rescue your child too soon after disaster strikes as this will only disengage your child from taking on responsibility. It also delays any further interest in being responsible.
For those children reticent to be independent, give them small opportunities to be independent. You will be amazed how this will grow once they are successful in showing responsibility.
We live in a world where the safety of our children is paramount and to this end, I can understand how we are cautious parents in giving them too much responsibility and independence early.
I would argue that with gradual responsibility being handed to them, they are stronger and more confident young people. They are more observant of life around them when being responsible for themselves. They confidently and intuitively show skill in navigating their way around difficult situations and are much happier in themselves being in control.
“The greatest gifts you can give your children are the roots of responsibility and the wings of independence.”
The potential of your child is immense
How magnificent it is when a child is born. At this point we envisage a wonderful life together as family. We dream of all the great potential of our special child. And so, you should. What can sometimes happen, as the years progress, it can cloud those hopes when we see unpleasant behaviour and our child challenges us in ways that are surprisingly uncomfortable. We can become fatigued by the onslaught of childhood and adolescent problems, that may appear, as our bundle of joy grows older.
What is worth keeping in mind is that the great potential you dreamt about with your newborn is ever-present. They are capable of so much and with our help can achieve in so many surprising ways. They of course must journey through the rigour of childhood, which will naturally have periods where their dreams are clouded as well.
There is nothing more exciting than sitting in a classroom and observing the enthusiasm, interest and passion children show for their work. They are like sponges and are keen to absorb all the advice and stimulus that they can access. This is such a liberating environment for bringing out a child’s potential. Of course, here I sit as someone who does not have the job of rearing the child. My observation looks at the child from a pure perspective and here I encourage parents to similarly keep a clear vision.
Your child has so much potential. Teachers know this and in clever ways tease out their strengths and encourage new thinking in each child. Sometimes all we need to do is encourage their ideas and affirm their interests and passions no matter how different they are to your line of thinking. Potential is driven by ongoing encouragement.
A child’s developing confidence will influence their ability to express their potentiality. Our job is to help build their confidence and demonstrate faith in their attempts to be stronger, louder and more expressive overtime.
In classrooms, teachers look for a child’s potential and work to displaying their gifts and strengths through many and varied activities. It may not be through academics. It may be through sport, drama, art or music etc. When a child realises that they have strengths and that they are encouraged to develop them, a whole new world of hope and possibilities expands on their horizon. Their self-confidence escalates and the world is their oyster.
Consider:
Be open to your child’s potential no matter how different this may be from your own ambitions. Accept and celebrate their differences. The best comes out when they feel liberated to be themselves.
Invite conversations around what they enjoy and what sparks their interests. Try not to direct their interests, but be guided by what they tell you. Listen with interest and not condemnation.
Remember to affirm their passions and encourage their interests, as they are often stimulated by their developing potential.
A child is a work in progress and over time their passions, interests and strengths will align if allowed to grow. This will lead to them reaching their potential over time.
Be the instrument that allows them to develop their potential by affirming, reassuring, allowing trial and error and above all seeing every attempt as success, not failure.
Keep in mind that your child’s potential is unique to them. Sometimes we get confused when we see considerable difference in our children. We can feel more reassured when they seem more like us. Their journey and potentiality are all about them. Best we celebrate the unique differences we see, rather than bemoan the lack of similarity in our children.
A child’s potential is such a wonderful part of their development. Your role is simply to open the doors and windows, to let in fresh possibilities for them to experience their potential. You are building a strong foundation enabling your child to embrace what is their right, to reach their full potential.
“Free the child’s potential and you will transform them into the world.”