Don’t Show Anger To Your Child

Anger can be a terrifying and degrading experience for your child if you’re taking your anger out on them. When you abuse your child physically or verbally, you are actually sending a wrong signal to your child. It can also lead to lasting and lethal implications, so it’s crucial that as a parent, you must always keep your anger in check.

A recent report that I have read have shown that children whose parents often express anger are more likely to be difficult to discipline. Identify problems from your past and honestly look at current situations that are making you unhappy and full of anger.

Is it work related, pressure from your boss, unfulfilled goals that are bothering you, relationship issues with your spouse and circle of friends or you are frustrated simply of so many things that are beyond your control. If all your child ever sees is your angry face and hears an angry voice, that’s what they’ll most likely grow into as well.

Young children always model after their parents in terms of behavior and what they learn in the initial age of between 1 to 3 years old will have a lasting impact on how they will turn out to be in the future.

If you ever face a situation where you know that you are going to explode in anger in front of your children, follow this mantra. “Take a deep breath, walk away, get a grip on yourself” before addressing the situation. Another way is to douse yourself with a bucket of cold water over your head! Highly recommended! Ha!

P.S It’s tough but you have to make the effort to keep your anger in check. I know that from personal experiences especially when I have two little devils at home fighting each other and making so much noise everyday.

The Keys to Effective Discipline

Disciplining a child is one of the most important, yet difficult, roles of being a parent. Effective discipline teaches a child to be self-disciplined later in life. It helps your child grow up to be happy and well-adjusted. Effective and positive discipline teaches and guides children, and helps them to feel safe, secure, and valued.

Discipline should be based on a child’s age, development and temperament. A parent’s goals by disciplining their child is to protect them from danger, to help them learn self-control and self-discipline and to develop a sense of responsibility.

Children should be respectful of their parent’s authority. If they’re disciplined harshly or unfairly, especially if it includes shouting or humiliating, will make it difficult if not impossible for a child to respect and trust their parent.

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Praises Vs Harsh Discipline

Recent studies suggest that low-income parents tend to endorse much harsher discipline, partially because they hold stronger beliefs about the value of spanking and experience higher levels of stress.

However, parents who work in high-stress jobs or are stay-at-home parents who are feeling frustrated or isolated are also at risk. It’s very important that parents recognize their tendency to punish a child too severely and take the needed steps to make sure the punishment is appropriate for their child’s age, temperament and maturity level.

The study’s finding showed that parents from lower income levels or work high pressure jobs are more stressed, and they react more emotionally to their child’s behavior, and thus use harsher discipline. A parent in this situation may benefit from outside assistance and learning about alternative disciplinary strategies that are more appropriate and less harsh.

It’s also important for a parent to realize that children thrive on praise. Parents in such a situation may always jump to discipline but fail to praise their child for their good deeds, behaviors and traits. Children instinctively want to please their parents and make them proud. By encouraging positive behavior, the parent will most likely discourage the behavior that has driven them in the past to punish too harshly.

In order to encourage positive behavior deserving of praise, parents might want to consider giving their child a task they know they’re able to accomplish, and praise their efforts along the way. Parents need to also consistently praise their children for the positive traits they possess. Their child might be good at math in school, helpful to their little brother or sister, or is good at drawing pictures. Praise these good traits and the child is likely to respond by acting appropriately and behaving positively in order to gain more praise.

In the end, it’s important to remember that a child is just that – a child. A parent should make a concerted effort to make sure the discipline is appropriate and take care of themselves physically, mentally and emotionally so they can optimally provide for their child’s physical and emotional well-being.

Play Is Good For Child’s Development

We’ve all heard the term, “Oh, that’s child’s play.” It implies something is easy, frivolous and unimportant in the overall scheme of things. But to a child, child’s play is essential to their mental, social, emotional, and physical development.

We all know that children like to play. But what we may not know is the importance of play in a child’s life. Play is essential to every area of a child’s growth and development.

Play provides a means for energy to be put to use. It strengthens and refines small and large motor skills, and it builds stamina and strength. Sensory learning develops mostly through play. Play is significant to physical development in that without it the body could not grow and develop normally.

Children possess a natural curiosity. They, explore, learn and make sense out of their environment by playing. Parents and educators alike can support this learning activity by ensuring age-appropriate toys, materials and environments are available to the child.

Play enables children to know things about the world and to discover information essential to learning. Through play children learn basic concepts such as colors, counting, how to build things, and how to solve problems. Thinking and reasoning skills are at work every time a child engages in some type of play.

Children learn to relate to one another, negotiate roles, share, and obey rules through play. They also learn how to belong to a group and how to be part of a team. A child obtains and retains friends through play.

Play fulfills many needs including a sense of accomplishment, successfully giving and receiving attention, and the need for self-esteem. It helps them develop a strong sense of self, and is emotionally satisfying to them. They learn about fairness, and through pretending learn appropriate ways of expressing emotion such as anger, fear, frustration, stress and discover ways of dealing with these feelings.

So encourage your child’s play. Color pictures, make finger paintings, build buildings and imaginary cities with blocks, and built a tent in the middle of the living room and go camping! And as we all know, childhood is fleeting, so let them enjoy being a kid while they are one!

Encourage your Child to Feel Important

It’s imperative for a child’s healthy development to feel important and worthy. Healthy self-esteem is a child’s armor against the challenges of the world. Kids who feel good about themselves seem to have an easier time handling conflicts and resisting negative pressures. They tend to smile more readily and enjoy life. These kids are realistic and generally optimistic. It’s also been shown that children who feel important are well-rounded, respectful, and excel in academics, extracurricular activities and hobbies and develop healthy relationships with their peers.

In contrast, for children who do not feel important or cherished have low self-esteem, and challenges can become sources of major anxiety and frustration. Children who think poorly of themselves have a hard time finding solving problems, and may become passive, withdrawn, or depressed.

You are the biggest influence in your child feeling important, valued and worthy. Remember to praise your child for a job well done, and also for putting for a valiant effort. Praise the good traits they naturally possess, and help them find ways to learn from their mistakes and failures. Be honest and sincere in your praise. Help them realize that you also suffer from self doubt and can make mistakes from time to time, but that you know that you are important, valued and loved. When you nurture your own self -esteem and importance, your child will learn to do the same, so be sure to lead by example and steer clear of self-depreciating yourself or engaging in activities that lower your self-worth or importance.

Your child may have inaccurate or irrational beliefs about themselves, their abilities or their traits. Accentuate the positive about your child, and encourage your child to set realistic expectations and standards for themselves. Help them identify traits or skills they’d like to improve and help them come up with a game plan for accomplishing that goal. Encourage your child to become involved in cooperative activities that foster a sense of teamwork and accomplishment.

Through these and other positive, affirming activities, your child is sure to develop a strong sense of self importance, value and worth which will carry into their adult years.

Why is it so hard to get working?

Is it really that hard to get your butt off the ground and start working towards your goal?

Seems like nowadays when I talked to my friends, most of them would generally lament about the costs of living, their pay, their career directions and a general lack of opportunities for them to break free from the mundane life they are living.

While they acknowledged the need to work towards their goal, however many can’t seem to be able to put plans into action. I’m not sure if this is a trait common among people of my generation and younger, but from my own personal observation and that of my mentor, it seemed to be the case.

Recently, I met up with a good buddy of mine. We talked about many things, and he asked for advice on how to overcome his procrastination and the inability to work hard for things he desired. He understood the need to work hard but just can’t seem to bring himself to do it.

We chatted for a few hours and I really hoped that he understands that no one can help him except himself. While opportunities are easily available to him, he really need to start changing his attitude and mentality. Otherwise, opportunities just like time will not wait for him.

P.S Hi Bro, if you are reading this, please do yourself a favor and start changing today, immediately, not tomorrow or next week. It will never come if you keep delaying and thinking that I will change later.

Teaching Your Child To Respect Others

In order to teach or child to treat others with respect and dignity, they must also be treated that way. And childhood is a time for children to learn about the world, including how to get along with others. Parents play an essential role in teaching children how to form healthy relationships and grow into socially adept individuals. This social competence allows children to be cooperative and generous, express their feelings, and empathize with others.

The most effective way to teach children this lesson is by modeling the behavior you want to encourage. Every time you say “please” or lend a helping hand, you are showing your children how you would like them to act. Ask for your children’s help with daily tasks, and accept their offers of help. Praise your child’s good behavior and traits often, and help them realize how good it feels inside to do a good deed or be generous with another person.

Socially competent children are ones who have a strong sense of self worth and importance. When a child feels good about themselves, it’s easy for them to treat others in a positive, helpful manner.

Encourage acts of generosity through sharing and cooperation. Let your child know when it’s someone else’s turn with a toy or on the swing and praise their ability to recognize this on their own. Thank them for being polite and respectful and for sharing and cooperating.

Children know from their own experiences that words can hurt, and that name-calling, teasing, or excluding others affects how people feel. Children want to be treated fairly, but they don’t always understand how to treat others the same way. One way to teach fairness is to explain a rule to your child, pointing out that it applies to him as well as to others.

Some Strategies To Improve Your Personal Life

Setting up strategies to improve your personal life is only one step to realize your goals. You have to create plans, goals and take the steps to follow through. Once you have your details gathered, you can start to set up strategies.

How to plan long-term strategies:
Strategies are approaches we take to attain our goals. Our approach determines what comes of these plans and goals. When you create long-term goals, you have to provide as much descriptions as possible, leading to the strategies used to achieve your goals.

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Don’t Spoil Your Child Through Love

Though we all worry about spoiling our child, rest assured that you cannot spoil your child with love. Love doesn’t spoil children. Love is imperative to a child’s healthy development, and it’s just not possible to love your child too much. They need caring adults to spend time with them, play with them, teach them, protect them, and enjoy life with them.

It’s a parent’s job to provide love, safety and encouragement. The process of growing up provides children with lots of challenges. Try to listen openly and understand their situation and communicate honestly with them when they have difficulties and letdowns in their life.

Set appropriate limits with your child and then adhere to them. Establishing limits with your child gives them a sense of safety and security. Sometimes parents do not set limits because they don’t want to fight with their children. They don’t want to cause bad feelings. They may beg a child to comply. Or they may make a rule and fail to enforce it. They may nag without ever enforcing the rules. None of these helps children. When your child fails to adhere or comply with the boundaries you’ve set for them, be firm yet kind in your response. This lets them know that you’re serious about the rule but dedicated to helping and loving them.

Bear in mind though that each child is different and what works for one child may not work for another. For example, one child may respond well to the direct approach of telling them a specific time to be home, where another child may need a gentle reminder that it’s now time to come home.

Develop a firm but kind manner of making and enforcing your household’s rules and expectations. There’s no need to fear our children, and there should be no need to instill a sense of fear in our children in order to get them to comply.

Get Rid of Procrastination, Now!

Do you always put off your work till the very last minute? Then you, my friend, are one of the millions of people troubled by the procrastination virus. Procrastination is the biggest reason for loss of productivity and late output. Though many would not admit it, they would benefit greatly if they start their work on time.

For many people, putting off their work for later is more of a habit than desire. It can be so tough to get into a groove where starting your tasks in a timely fashion is a priority; especially if the penalty for being late are not that hard to bear.

If you are one of these people, yet you desire to shake off your penchant for procrastination, here are a few tips to help you overcome this dilemma and become a more productive and dependable person.

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