Home
>
Parenting
>
Classic Parenting: Encouragement, Praise, Acceptance, and Responsibility

taxi from O'Hare Munster limo Chicago New Lenox Cadillac Escalade SUV rentals Melrose Park Cadillac Deville rentals Streamwood Barrington Hills town car ride to ohare .. Drug testing

Classic Parenting: Encouragement, Praise, Acceptance, and Responsibility

Encouragement comes when you focus on your child's assets and strengths in order to build his/her self-confidence. It comes from seeing the positive. Even failures can be outstanding learning experiences. Encouragement sounds like this, "I like the way that you did that," or "I know that you can do it," or, "It looks like you worked very hard at that."

Encouragement is NOT giving compliments for work poorly done, but under those circumstances it IS inspiring your child to work harder and do better. "Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up, according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen." -St. Paul (Eph. 4:29)

Ultimately self-confidence comes from having accomplished things worth being proud of. Reserve praise for things well done. Where encouragement is given for effort, praise is given for accomplishment. Just say, "That's a good start, keep at it," when the work is not yet worthy of praise.

Accept your child for who he or she is. If you expected that your baby would grow into an Olympic athlete with an IQ of 148, and instead he or she is "average" then you might be very disappointed as a parent (most children are "average," which is why they call it "average."). Disappointment is often turned into anger, or at least frustration. If your child cannot live up to your expectations and dreams for him or her (and why should they?) then please be careful of your emotions. If you are not careful, your own dreams and expectations for your child will become a wedge between you and your child. Please don't make your love, encouragement, or acceptance, dependent on their performance or behavior.

Teach Responsibility to your children. Let them try things and let them fail once in a while. Don't keep bailing them out. Victory only tastes sweet if we taste the bitterness of failure once in a while. Trust me, the dog's not going to starve if he misses a meal or two. The newspaper won't come to run a story on your family if your child fails to make his bed once in a while. Just use these occasions to remind your child that if his or her dog is going to ever eat again, he needs to get out there and feed it (assuming that's your child's job), and that he or she is an important member of your home and that he needs to be responsible with doing his chores.

Make the consequences for not being responsible fit the crime. And of course be sure to reward/praise your child when he/she does act responsibly. Behavior that is rewarded tends to reoccur, and behavior that is ignored tends to go away -- so always reward and praise responsible behaviors.

Douglas Cowan, Psy.D., is a family therapist who has been working with ADHD children and their families since 1986. He is the clinical director of the ADHD Information Library's family of seven web sites, including http://www.newideas.net, helping over 350,000 parents and teachers learn more about ADHD each year. Dr. Cowan also serves on the Medical Advisory Board of VAXA International of Tampa, FL., is President of the Board of Directors for KAXL 88.3 FM in central California, and is President of NewIdeas.net Incorporated.

limousine chicago service

In The News:

If you're not lucky enough to live in the path of the May 20 "ring of fire" solar eclipse, you can still watch the spectacular event online.

If you plan it right, you could rent out your home on the Internet -- and use the money to take a free vacation of your own. These three websites will help you roll out the welcome mat.

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg updated his status to "married" on Saturday.

A new app launched this weekend that will scan the faces of patrons in 25 bars across the city to determine their ages and genders. Would-be customers can then check their smartphones for real-time updates on the crowd size, average age and male-to-female mix to decide whether the scene is to their liking.

An oil company exploration crew's chance discovery of a 200-year-old shipwreck in a little-charted stretch of the Gulf of Mexico is yielding a trove of new information to scientists who say it's one of the most well-preserved old wrecks ever found in the Gulf.

They say patience is a virtue, but like temperance and chastity, it’s not much fun. Unfortunately, if you want to reach a state of true techstasy, you may need to repress your desire to buy a new gadget today and wait for the next version to come out.

Taxes, dental exams, cellphone contracts — things you hate but can't avoid. Actually, you can skip the last one. With prices on smartphones dropping and plenty of used smartphones for sale, BYOD — bring your own device — is now an option.

A turtle the size of a small car once roamed what is now South America 60 million years ago, suggests its fossilized remains.

A new private supply ship for the International Space Station remained stuck on the ground Saturday after rocket engine trouble led to a last-second abort of the historic flight.

A private spacecraft stands ready to launch on a historic first visit to the International Space Station early Saturday morning.

A new generation of super rich, super young tech entrepreneurs is upon us. And while some are barely old enough to rent a car, most could -- if they really wanted to -- buy a small island nation instead.

The small town of Monmouth in Wales (population: 8,807, according to Wikipedia) will become the world’s first “Wikipedia town” on Saturday, May, 19, Monmouth county officials said on Thursday. Every person, place, and thing of interest in the town can now be scanned by a smartphone and looked up on Monmouthpedia.

The 16th Annual Webby Award winners have been released, honoring websites, interactive advertising, online film & video, as well as apps.

Summer's almost here and that means kids will have a lot of time on their hands to surf the Internet. So you may be concerned about what they'll be looking at online. Fortunately most web browsers like Safari, Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer have easy to use privacy settings.

Apple was sued in March by a New York man who alleges that Apple’s Siri commercials are misleading and deceptive. Apple’s recommendation to Fazio: buy a different phone.

A new NASA survey has pinned down the number of asteroids that could pose a collision threat to Earth in what scientists say is the best estimate yet of the potentially dangerous space rocks.

Tech geeks across the Facebook empire celebrated the company’s IPO and their newfound millions by slugging back energy drinks at all-night code-writing parties.

Just two weeks after the huge "supermoon" wowed skywatchers around the world, the heavens will offer up another observing treat — a solar eclipse on May 20 that should be visible from much of western North America.

NASA has given SpaceX $381 million to develop a private rocket to replace the space shuttle -- and that’s just the tip of the money iceberg. The space agency plans multiple future grants ranging up to half a billion in the next year and a half. Is the $4.9 billion program worth it?

More than 900 million people worldwide check their Facebook accounts at least once a month, but millions more are Facebook holdouts.

Classic Parenting: Encouragement, Praise, Acceptance, and Responsibility

Parenting Parenting