Throughout the journey of raising children from infancy to adulthood, one thing is as sure as the sun’s rising each dawn – children will make mistakes, fall off the required habits band wagon and indulge in abberant behaviours.
This is normal and acceptable for you are raising children with developing cognitive and emotional faculties who err in the natural process of learning and growing. No matter how well you parent, prepare and advice your child, deviant behaviours will occur from time to time.
For many parents, these trying moments are a headache that never abates. Consequently, how you deal with your child during these moments map a trajectory on how well or negligently your child will make future positive behavioural changes and how close your parent-child relationship will be.
Parenting is ever evolving and a wildly different experience from one child to another. Growing children demand regular shifts in parenting skills, approaches and clear communication to match the rapidly changing phases and cycles they undergo.
Today, this post will shed light on 15 motivators you need to add to your parenting repertoire that will greatly aid your child in making positive behavioural changes which lead to the desired outcome for both your child, you and the family.
Here are 15 motivators that drive growing children to make positive changes in their behavior
1. Positive Reinforcement and Praise
This includes recognising and celebrating your child’s specific desired behavior/attempt with praise, hugs, high-fives or other forms of age appropriate positive attention. The best time to use this motivator is immediately you notice a shift in behaviour towards the desired goal. In tandem with urgent positive affirmation, make it an intention to do it consistently. Persistently applying this powerful motivator helps your children understand what is expected, valued and encourages them to repeat desirable deeds that bring about positive behavioural cahnges in the future.
2. Modeling Positive Behavior
Children of all ages from infants to young adults learn by observing and mirroring the adults around them. When parents and caregivers model kindness, patience, respect and emotional regulation, children are more likely to adopt these behaviors. To expedite acquisition of positive behaviours, curate the adults in your child’s life as much as possible to comprise of majorly of those whose relationship enriches your parenting ideals. From nannies to teachers to selected relatives, winning parents know who to keep close to their child and who to keep at bay.
3. Setting Clear and Consistent Boundaries
Clear and consistent boundaries are the fertile soil in which positive behaviour change grows and flourishes. Children thrive when they understand expectations, the deisired end goal, consequences and limits. Boundaries are put in place by having consistent rules and consequences. These guidelines provide a sense of right and wrong, what to do and what not to and what is expcted when the rules are followed or broken. The greatest profit for having boundaries that it teaches children to be accountable, understand the power of choice and be more responsible.
4. Focus on Effort, Not Just Achievement
Nothing is as insurmountable as the nascent stages of replacing a wanting behaviour with a desired one. During this delicate period, parents need to focus more on the small efforts that later lead to the big turn around. Being too critical or demanding the new behaviour to manifest ASAP leaves the child starved for motivation and unsure if he is on the right path. Noticing and celebrating your child’s effort is key as it helps the child build his esteem, serves as motivation and encourages growth mindset.
5. Encouraging Autonomy and Decision-Making
Allowing children to make age-appropriate choices gives them a sense of control, agency and encourages independence. Your main role is providing the direction, clear desired outcome and support. Allowing your child autonomy makes it easy for him to own the process and identify with the end behaviour. For example, if you are inculcating time management skills or enhancing your growing child’s productivity, this could be as simple as including them planning their revision timetable, chore chart or after-school activities programs.
6. Providing Opportunities for Problem-Solving
Children need to develop self-trust in their ability to enforce the actions necessary to bring about the desired behaviour. The process of developing this self-trust is slow and requires an exposure to solve problems as they arise. Instead of rescuing children from every difficulty, guiding them to find their own solutions helps them develop resilience and coping skills. Successfully solving these problems or attempting to solve and accepting your help goes a long way in bringing about thendesired behabioural change in your child.
7. Fostering a Sense of Belonging
In my book Parenting With Intent, chapter one dives deep into the stages of growth within a family. Notably, the norming and perfoming stages are crucial for children because the children are expected to behave in acceptable family ways. A deep sense of belonging helps children consistently make choices that align with the family values. On the contrary, negative influence from peers demands that a child makes detrimental personal choices that align with the peer group identity. E.g engaging in drugs, early sex, petty theft and so on. Making children feel valued and important part of the family or a team motivates them to contribute positively and work for the greater good. It also keeps them away from negative peer pressure.
8. Building a Strong Parent-Child Connection
Spending quality time with a child through play, reading or conversation strengthens the emotional bond, making them more receptive to guidance. You can only influence your child to make lasting changes if he feels securely attached to you. No matter the age, strong parent-child bond is key in bringing about positive behaviour change in children primarily because your child would not want to lose the precious bond.
9. Teaching Emotional Regulation
Helping children name and understand their feelings, and showing them that all emotions are okay helps them learn to regulate their own behavior rather than acting out. As an example, it is natural to experience frustration when things do not go as the child expected. Yelling at others and engaging in negative self-talk may provide a temporary relief. However, this habit is detrimental in the long run both to the individual child and his social circle. A productive course would be to acknowledge the frustration, communicate clearly to peers and extend many second chances to self when the child feels inadequate.
10. Teaching Empathy
Encouraging a child to consider how their actions affect others helps them develop empathy, which is a key driver for making positive social choices.To model this, learn to listen to your child when he expresses how your actions hurt him a and make the necessary changes to ensure you do not repeat the action in future. Only when you have embraced this humility and understanding can you then fashion your child to be cogisant of how his actions affect others.
Another way to instill empathy is to encourage your child to show support to others and in turn ask for help when he needs it. Also, observing other people overcoming a challenging situation helps children understand that every one has something that he has to overcome. This in turn helps them develop grit and persistence.
11. Natural Consequences
Allowing children to experience the natural outcome of their actions (e.g., if they don’t adhere to school rules, they will miss lessons or be sent home) teaches them responsibility and the link between behavior and outcome. When you perpetually shield your child from natural consequences, learning how to be responsible and accountable becomes allien to him. Encourage, remind and offer support, but when your child refuses to do what he is required to do, then let him bear the burden of the consequences. Sometimes, consequences teach lessons that last a lifetime.
12. Creating a Structured Environment:
Establishing a predictable daily routine for activities like homework, play, hobies, meals, and bedtime provides a sense of stability and reduces the likelihood of behavioral issues. When children know what to expect, they experince lower anxiety and stress which correlate with aberrant beahaviours. Long unsupervised hours alone also might lead to acquisition of unwanted behaviours either from peers or media.
Do your best especially during this long holiday to create an inclusive structure that accomodates skill acquisition, social interaction with friends, famiy and acquintances, studies, chores adequate sleep and self driven personal hobbies. This list may seem long, but it is possible to accomodate a wide variety of activities if you plan well. This will give your child a sense of direction and motivation as well as instilling responsibility and accountability.
13. Intrinsic Motivation
Tapping into a child’s natural curiosity and interests is more powerful than external rewards. When a child is motivated by a strong desire to grow into a person of reputable character, he is more likely to engage in positive habits that bring about the cherished end goal. Your role as a parent, when your child is curious and motivated, is to give dependable support and encouragement. This not only accelerates behaviour change, but also helps the child develop confidence, self- esteem and have a more positive judgement of self.
14. Open, respectful and Honest Communication
Creating a safe space where a child feels comfortable sharing their thoughts and feelings helps you understand the root cause of misbehavior and work together on solutions. Most insubordination from children stem from a history of being unheard, invalidated, unjust punishment and being misunderstood.
Embodying open communication and creating psychological safety as a parent is positively consequential in two ways. One, openness creates room for your child be vulnerable and share why they are acting out of norm. Two, psychological safety creates containment (think of it as holding safely) as the child shares how he will recalibrate his behaviour without the fear that he will not be judged, undully punished or abandoned by you.
15. Providing Constructive Feedback And Maintaining Realistic Expectations
Offering specific, non-judgmental suggestions for improvement rather than harsh criticism helps a child understand how to grow and learn from their mistakes. Compassion will yield fatser behavioural change than demanding perfection. Offering feedback does not mean your child will implement them there and then therby producing immediate change.
Taking in, assimilating and adopting suggestions to alter behaviour takes time. Having realistic expectations for both you and your child goes a long way in fostering self-compassion in your child. Recognising that children are not perfect and that mistakes are part of learning helps you avoid unnecessary conflict and provides a supportive environment for positive behavioural changes.
CONCLUSION
The above suggestions can be insurmountablly overwhelming when you implement all of them at once. As one common adage goes, the best way to eat an elephant is a bit at a time. So, implemet a strategy or few at a time and evaluate its effectiveness on your parenting expedition. In time, you will sublimely find out that you are implementing all the above approaches with ease.
As I rightly pen on the front cover of my book Parenting With Intent, parenting is a transformative self discovery journey. By striving to be a better parent, you become the greatest beneficiary. All the best in your parenting endeavour 🙏🙏
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