Mentally strong kids will inevitably become responsible adults of tomorrow. It’s the responsibility of parents that their children cannot only validate and recognize their feelings but also to teach them lessons to overcome difficult emotions. Parents should handle every situation with a mature mindset around their children so that they can portray that behavior when they become mature. Since children learn better through mirroring, rather than excessive reprimanding. Here are some of the tips for raising mentally strong children.
Sense of Leadership
Children should be obedient enough but it does not mean that they don’t know how to practice autonomy. Children should know that their parents are the leader in every situation but you should equally value their opinion. Moreover, they should be encouraged to make their own decisions so that they can differentiate right from wrong. Conformist behavior, often inculcated through helicopter parenting, decreases creative freedom. Teach your children self-reliance while respecting authority.
Don’t Fulfill Every Demand Child Makes
Parents usually fulfill all the demands of their kids when they misbehave and stubbornly ask for things. Never give your child anything when they misbehave as this will create the habit in them that each time they will misbehave they will get what they want. Rewards should be earned, while punishments should be given when they are due – this will create a sense of accountability in your child.
Spending Exorbitant Amounts of Money on Children
Don’t spend an exorbitant amount of money on your kids as research shows just how unhealthy overindulgence is for kids. If they always get everything they want, they miss out on learning valuable life skills like responsibility, hardworking, and self-discipline. Moreover, children become habitual of getting things the easy way. Thus, spend only when it is due.
Stop Expecting Perfection
Never let this feeling build in your kids that they are not fulfilling your expectations so that they cannot succeed in their lives. This will create feelings of lower self-esteem, narcissism, and self-doubt in them. While high expectations are good for kids, setting the bar too high is likely to backfire. Whether you expect too much from your child on the sports field or your academic expectations are unreasonable, kids who feel they can’t succeed are likely to stop trying. Help your child aim for big goals, but make sure those goals are realistic. And use mistakes, failures, and setbacks to teach important life skills.
Focus on Adding Brain Foods to Their Nutrition
Most parents love spoiling their kids with food. But this can be a destructive pattern in the long run. Hyper-palatable foods rich in sugar and fats have detrimental effects on the brain. Your child may end up developing eating disorders and may resort to food for stress management. Since a substantial amount of your brain develops until twenty-five years, you must feed your child foods rich in vitamins and minerals for better cognitive function. These include nuts, vegetables, fish, and dark chocolate. Find creative ways of incorporating them into your child’s diet. Of feed these to your children at a young age to help develop a varied palate – thus, children won’t be repulsed by them as they grow older.
Physical activity is also very important. Even better, get them enrolled in some martial arts class so they can learn discipline
Stop your child from negative self-talk
Healthier inner monologue is really important they should learn to respond to self-doubt on their own, at a young age. They need to learn that they should not believe everything that comes in their mind. When you catch them excessively loathing themselves or their surrounds – teach them to practice gratitude and finding solutions. Moreover, see where they are learning this behavior from and change yourself first if you’re the culprit. Ask them to collect evidence and be realistic at what point they are not good enough and ask them to improve the area where they lack.
Let Them Fall so That They Can Stand by Themselves
As a parent, it’s difficult to see your child fail but if you help them at every moment this will take the opportunity to learn valuable lessons from them. Preventing consequences deprives kids of learning valuable lessons that can help them in the future. As a parent, you just watch kids as a spectator and get out of the way. Let them flex muscles on their own and deal with the aftermath when they don’t succeed.
Finally, be patient! Raising a mentally strong child takes years of positive affirmations and habit building to see tangible results.