Today more than ever children are exposed to extreme competition within the family, society and school. This increased competitive environment puts enormous burden over a child’s psychology. Up to 60% children cannot tolerate it for long terms, developing maladaptive psychological life-long lasting patterns like negative self-image, inferiority complex, shyness, decreased concentration, decreased memory power, etc.
Here are some tips that have worked successfully for thousands of parents you have consulted me on how to create a positive self-image within their child’s mind:
1. Don’t Lecture, understand the problem. - A child is not a machine or a slave that will follow everything you tell him/her to do. He/She is a small emotional individual, who is learning through mistakes. Pointing the finger or raising the voice and saying “don’t do this” “you are supposed to do what I say”, “you cannot follow my simple instructions” are common phrases that within months lose their value and become a boring lecture that the child hears from one ear and lets go from the other.
Instead learn to change your approach. “I can perceive you are frustrated today, let’s talk about it”… let’s talk should mean that you let the child pour his heart out, and understand from his/her point of view.
2. Positive Energy is more powerful than Negative Energy – Whenever you criticize, verbally abuse or even physically abuse your child, you release a whole lot of negative energy over him/her. This is perceived by their minds as lack of support from family, lack of love and conditional love from family members. Instead if positive aspects of a situation are emphasized first, if praise and appreciation is showered without conditions, the effect is positive on the child’s mind.
3. Don’t encourage shyness? – In good faith of creating as secure future for their child, many parents become over-protective of their children. Parents start controlling every movement, every need and every desire of the child. Such a child develops a handicapped psychology, where he depends on his parents for all his/her social and personal needs. This also increases the fear to rejection from society or from unfamiliar people.
Bring a change, don’t encourage shyness, instead encourage your child to go out and learn street smartness.
4. Learn to differentiate between you and your child – Many parents love to use what they refer to as “positive stress” to motivate their children. Simple instructions like “if you get good marks, we are respected” , “if you behave good, people think good of us”, “if you fail, society will think we are failures” are fed into a child’s mind at a very early age.
The guilt of not letting his parents down creates fear within a child. This fear grows more in situations where he/she is being judged. Social fear, exams fear, shyness, anger and low self-esteem are common behavior patterns used by the child to cope up with such a psychological burden.
5. Be a role model not a super-hero – Many parents have the habit of telling their children unreal or exaggerated stories about themselves. Stories in which the parent has battled all pain and difficulties to succeed. The parent is always perfect, always a hero. The child’s narrow psychological view, increases his mental burden to live upto his parent super-hero image. This causes negative self-image.
If you are one of such parents, admit you have made mistakes, that you have taken risks, be a real role model not a unreal super-hero.
For
any further assistance on this topic or any other emotional, sleep, memory or sexual health related issues feel free to contact me at-
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Dr.Hemant Mittal (MBBS,
PG.DPM, M.D.(Mind Mantra Wellness Concepts - Mumbai))
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Website - www.mindmantra.in
Email - eksoch@gmail.com
Email 2 – themindpath@gmail.com
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Twitter 2 - http://twitter.com/Hemant_MittaL
