Teaching your kids manners and discipline
Inculcating essential social skills in your kids is one of the most important (and sometimes dreaded!) tasks of good parenting. These basic social skills can impact and define the rest of their lives right from the playground to the family, school classroom and finally workplace and relationships. Hence providing a good foundation becomes essential.
Actions speak louder than words, when it comes to kids. Most of the times we teach kids through our body language and unconscious actions as compared to sitting them down and telling them consciously. Kids learn naturally by observation and imitation and hence it becomes important for us, as parents to set a good example and walk the talk or at least only talk about that which we can walk too!
Here are some tips that may interest you –
During the pre-school years, until around the age of four, kids are especially receptive to learning basic rules of conduct and values like politeness, kindness, honest expression, gratitude, saying their ‘thank you’ and ‘sorry’. These form the basis of building a good character and social mannerisms and hence, the focus needs to be on applying them practically to different circumstances that arise and encourage them to do the same, by being supportive and patient, and not by using force.
Teaching them table manners is equally important, like sitting and eating in a proper manner, chewing the food with mouth closed, slowly and quietly, drinking liquids quietly without slurping or dropping, cleaning up after they finish eating, basic skills to use a knife, spoon and fork, as required.
Teaching them discipline may take an effort to say ‘no’ to their wants and demands, setting limits and defining basic rules of conduct. However, it is important to explain the rationale behind all the rules that need to be followed and be open to, and validate their suggestions. In the absence of validation, the child begins to harbor resentment, which may grow into rebellious or dishonest behavior in the future, thereby causing problems to both, the child and you.
And as they grow, other areas of focus could be basic telephone manners, basic social skills at the playground with other kids, at school and how to behave around family during get-togethers or otherwise, learning to respect differences and other people, importance of sharing and expressing their emotions in proper ways and most importantly safety procedures and skills.
Teaching kids these basic social skills may take time and a continuous supply of patience, however using force to imbibe these values in them may give you detrimental results and make the child resistant to learning, making the process longer and unnecessarily difficult and frustrating.
It helps to look for the good things that your kid does and appreciate them, and use that as the base to help change their unhealthy habits.
