The education of our children is one of the issues that always keeps us concerned, being parents is a company that we all undertake with the hope that the love and dedication we have invested in it will yield the best possible results, as a protective instinct we all wish may our children be safe and that nothing in life can harm or divert them from a happy future and a promising life.
We invest in clothing, food and education as much as our ability allows, we develop their skills to the fullest with extracurricular activities, we watch for them to acquire proper hygiene and health habits, we monitor their friends and colleagues, all this is really a complete job of 24 hours a day, however, sometimes we do not think about small details that are not important because they are less noticeable, as is educating based on the development of an emotionally strong child .
Emotional education is a great orphan of traditional education , in current school curricula worldwide, the education of emotions occupies a very small or sometimes non-existent place, the product of these educational systems focused on knowledge is truly discouraging for the humanity, more and more children and adolescents are involved in problems that have no other origin than the management of their own emotions.
As responsible parents we must face this disadvantage and not get carried away by the need to always cover knowledge content, emotional management is a tool through which our children will have a more successful future than if we only let them learn arithmetic, letters, or science. Raising an emotionally strong child requires paying attention and being aware that emotions will always control all behaviors in our life, in addition to giving importance to the emotions that children manifest and the use or management that they acquire throughout their life. childhood.
Tips for raising an emotionally strong child
But what is an emotionally strong child? It is that child capable of identifying their own emotional states and those of others, understanding what things can affect with them, and how to handle those states to put them to work in generating solutions for the problems that they must face.
It sounds simple, and it is, the important thing in the first place is that we as parents function as facilitators of the process and that happens by understanding that we are also involved. Responsibility is the first requirement that we must assume. To make this process easier, here you can review a list with 10 tips to raise an emotionally strong child.
1. Develop competitiveness
The first thing is to understand what we mean by competitiveness, it is that feeling we experience when we are certain that we can handle situations effectively. To develop this feeling in children we must:
- Help identify your strengths and weaknesses
- Provide guidance on the problems encountered and their influence on solving the problem.
- Encourage the recognition of actions that have been positive.
- Stimulate decision making
- Enhance your ability to see the skills of others, always avoiding comparison.
- Avoid at all costs that our desire for protection generates in the child the idea that he does not have the capacity to resolve the situation (this last tip is very important)
2. Build trust
Self-confidence is the main tool for high self-esteem, another characteristic of emotionally strong children. We facilitate trust building through:
- Focus your attention on the best that the child has , so he can see it too.
- Express your skills in clear words.
- Give proper recognition to their successes.
- He praises positive characteristics of his personality, always avoiding falling into false praise.
- Never pressure the child, do not encourage him to go beyond what he can handle.
3. Promote connection
The establishment of ties with the family and the community sends a message of safety in children by feeling safe, loved and accepting the attitude of children changes, it can promote connections if:
- Encourages the child’s participation in group , family and community activities.
- Provides a safe and predictable environment for the child both physically and emotionally.
- Create family gatherings to resolve conflicts fairly and openly.
- Teach confidence through your fair treatment and your promises kept.
4. Empathy
Developing or stimulating the development of empathy in children is important, empathy is the ability to put yourself in the place of the other to understand the moment that is happening, to put yourself in the place of the other is not to let yourself be affected by the problems of others, but If you evaluate the importance of understanding the situation of the other people around you.
- Talk openly and with simple words your feelings , do not let the child interpret only what happens, if you are crying do not stop doing it instead explain in simple words why you do it, be sure to include in the explanation that things will change but for the moment is like that.
- Never judge another and less in front of a child , we do not want to raise implacable judges, on the contrary we want them to develop the ability to understand that we are all to a greater or lesser extent, we are different.
5. Self-control
It seems complicated and even contradictory to talk about developing self-control in others, but it is really possible to do it, even with quite young children, it is an easy exercise that you can achieve with:
- Develops and encourages the appearance of self-dialogue and the recognition of emotions through questioning, asks the child to describe what he feels or if he is very activated that he felt about different events, uses the narrative, gives examples, talks about physical feelings , help him to identify how his emotions affect him, closes with a summary of conclusions regarding the effect that this emotion had on his environment.
- He talks about responsibility and protagonism, he teaches that emotions arise on their own but that they can be managed and that he is solely responsible for carrying out that battle.
6. Global awareness
This concept may seem a bit advanced for children but it is not, in fact many children have developed it at an early age, it is important to convey to children that their actions can alter the spaces of other people or the planet because we are united in global way.
- It focuses attention on explaining the effects of human actions on the environment, talks about recycling based on the importance of keeping the life cycle healthy.
- Illustrate natural processes and use analogy to compare with little things that happen in the child’s immediate environment.
- Talk and demonstrate with facts .
7. Develop plasticity
Plasticity is the ability to adapt and modify in the face of the problems encountered.
- Open forums with troubleshooting.
- Encourage brainstorming to generate solutions.
- It establishes the strengths and advantages that the challenges of both the child and the family impose.
- Stimulates fortitude.
8. Confrontation skills
Confrontation is the power through which we face real problems looking for solutions, this is a very important skill, we can develop them with:
- Avoid evasions, do not encourage the decision to flee in the face of problems, on the contrary, accompany the child in the resolution of conflicts.
- Always value and establish the importance of continuing the fights until the end, regardless of the result, each battle lost or won generates experience.
9. Sense of impermanence
Learning and assuming that everything in life is constantly changing is also very important advice, impermanence dissolves one of the worst ties for emotional liberation, irrational attachment. While it is true that children need security, they also as human beings need to know that everything that begins will have an end.
- Celebrate the end of stages with him, at the end of kindergarten, or preschool or elementary school, it is important to celebrate with them and explain that time is up but that this end begins something new.
- Involves the child in death experiences, we have the tendency to disguise the deaths of family and friends to avoid pain and pain due to suffering and the departures of loved ones, this is not healthy for them, as it does not provide the ability necessary to understand that we are passing through life, involve them, put what happened in simple words and teach strength to handle it.
10. Effective use of emotional resources
The emotional resources to which we refer are those that we develop through our exposure to different life experiences, from an early age we transform our behaviors to face different problems. However, many of them backfire. We favor the effective use of emotional resources when:
- We promote the recognition of emotions and the attitudes they take towards them.
- We evaluate together with them the benefits of one or another attitude
- We teach effective strategies for managing emotions, through example.
We reiterate again that to be parents there is no manual, and that this is a relationship that is built day by day with the collaboration of all the participants, these are some effective little tips but your love and your intuition will always lead you to the best path , trust them.