(And What You Should Do Instead)
In this article, we’d like to share with you one of the small mistakes good and smart parents commit when disciplining their kids.
It’s a small mistake but, if we can change this, it has a huge positive impact on our kids’ self-esteem and character.
And only a few parents consistently do this because for some reason they were influenced and raised by their parents this way.
And for a few parents, they take time to learn this.
What’s the small mistake?
It’s simple more often than not…
We criticize our kids’ bad behavior more than we compliment them when they do good.
And sometimes, we even forget to compliment them.
Now hold on. This is simple but lend your ears with me.
You see, as parents, we want our kids to have the best for them, we want them to be happy, we want them to believe in themselves and we want them to be self-confident.
But you know what?
Because we criticize them and always point out their mistakes more often…
… they’d start to shrink their confidence and before you knew it, your kids’ self-esteem was crushed.
And when this happens, they’d start doubting themselves. (Which we don’t want to happen)
So to eradicate this, all we have to do is to catch them when they’re doing good and compliment them.
Like for example “Messy, thank you for putting your toys in the toy box” “Ryan, Good Job for cleaning the table”
Simple as that.
Another one here’s a short story:
Several years ago, there were studies conducted by several Universities in the US for their team sports players.
They were training them with specific drills to reach their full potential as a team.
And while they’re doing the drills, they record it.
After that, they watched the video with half of the team members, and pointed out and criticized their mistakes.
And guess what?
They start to see a little improvement and accuracy in their drills for weeks.
That’s good.
Now, when they show the video to other team members of the team, they do the opposite.
Instead of pointing out their mistakes, they compliment the things when they do the drills right.
And they were shocked…
Because for days, they see a huge dramatic improvement with their accuracy doing the drills.
You see when we compliment them more often…
They start to believe in themselves, even more, they start doing the things when they did it right.
However, as you know, only a few parents (like us) do this.
Even the “consider” smart parents even commit to this mistake.
And it’s not our fault. It’s human nature.
In fact, according to studies…
Our brains produce 50,000 thoughts a day.
And guess how many of it is negative? It’s 40,000 negative thoughts.
Only 10,000 positive thoughts a day are positive.
That’s why it’s easier for us to criticize other people or our children rather than compliment them.
And if we want our kids to believe in themselves and boost their self-esteem, and build their character, start complimenting them more even the slightest thing they do good.
And you’ll be surprised what’s the results.
Anyway, thank you for supporting us in helping other people (especially the children who need help), and hopefully, you somehow find value in it and apply it to your own.