Best Things To Say To A Child

I remember when I was little, my grandma told me a thing that followed me all throughout life: that God loves, He loves children, and listens to their prayers. Words engraved on a young heart will remain there for a long time…or it might not be too much to say, forever. Anything an adult tells a child can greatly affect his future development.

Naturally, parents should raise their kids in order to become fully responsible, self-confident and caring grown-ups. Nonetheless, there undoubtedly are many times when adults should think twice before opening their mouths and say the words that might haunt the kid's mind and turn him to rebellious acts and attitudes, irresponsibilities, and so on.

One of the most frequent, and most affecting mistakes would be that of having an attitude of arrogance and selfishness towards the child, and saying the commonly-heard words: "Because I'm the dad/mum, not you!" By uttering this, the parent actually communicates to the child his/her lack of interest towards any of child's feelings, opinions and thoughts. It is as if their own ideas and personality didn't matter. As an immediate reaction to this, children would get bad feelings about themselves, will refuse any more idea-sharing with their parents, silently plotting their rebellion and separation from them. The fact is, children have the tendency to add their momentary emotions to their own fragile, developing psychological system.

Another disturbing advice from the part of the parents is "Do as I say, not as I do" It is damaging because kids actually are more likely to copy the adult behavior than to listen to their verbal discourse, advice and commands. It may sound like a cliché, but raising a child really involves a lot of responsibility, mostly the responsibility of being an honest, self-disciplined person who actually does what he says or advises others to do. Kids expect integrity from the part of their grown-up parents, otherwise they would regard them as hypocrites and manipulators. If parents do not do what they "preach", their kids will follow their examples in their own lives. If there is a discrepancy between the parents' public image and their private image, kids will do the same, including keeping "dirty" secrets from their own parents.

But what is there to say to a child in order to help him/her grow into a self-reliant, honorable and respectable adult? Stanley Coopersmith thought of a system to measure people's self-esteem level. The basics of this system state that both kids and adults need the same things in order to have a healthy, well-balanced self-esteem. First of all, they need to feel capable, to have the feeling that they possess certain skills and capacities; they also need to feel significant, that their words, thoughts and actions matter to others; they need to feel powerful, to know that they can have an impact on the surrounding world; they have to feel worthy, to have the inner conviction of being unique, endowed with special talents that may differentiate them from other people.

Both kids and grown-ups have the same mechanisms of achieving and improving their self-respect. These means are generally related to appreciation from the exterior and to an encouraging attitude. Whenever a human being fails at something, he/she needs to learn to focus on his/her successes rather than his/her weak points.

All parents need to make their kids' self-image blossom, is to be around to play and communicate with them in a positive way. The simple gesture of being there tells children they are worthy of their parents' time. If a parent shows joy when welcoming their kids home, and genuine happiness caused by the simple presence of their children, the latter will feel valuable, loved, accepted and trustworthy. One of the worst attitudes towards a child is to act too busy to pay any attention to what they are trying to express or communicate.

Other self-esteem problems may result from their parents forcing them to do things they don't really like or they aren't good at, like dancing, doing certain sports, playing a musical instruments, a.s.o. This is because the focus is on what kids cannot do instead of what they are capable of.