Building Your Parenting Self Confidence (cont'd)

So what's the secret of how to give a child a healthy self-confidence?

- Be realistic with appreciation. If you feel you should commend your child for something, consider what would be the ability at its age and then evaluate the outcome. If it deserves appreciation, give it. If you have the feeling that your child is putting to much effort in getting your attention, try to get it back down to reality carefully. Love and appreciation shouldn't be goods that can be bought.

- Don't criticize or reject your child out of a bad mood. If you come home after a stressful day and your kid comes up with a picture, show some interest - it might mean a lot more to it than you think.

- Keep an eye on the influence your child is receiving from its friends. But if you have a bad feeling, try to talk to your child before you call the offender's parents and ask for a restraining order.

- Don't do things for your child if it's afraid of something. It might be hard sometimes, but how should it learn to be independent if it can always hide behind its parents? Later on, it will lack the confidence that comes from the experience of having to do things on its own.

- Always be there to give advice if required. There's a whole new world of complex social systems out there, and it's easy to get lost. Remember when you were a child probably you can learn a lot from that.

Brigitte Meier is an occassional author for E-nterests.com. Find some interesting travel related articles here too. Article Source: http://greatarticlesformoms.com This article can be printed in it’s entirety as long the author's bio box is intact and all links are live and clickable. Author reserves sole ownership of the article