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Posts Tagged ‘Importance’

It’s the same story every year – you worry about whether the new teachers will understand your child. Will the teacher adapt to your child’s individual learning speed? Will she be able to recognize your child’s special aptitudes and talents? You don’t want to be the overbearing, interfering parent, but you still want to know these things.

You certainly cannot hold your child’s teacher accountable for every classroom nuance. After all, teachers are qualified educationalists, and we have to trust their judgment to a fair degree without questioning it. So what’s the solution? How do you stay on top of how your child is faring under his or her teacher? The answer is – build a good parent teacher relationship.

Parent teacher relationships are like many other relationships – once they are in place, they can overlook quite a few social gaffes. And like all other relationships, building a healthy parent teacher bond involves a certain process of breaking the ice, winning mutual trust and staying in touch.

Your objective here is obviously not to build a rip-roaring friendship – though that often happens. The primary purpose of building such a relationship is to have informal access to your child’s progress at school, and that may not happen merely by attending local PTA meetings.

Is such relationship-building really necessary? After all, you are busy and have lots of other things to do. Also, you as a parent are obviously entitled to inquire with teacher about your child’s academic performance. However, that is not all you need to know about how your child is faring at school.

You need to know how your kid is doing at the emotional level You may need to be able to make requests for special attention by the teacher You may require the teacher to offer instinctive evaluations You may need to communicate your own insights on your child’s mental make-up and ask that these be factored into the teaching process You may need to advise the teacher on your own parenting style and ask that it be supported in class, as well

Once of the main reason why most parents do not make efforts to build a healthy parent teacher relationship is the fear of vulnerability. Such parents worry that revealing too much about themselves will expose them as inefficient and ineffective parents, thereby laying them open to a teacher’s professional criticism.

The fact is – parents are as human as we are, and are often parents themselves. They may have their own insecurities in that role, and are therefore perfectly capable of understanding yours. On the other hand, you will never know of or benefit from this human side if you do not tap into it.

The only way to break the barrier of formality is to initiate and maintain a healthy working parent teacher relationship. If you aren’t the gregarious type who is comfortable with breaking the ice in person, you can take the help of interactive parent web sites designed to help parents interact with their children’s teachers.

Many parents find staying in touch with their children’s teachers in this manner quite comfortable. While signing up for such a parent web site, ensure that it also helps you connect with other parents and keeps you updated on after-school activities.

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People with healthy self-esteem have an abundance of confidence. Failure does not slow them down. When one direction does not pan out, they look around for and expect a new direction to become available to them. They are tenacious, and their stick-to-it thinking keeps them motivated and progressing.

These people feel exuberance over a raise or a promotion. They view the day-to-day rewards of life as something they deserve. They are their own cheering squad. Instead of thinking, “This is all I deserve,” or, worse yet, “I don’t deserve this,” they say, “Hooray for me!” and look forward to the next reward. They see life as vibrant and exciting.

People with healthy self-esteem love themselves. They have a deep feeling that they are worthy and desirable. They are able to give and receive love.

People with healthy self-esteem have a sense of inner direction. They see themselves as worthy regardless of what other people think. Under the worst of circumstances, their self-esteem keeps them going.

Good self-esteem greatly helps people manage stress and avoid self-destructive behavior. They see setbacks as temporary. They may be sad or even angry, but at the same time know that they are going to start over and are optimistic that it will work this time. This is the way that children become self-actualized in developing their strengths and making a positive contribution.

What Is Low Self-Esteem?

People with low self-esteem do not see themselves as lovable or even worthy. They don’t feel good enough. When opportunities present themselves, they think, “I don’t deserve it.” They unconsciously find ways to sabotage their chances. The result can be a life of missed opportunities and continual disappointment.

When other people find them worthy, they think, “If you really knew me, you wouldn’t like me.” They “shoot themselves in the foot” precisely when they need to take a big step forward.

Many people live out their lives almost dead inside, having long ago lost the juices needed to fuel their self-esteem and confidence. The tragedy is that they may have been sabotaged as children by well-meaning adults who did not under¬stand how important it is to help children cultivate a sense of self-worth.

Such people usually are on the low end of self-esteem and do not know how to encourage in others what they do not have themselves. They fail to see that they can make choices to change their lives. They are outer-directed; they do not see themselves as being in charge of their lives (inner-directed). Instead, life is something that happens to them. They perceive themselves as victims with no power to truly take charge of their lives. They haven’t developed their true self. This can be an unfortunate result of authoritarian parenting. They have the attitude that when one door closes, it slams shut; they do not picture another door opening.

Many of us verify our personal worth by looking outside of ourselves for validation. If others approve of us, we’re worthy. If others look down on us with disapproval, we assume that we are unworthy. Our awareness of ourselves is not based on an internal sense of self, rather, the reference point of “Who am I?” is found somewhere else.

Self-Esteem Killers

A self-esteem killer is a statement about another person that is designed to diminish that person’s sense of personal worth. Often these statements are humorous in a cruel way. Frequently, these killers have been passed down from generation to generation.

One woman said that whenever she and her sisters brought home a school photo they regularly heard their father say, “Put it under your mattress face down, and it will scare the mice away.” Another person heard a parent say about her son, “Nathan is going to be this year’s birth control poster child.” Or, “I found you under a rock bawling your head off and I felt sorry for you.”

“He’s only good when he’s asleep.” “He’s too dumb to get a headache.” “If you think he is so great, you can have him.”

When children are raised hearing these self-esteem killers, they are likely to assume that it is true that they are inadequate in some important way. It can be a self-fulfilling prophecy that becomes hard-wired into their brain circuitry.

They may not recognize their destructive nature. We all need to be on the outlook for these, so that they are not passed on to the next generation. A self-esteem killer is, by its very nature, destructive to a person’s sense of well-being and is therefore a form of abuse.

If you saw someone beating a child, you would feel obligated to stop it. Self-esteem killers are verbal violence. Words can hit as hard as a fist, and the damage has as much or more impact than physical violence. We all have a responsibility to protect each other from both physical or verbal abuse.

Labels Can Become A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

Your child’s self-esteem and his or her resulting behavior are built in part on the “labels” of character that you and other caregivers use to describe your child.

After all, children absorb what they are told about themselves without much discretion. In addition, it is true for all of us that what we think and feel about ourselves leads us to behave the way we do. Thus labels become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

One of the great-grandfathers of parent education, Hiam Ginot, was fond of saying, “Beware that the diagnosis doesn’t become the disease.” He meant that if you diagnose your aches and pains yourself, you may be wrong-but ultimately your diagnosis may invite the disease. Likewise, children absorb descriptions of their personalities in many subtle ways and begin to act according to them.

Ginot wisely advised parents not to invite the diseases of laziness, cheating, stealing, or slovenly behavior by diagnosing a child as having those diseases. If a parent sees a child as ugly, clumsy or not very smart, and points out these traits by labeling them to describe the child, the parent is encouraging homeliness, awkwardness, or dullness. We attract what we project.

How parents, the most powerful people in a child’s life, use these words to describe a child’s character in the early years has much to do with the interpretation a child will have of his or her own character and what kind of person the child will grow up to be.

It is inevitable that young children come to believe what others say about them. If we avoid negative labels and if we acknowledge the times when a child shows positive personality characteristics, our children are more likely to develop healthy self-esteem and believe in their own inherent goodness.

Mistakes Are Valuable

When you shoot a roll of film in your camera, do you expect every “take” to be perfect, or do you expect that there will be a “miss” on some of the pictures? A “mistake” is what happens when you miss in something you took to be a good idea.

Mistakes happen when we are trying to find our way. We learn from our results and use the information from them to design a better plan. Too many children do not understand mistakes; they see them as failures. It is only by trying different things that we grow at all. Some of the things we try will be regarded as “mistakes,” but there is no way of knowing beforehand which ones. Mistakes are an essential part of the process of being successful. It is a criterion of successful children that they are not afraid of making mistakes. Mistakes can actually make children more determined and confident, but this requires a healthy self-esteem.

Too many children have been raised with the idea that mistakes are a sign that they are stupid and use it as a self-esteem killer. A mistake is better seen as an opportunity to learn a better way of thinking or doing things. Encouragement is a better choice. The number one way that we learn anything is by our mistakes.

Jayne A. Major, Ph. D. is the author of Breakthrough Parenting: Moving Your Family from Struggle to Cooperation which she has taught for the last 25 years. Please visit http://BreakthroughParentingOnline.com for more parenting resources including online parenting classes and community.

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In today’s demanding world, the idea of play being important can seem counter intuitive to success. To be sure, play does not seem to have direct measurable impact on the bottom line. Yet, for parents, the idea of play can take on a different meaning. With the addition of children, the context of play is changed drastically, as it is often realized an integral part of a child’s daily life. It is typically around this time that we hear of “play dates”, “play time”, or “scheduled play.” Parents often realize that when children play, they seem to be more relaxed, better equipped to handle stresses or emotional upsets, and in general more sociable.

In terms of maintaining a healthy weight, and reducing the risk of developing any negative habits around food, the benefits of play are unmatched.

There are several reasons for this. In terms of healthy weight maintenance, several factors need to be in place, such as, a sense of competence, an ability to weather emotional distress, an ability to negotiate conflicts and power struggles, an ability to cooperate and form alliances, and an ability to concede with grace. Essentially, these qualities describe a child who is very socially competence. When a child is socially competent, his sense of self is derived from the relationships that he forms, and the emotional satisfaction that they bring. This results in a child who not only views relationships as safe, but also supportive in the case of uncomfortable feelings. A child such as this will turn to relationships in times of need, and will leave these relationships feeling better.

However, when the child does not develop a healthy sense of social competence, the way that he views relationships can jeopardize his ability to maintain a healthy weight. When relationships are not viewed as safe or supportive, the child looks for other factors in life to gain a sense of comfort, the first of which is frequently food. Where relationships are lacking, food becomes a dependable ally, offering a reliable source distraction from the emotional distress of unhealthy relationships. A lack of a social competence can result from a child who has either not been given enough time to play, has not had the opportunity to play in supportive environments, or whose play has been complicated by competitive factors. All of these situations can happen very easily when parents are not aware. Team sports, physical education classes, and league sports can all have the tendency to emphasize competition over cooperation. While all parents want their child to do well in sports, and become excited when they see their child shine, the difference between being supportive and creating undue competitive pressure can be difficult to determine.

Looking at both sides of the coin, both approaches emphasize success, however, one does not tolerate any deviation from success. When we say that a parent is supportive, he both encourages his child to succeed, but also encourages his child to cooperate. In this sense his is supportive both positive performance, and social competence. Sacrificing social competence, and therefore winning at all costs, would not be part of this approach. Therefore, winning can be important, but not when it infringes on the rights of others, and creates relationship friction. A child supported in this way feels successful, and socially competent. Succinctly, he enjoys doing well as much as he enjoys making friends, and leaves this situation feeling as though relationships are a source of support. This child is not likely to turn to food for comfort, as comfort is found in the relationships he experiences both with his parents and with his friends.

On the other hand, the approach of undue competitive pressure, places winning the competition above winning friends. Any example of this is the parent who easily becomes angered when his child fails to make a crucial play in a game, despite making an effort to do so. Another example of this is the child who is told to neglect the rights of others to win, or even hears subtle messages that he should avoid sharing to garner more glory for himself. The first scenario creates a child who feels that he is never good enough, while the second scenario creates a child who feels as though his deserves more than everyone else. While the first child will suffer relationship distress with his father, the second child will suffer relationship distress with his teammates, as they will resent his “all about himself approach.” In either case, the child’s sense of social competence will be disrupted, and he will fail to view relationships as safe or supportive. This child is at high risk for turning to food for comfort and distraction from the emotional distress he experiences from unhealthy relationships.

Taking all of this into consideration, as a parent, it is not difficult to see the importance of emphasizing healthy play environments for your child. The difficulty may be in determining exactly when to push your child a little more in the direction of success, and when to simply offer support. Bearing in mind that success never imposes on the rights of others, and never sacrifices sportsmanship, can be a helpful barometer for parents. But also, as a parent, who knows his child better than anyone else, remembering that your child should never feel as though winning is more important than feeling good can help determine just how to be supportive. Lastly, keeping in mind that the purpose of sports has always been enjoyment and fun, and not frustration and disappointment can help parents understand the importance of play.

Eric Viskovicz is the founder and director of Live In Fitness Enterprises. His site, http://liveinfitness.com is where many people find his Marina Del Rey weight loss retreat.

When it comes to weight loss, Eric Viskovicz is both an innovator and a pioneer. Due to his own struggle with weight loss, and a comprehensive understanding of the way in which the struggle to lose weight can totally envelope a person, Eric was the first person to realize that in order to be successful at weight loss, it needs to be treated in the way in which it is experienced. What this means to Eric is that in order to win at weight loss, a person has to first completely understand himself. This philosophy led Eric Viskovicz to produce the first ever approach to weight loss based on the person’s personality.

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