Hello,
I have recently become a father and I have started thinking more and more about what is the right way to raise my child. I often reflect on my past and what have contributed the most to my individual development and made me who I am today. In this post, I will try to provide you with some ideas that can be used in order to help you to raise your child into a good human that is kind, educated, carrying and loving, respectful, hard-working, curious, fearless, and funny.
What makes a person become good or bad? I think there are many things that contribute to one’s development as an individual. The characteristics of humans often change based on the environment they grow into. For example, if you are rich more than likely you are more spoiled than if you were born in a poor family and struggled. The individual who had everything when growing often is less likely to work hard while a person with less often had learned that hard work is necessary to achieve things. But for me I think the biggest contributor were my parents. Both of them spend a lot of time with me and my older sister to develop us and teach us what is right and wrong.
For example, by sending us every summer to a different country being it USA, UK, Germany or France to learn languages and meet other people both my sister and I have become very open to other people’s cultures and ideas. When you expose your child to this type of experience I think they not only become more independent as they travel alone and learn how to do things without anyone else’s help, but it also builds their character. It opens their mind to meeting new people and cultures.
By being exposed to other kids from around the world early on children do not differentiate between race or colour instead all they see is another child. As parents, it is our responsibility to teach and expose our children to this type of situations as early as possible in order to develop that understanding in their lives and teach them to treat everyone with respect and to not discriminate. The other month my wife and I were in Metz, France visiting a nice Disney Ice Sculpture event, and while we were in the coffee shop trying to warm-up after our visit we saw a young girl with some disability. She really wanted to come and play with our daughter and even though we were not sure what her problem was we taught it is great that our daughter can see other individuals and still feel it’s just another person without crying or feeling scared.
One things that I noticed with my daughter and I have been reading online as well is the more time you spend with your child, especially when they are growing, the faster they develop. And that is really true by spending more time I can see that every day she learns something new. It was the same for me my parents would spend a lot of hours to teach us being it math or history they will switch between whatever each of their strengths were but still spend a lot of time with me and my sister. So most certainly, leave those iPads and iPhones, turn off the TV and focus on the kid in any case it’s not good to let your child watch those screens until they are at least 18 months old. I know it makes it easier to relax as the child will focus on their things and you can finally have a break but trust me the amount of time you spend with your child developing and teaching them stuff is way more worth it than an episode of your favourite drama show. After all, after 18 years when your child leaves the house and goes to another country that same show is still going to be available to watch but the time you missed playing and teaching your child will never be replaced.
Let your child learn as many languages as possible when they are young. It is proven that the more lingual children are the easier for them to pick up new things later on in live. When I was a child computers were just entering my country and there were not many of them. But it was one of those things that everyone had to have. Unfortunately, my parents did not know how to use them, so they let me and my sister to figure that out after buying us one. Every so often when the software would break my parents would have to bring the computer to the technician to fix it, and he would always install some new games for me to play. All of them getting more complex and interesting as the gaming industry and skill of developers was improving. By being exposed to different content and challenged to think and figure out puzzles and trivia questions I developed a quick brain that helps me solve problems fast today. When issues or though questions arise, I can respond a lot faster than my peers in work or school. So, with my child I try to do the same, I buy her toys that encourage some type of thinking but also challenge her and make her think. It should not always be easy and I never look at the age of the toys (of course make sure it is not a dangerous toy – small parts and things like that for toddlers) but rather the usefulness and the potential of what it can teach my daughter.
An important part for your child development is the feeling of safe environment. If I child does not feel safe at home how do you expect them to feel safe when they go out of the house. By making sure that parents never raise their voice and fight in front of their child that can be very easily solved. If you have something to say to your partner create a code work or a sign language to note when there is a need for a more serious conversation and that can be postponed for later when the child is sleeping (again with no raised volume on sound). It is hard but my parents have never fought in front of me and my sister and I don’t think I have ever heard them scream in their room either. I believe it is achievable if both parents are willing to put the work. And yes, it does take extra time and energy but my advice is do it!
Children need to be appraised when being successful and pat on the shoulder when failed at something. As parents, we need to teach them when they fail they can try again but this time succeed. Because failure is part of success. In fact, for me the best way I learn is by failing. So being able to encourage your child after they lost a basketball game they really wanted to win and teach them to learn from the mistakes that happened is what every parent should do. And no, we should not appraise them for everything, if we tell everyone how good our children are and they keep hearing that in the end we might do something that is even worse than not appraising them in the first place. We should appraise them for what they are good at but also teach them that there might be things that they will be bad at and that is ok. I might be good at basketball but I am a terrible singer and that is ok, I am ok with that and I accepted it but that doesn’t matter that if I wanted to become a better singer I couldn’t do it, with enough practice I might be able to become somewhat better but I know that and my parents taught me its ok to do what you like and love and be bad at what you don’t really like to do.
Teach them how to work hard. That is probably the hardest thing to do as our society is become less and less interested in working overall. Everything is becoming automated and people want to do less and less in work. That is not the mentality I grew up with and even today I am always eager to work hard and do new things. By relating to the first point made in the article, traveling around the world and seeing a lot of things at a young age develops curiosity and interest in learning new things. That same curiosity often helps people to work hard. When you are curious, don’t know how somethings works and want to understand as individual you are more likely to work harder to find out because you want to understand and know. That is the nature of people who ask questions and want to learn. So, keep teaching your child new things and let them be curious. Create new family games, take them on camping and let them to figure out how to build a house in the forest with only the materials from the nature, bring them to the beach and ask them to be artistic and do something with the sand, always keep their mind working and that will build onto their character.
I have been taught from young age that I should never fear to try new things. Go and play soccer if you like it stay with it if not try volleyball or basketball until you find something you like. Don’t like your job quit and start something on your own this has always been my parents attitude and by having their support all the time I become fearless. Make sure that you tell your child that you got their back no matter what decision they make, you are their parent and you are there for them if they need you. This will make them more fearless and yes guiding them in the right direction and being their mentor is ok but also let them fail, let them learn and experience what they thought is right (only as long as there is no risk for their wellbeing of course) and see if it or not. The most important part is being there when needed, during the hardest and most difficult moments. Do not let your children get to the point where they are depressed and don’t want to live. I have a friend who experienced that, she simply didn’t have the support when needed and when she got help it was too late. She went to hospital for depression treatment and took years to recover but that could have been avoided if someone was there for her when she was down.
Humor is very important for every human being. It is proven that people who laugh for certain amount everyday are a lot more healthy and happy overall, so be sure to smile and laugh. How do you make your child laugh, it is simple. Find the things that make your child laugh and keep repeating them until you discover a new things. My daughter loves when I squeeze the mayonnaise bottle and the sound it makes. I can spend hours just doing that and listening to her laughter as it is so funny and joyful for both of us. Obviously, there is some limit when she starts hiccuping that is probably a good time to stop until next time. But the point is every child have something that makes them laugh, our job as parents is to find what that is and make it happen. Children learn humour as they grow, based on situations they experience and things they do. So simply try to have fun and good memories together. By spending more time with the children it will happen rather sooner than later.
Education is most certainly crucial in child’s development but what makes a child interested to study and learn? For me it was my mother. She often taught me that by learning and studying hard I will build something that no one can take away from me. The knowledge is power as people say and having it even if you lose your house and all your money one day, you still have your knowledge. The next day you can start something on your own and make things happen. The other funny way that she was keeping me in check when I saw no point in continuing to study was to simply tell me: “Do you want to be a garbage man and a toilet cleaner or do you want to study?” until I was saying no and was scared from cleaning garbage this worked but at a point in my life where it made no difference if I would do hard labour or study that was no longer efficient. So, there are different ways to convince a child same like the different leadership styles a manger can have at work – it depends on the situation and child involved.
And lastly the easiest thing any parent can do is love their child. By telling them I love you every day your child will learn to be loving and carrying it’s that easy. A lot of people are afraid of those words, not sure why some people struggle to pronounce them but it is proven that when you tell someone many times the same thing over and over they start relating to it and believe it. So, tell your children that you love them and care for them, that you will always be there for them no matter what happens next. By following some of the other tips, not fighting in front of them with your partner, by being there for them, and letting them fail and cry on your shoulder when they do, appraising them when they succeed you as their parent will be able to influence and develop on their loving personality.
Those are some of my tips that I believe have helped me become who I am today and that I plan to use with my daughter as she is growing up. Please share and add more as I am sure I only touched on a few of the many ideas on making our children better for the future. Thank you for reading and looking forward to adding new ideas to my list and trying them out with my daughter.