There are certain qualities that successful, and happy people share and parents should nurture those key traits in their children, from early years.
Here are the top five qualities your baby will need to grow into an independent, happy and successful adult.
1. Trust
Trust is the foundation for all the other qualities. Adults who lack this basic characteristic will have a difficult time building and managing relationships, and believing in others. To help your child build trust, it starts with you. Say only what to intend to do to your child or other people around you, when you make a promise, fulfill it. Let your child be able to trust you completely.
2. Patience
People who understand patience and perseverance are more likely to succeed in life. It starts from how you react when he spills is milk. Do you calmly help him clean it up or you get angry and beat him up? Every action has a corresponding effect and reaction on your child. Also, children don’t understand time like we do as adult. For example, if your child wants snacks and you are busy with the dishes, instead of saying ‘”give me 5 minutes” and end up with a child throwing tantrums, say “I’ll give you as soon as I am done washing these plates”. That way, he can watch the progress and patiently wait till you are done because you communicated in a way he understands. You’ll also want to ensure that is the first thing you do as soon as you are done with the dishes, hence, trust is built.
3. Responsibility
To succeed in life, says Doreen Virtue, PhD, a psychotherapist in Los Angeles and author of Your Emotions, Yourself, you need to know how to make commitments and follow through. Does your baby throw items on the floor for you to pick up only to repeat it again? Then he is ready to learn basic responsibility. Start with baby size responsibility like giving her an unopened snack and asking her to give it to Dad or a toy to give to your friend across the room. As she grows, make the chores more advanced and explain the value of each tasks. For example, insist on socks being dropped in the laundry as against scattered on the floor, and explain why that is important i.e. it is easy to find what you want to wear next time.” He may not understand your explanations at first, but eventually the ideas will sink in.
4. Empathy
This is key to the development of our social competence. Understanding how people feel and how to respond to them is important for kids to learn. If your toddler hits a toy on his friend’s head and laughs inside of saying sorry, ask him “How would you feel if that happened to you?” then proceed to explain to him how his actions affect others. Even more important is our behavior as parents. The kids emulate the values the see in us. Saying please, sorry and thank you are magic words every kid must know and use.
5. Self-Reliance
It is important to learn to act independently. Self-reliance is one of the best characters your child needs to learn. Help your child break tasks into small achievable steps, and then let her figure things out on her own. If she can figure how to work little tasks, she will be more confident in herself to do more. Slightly open the cookie jar and let her open it and pick out her cookie. She wants to feed herself? hand her a spoon!
When shopping, ask your toddler to select a shirt from a choice of two. This let’s him know his opinion counts. Spending extra minutes to let kids do things on their own will pay off later in life.
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