Parenting Information |
|
7 Powerful Ways to Show Love to ChildrenSteve Brunkhorst Our children are our most important legacy to the world. However, our love is our most important legacy to our children. Here are seven ways to show love that will help children build sturdy foundations for the future. 1. Spend Time with Your Children. Time is the most loving gift we can give to our children. It allows for the mutual exchange of ideas, emotions, actions, and words that help our children develop and learn to communicate. Enjoy a toddlers tea parties as well as a teens ball games. Help your children build things and create art. Begin new family traditions that you can enjoy together each year. Ample time spent in mutually enjoyable activities will create memories you will always treasure. 2. Be the Primary Role Model for Your Children. Children need examples to follow. Teach practical values to your children by modeling those values. Admit when you have made a mistake and apologize. Model being committed to the ideals you embrace. Demonstrate the advantage of integrity over peer pressure. We teach and influence children more through actions than words. We are our childrens first heroes; the ideals that we live today are the ideals that will influence our children throughout life. 3. Listen to Your Children. A childs message is one of his or her most essential gifts. We build self-esteem in children when we show interest in what they have to say. Children need to communicate their pride of accomplishment as well as their needs. Get down at eye level with very young children and listen with your eyes, ears, and heart. Listen most of all to the feelings conveyed through a childs eyes and expressions. If you listen to your children deeply, they will grow up listening deeply to you. 4. Provide Your Children with Loving Discipline. Children need guidelines and safe boundaries without being constrained unnecessarily. They need to learn the value of being accountable for their choices and actions. Let your children know that you disapprove of hurtful actions but will always love them as sons and daughters. Loving discipline enables them to recognize the best in other people. It allows children the freedom to explore the world safely and reach their highest potential. 5. Give Your Children Encouragement. Encouraging words are powerful emotional deposits of confidence and self-esteem. Verbally acknowledge your childrens special talents and accomplishments. Catch your children doing something great, and tell them what a great job they have done. Children need to know that we recognize and support their hopes and dreams for the future. Encouraging children to grow mentally, emotionally, and spiritually provides the foundation for living a balanced life. 6. Share Your Experiences with Your Children. We each have valuable stories to tell, unique maps of our journey through life. These stories tell how our reactions to events created the life we are living now. Sharing the benefit of your experiences — the roadblocks and rewards — is a very loving way to guide your children. Your children may face many of the situations you faced. Your experiences can help them make informed decisions and avoid unnecessary mistakes. Among the most worthwhile possessions that we can someday leave for our children are journals filled with the stories that shaped our lives. 7. Love and Support Your Children Unconditionally. Love is an unconditional gift from the heart; it is not a reward for good behavior. Let your children know that you will love and support them in any situation. This message creates a sturdy bond of trust. Your children will grow to feel safe in coming to you with any problem they face. Children need the freedom to make decisions, try new things, and learn that life requires personal responsibility and persistence. They need the freedom to fail and learn from mistakes without being judged. Unconditional love helps them to acquire the decisiveness and resiliency required to become successful. If you could sum up all of our childrens needs, hopes, and expectations in one word, that word would be love. We share love when we play a central role in our childrens world of learning and discovery. Our legacy of love will have a guiding influence upon our children and grandchildren for many generations.
| RELATED ARTICLES Shared Dancing Has Benefits for Babies and New Moms Alike Every parent knows the calming effects on their baby of rocking and gentle motion. After all, who among us has not paced the floor at 2 am trying to entice a little one back to sleep by rocking, bouncing or swaying Delete Cookies: New-Age Diet or Common Sense Internet Security No, this article isn’t about some new, lose-20-pounds-in-a-week, certified-by-some-tan-Southern-California-doctor diet. It’s about cookies on your computer - what they are, why they are there, and what to do about them. Computer cookies actually have quite a bit in common with their baked counterparts - some are good, some are bad, and they have expiration dates. The Courage to Be a Loving Parent Most of us really don’t like it when someone is angry at us. We don’t like it when people go into resistance to helping us when we need help, instead of caring about us. We don’t like it when people withdraw from us, disconnecting from us and shutting us out. We don’t like it when people make demands on us and do not respect our right or need to say no. Many of us will do almost anything to avoid the soul loneliness and pain we feel when people treat us in angry, resistant, demanding and uncaring ways. Preparing Your Child for the Three Rs There is little doubt that reading, riting and rithmetic are crucial elements in the education of any child. A childs ability to later cope in the adult world, to have a career, to take charge of his financial affairs and to live independently depends to a large extent on his mastery of these skills. The Challenges of Single Parenting Having worked with parents for the last 35 years and written books on parenting and relationships, I’ve discovered that one of the greatest challenges for us as parents is to be loving role-models for our children, showing our children through our behavior how to take personal responsibility for their own feelings and needs.Our children need to learn from our role-modeling how to nurture themselves within and how to create a sense of safety in the world.In families where both a mother and father are present, both parents can participate in nurturing the child emotionally and taking care of the child in the world, and both parents can role-model what it looks like to do this for themselves. A Dangerous Environment The internet is a dangerous place for your children. Dont even begin to believe that your child is safe. There are more dangers than you can possibly imagine waiting to lure children to their doom. You had better be aware of whats happening and take steps to shield them from the danger ... if you dont, your childs sanity and safety are at serious risk. Pieces of Time and Pivotal Moments Life is comprised of pieces of time sprinkled with pivotal moments. Sometimes these moments have immediate impact. Other times, they are slow to manifest and reveal their importance.But if you listen closely to the soft whispers of life, they will guide you on an unexpected journey filled with beauty, understanding and fulfillment. One such moment occurred for me about eight years ago. Parenting Starts Before Pregnancy While it may seem farfetched to some people, many of my clients remember what they felt and experienced while still in the womb. Comments such as these are not unusual: Graphology - Reveal the Inner Personality & Talent of a Child Graphology isthe science of understanding the human mind through person’shandwriting. When a person writes, the signal in the form of letters get decoded / printed on the paper by the fingers. Graphology aims at understanding & interpreting these signals through the writing. Using this we can know a persons mind so the thoughts, character and behavior. Awesome Dads Top Ten Ways To Be The Foundation of Your Family Part of the responsibility of being a father is to establish a strong foundation for the family. Just like a building foundation, much of this work goes unseen and rarely gets acknowledged, yet the strength and integrity of the entire structure relies on it. The following intentions, although not always perfectly fulfilled, give us guidance in our mission. 5 Love Languages and Those Who Contribute at Home The work around a house or apartment has got to be some of the least thanked work ever created. Whether it is the yard work on the weekend, plumbing as it arises, daily dishes & errand running, we tend to overlook the assistance that our spouse and children offer us regularly. In The Crook Of My Arms His head is tilted back, mouth slightly open. His breath is slow and steady and his eyes almost all-closed but slightly open. His neck nestles over the crook of my arm and I stare at his face as he breathed in and breathed out. A feeling of overwhelming love washed over me. I was totally at peace as I watched my son sleep in my arms. Using Music To Calm Your Baby Music is a wonderful way for you to calm and soothe your baby, especially during the first year.How many times have your heard parents say that there was nothing that they could do with their crying, fussing baby until they tried music.This is because music does indeed soothe the savage beast, or in this case, the baby. Learning To Be Safe With Your Children On The Road NC—According to recent Canadian studies, as many as eight out of 10 child safety seats may be improperly installed in Canadian vehicles. While most parents understand the importance of child safety seats and make sure they have one for their child, the problem comes from a lack of caregiver education when installing them. Soul Mate - a Pain in the Neck "and they lived happily ever after... Grandparents! Help Your Grandkids Do Math! This may come as a surprise. Ten Suggestions For The Overscheduled Child Ever wonder what happened to the family dinner hour Or for that matter the family dinner half hour Monday is Soccer Practice, Tuesday is Piano lesson, Wednesday is Church Activities, Thursday is a Soccer Game, Friday a birthday partyto attend. A number of events will fill up the weekend. Do you feel like a professional scheduler and taxi driver Are you finding yourself increasingly irritable as you go from one activity to the next Maybe you and your children are overscheduled. Making the Holidays More Meaningful Have the holidays become too commercial for you Are you feeling empty and unfulfilled during this time of the year This year by making some simple changes you and your children can truly make the holidays more meaningful. Attitudes-Based Learning The greatest discovery of my generation about 1900 is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind. Healing Anger and Violence in Our Society I have counseled individuals, couples, families and business partners for the past 35 years and authored eight published books. All this experience has resulted in the development of a profound six-step healing process, called Inner Bonding, which anyone can learn and use throughout the day FREE course available - see resource box. |
home | site map |
© 2005 |