As a parent, you are eager to raise your child in the most successful ways to ensure a joyful and healthy life for them. Parents, as a result, should adopt positive raising strategies in their parental styles to help their children be happy and mentally strong kids who can take on real-life challenges. When helping your kid to build mental strength and resilience, you will encourage them to find solutions to their problems, cope with suffering, adapt to change, and practice gratitude and self-love.
This article will explore 8 effective strategies that can build your child’s mental strength and happiness.
Let Your Child Make Mistakes
As a parent, you probably want your kids to be perfect and not make mistakes, however small they are. But the truth is, we all make mistakes. This is, mostly, perceived as something negative, something to be avoided and not accepted. However, making mistakes is, sometimes, healthy and positive because it provides your kids with opportunities where they can learn from their mistakes and build, in the process, resilient mental health. It is important for you as a parent that you should never make your child feel ashamed or embarrassed about their mistakes. Instead, encourage them to think about what they learned from it and what they could do better next time.
Avoid Rushing To Her Rescue
Sometimes, when you allow your child to handle life situations on their own and give them the right to decide, act or have a say in a particular problem will help them build a sense of self-confidence and self-control. When for instance, your child is trying to make new friends, it’s best that you watch her from afar making baby steps toward approaching and finally making friends. Coming to your child’s rescue every time she’s struggling will only make her feel helpless. By allowing your child to figure out solutions by herself, you are helping her to grow into an emotionally strong person capable of dealing with future challenging problems.
Help Him Deal With His Fears
It is no secret that children are afraid of many things such as sleeping alone, fear of the dark, insects, ghosts, and monsters. To help raise happy and mentally resilient children, you should as a parent encourage your child to face his fears and gradually get over them. You can also praise him for his bravery as he tries to overcome his fears.
Teach Him To Regulate Emotions
Creating a warm space for your child to express her emotions without feeling afraid, misjudged, or misunderstood is necessary for the process of preparing your child emotionally for adulthood. Help your child to recognize the negative and positive feelings and teach them how to respond effectively to each of these emotions. It is important, as a parent, that you will accept your child’s feelings, and never mock or belittle their fears. For example, saying to your child things like ‘” how can you still be afraid of the dark; I thought you’ve outgrown this childish fear”, will only damage your child’s trust and incite them to suppress their emotions. But listening attentively when your child is expressing her emotions will help you build a trusting relationship and encourage them to accept and handle their emotions. By learning how to self-regulate and self-control her thoughts and feelings, your child will be in full control of her actions and decisions and will be ready to deal with future challenges.
Minimize The Importance Of External Approval
Encouraging your child to love, accept and value himself is important to build his emotional and mental strength. As a parent, raising your child’s confidence can be challenging in the age of social media where your child can be extremely influenced by the number of likes he receives on his pictures, for instance. However, teaching your child to not depend on approval coming from others will change his whole perspective about himself, allowing him to build intrinsic self-worth and self-belief.
Highlight The Importance Of Gratitude
When your child feels grateful for what she has or who she is will prevent her from indulging in self-pity or falling into the trap of comparing herself to her peers at school or online. Teaching her the importance of gratitude will make her stronger and more resilient when problems come her way.
Help Your Child Adapt To Change
We all know that life isn’t stable and is ever-changing. You should expect that your child will experience and live small or massive changes in his life. And as a parent, you should teach him to accept, adapt and live with the changes. When for example, your child’s pet has died, you should be there by his side, console him but encourage him to gradually let go and move on. Teaching your kid to adapt to certain incidents in his life is important to ensure the development of a mentally strong person, able to exert some degree of control over their lives in times of uncertainty.
Teach Her To Be Kind To Herself
Teaching your child to be kind to herself when she’s feeling down is necessary to build mental strength and resilience. Being negative towards herself will only damage your child’s self-esteem and self-respect. If your kid has received a poor grade on a school test, instead of letting her feel bad about herself, encourage her to forgive herself and encourage her to perform better in future tests.
By following the various strategies described above, you will, as a parent, be able to help your children be psychologically strong and see opportunities even in adversity. Giving unconditional love to your kids will make them feel safe and secure, and help them develop self-love, inner acceptance, and strength. You can also share stories with your kids about how you dealt with and conquered challenges and problems.
- Remember to appreciate and celebrate your children’s efforts in coping with challenges, however small they are.
- Remember that mental strength is developed through engaging your children in learning strategies of self-discipline, self-confidence, and problem-solving techniques.
- Remember that mistakes aren’t always bad but can be used to teach your kids how to resolve problems realistically and effectively.
- Always be there for your kid, in their happy or sad times. But sometimes, allow them to self-regulate and self-manage their emotions to grow into mentally and emotionally strong and healthy women and men.