Teach Your Children to Be Responsible For Their Thoughts
One of the most important lessons we need to teach our
children is:
You alone are responsible for your
thoughts. You choose what to think.
Teach your children that they control
how they feel about problems. They can choose to worry
about them, complain about them or blame someone else
for them. But, nothing will be resolved until they take
responsibility for them.
Once they understand that they can choose not to worry,
complain or blame, they can take the next step and deal
with the situation.
Teach your children that when life hands them a
difficult situation, don't complain about it. See the
challenge and accept it. Find a solution.
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Encourage them to look for any positive
in the problem and work on it.
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Assure them that when they find the
solution, they will become stronger and things will get
easier
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Teach them to find a mantra for when
problems pop up unexpectedly. This will teach them to
immediately start looking for a solution instead of
focusing blame or complaining. The mantra could be:
"this is my responsibility", or "I choose how to fix
this", or even "I own this problem".
Scenario: Jacob comes home from school
with an F on his Geography paper.
"My teacher hates me." (complaining/blaming)
"I'll never learn this." (worry)
Many parents would simply say, "Don't be silly. Your
teacher doesn't hate you. You need to study more."
This causes problems in several ways:
-
You are putting down your child's
feelings by telling him he is silly.
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You are making a problem seem like it
doesn't matter to you.
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You are doing nothing to counter his
feeling that he will never learn.
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Instead, try encouraging your child to
be responsible for his thoughts and find a solution. Try
something like this: "What proof do you have that your
teacher hates you? Is that a fact or is it just how you
feel right now?"
When your child understands that he
controls what he thinks about how his teacher feels,
then you can move on to his statement "I'll never learn
this."
Again, it boils down to his responsibility for his
thoughts. "Is that a fact, or is that just the way you
feel right now. What can I do to help?"
Help your child find a solution for his problem and soon
he will be finding solutions on his own.
There are so many things to teach our children. With a
little anticipation, we can learn to find teachable
moments and incorporate them into everyday life. These
little "lifetips" will build a foundation on which your
child can build a very successful, happy life.
