How To Raise Emotionally Healthy Children

3 Pages 783 Words

How to Raise Emotionally Healthy Children

According to the author, Gerald Newmark PhD, there are five critical needs that all children, regardless of their age, have in common. These five needs include feeling respect, importance, acceptance, inclusiveness, and security. If you want children to respect you, you need to respect them first. This means avoiding sarcasm, yelling, anger, etc. Children are very aware when people are rude to them or treat them as if they don’t matter. The need to feel important starts at an early age. When children don’t think they are useful or have some sort of power and value, they don’t develop a sense of confidence in themselves. This then leads to children wanting attention in negative ways. This concept leads to how children strive for acceptance in the future. Self-confidence comes from attention, which does not mean negative attention, but attention that involves listening. Listening to children means that you care what they have to say, and soon in the future they will in turn care what you have to say. This need can help in interpersonal relationships and you are more involved in your child’s life as a whole. Being involved is a good thing but too much involvement, for example, making all the decisions and solving all their problems does not help them grow and learn to problem solve on their own. It is smart to include children in decision making, asking them their opinion and listening to what their ideas might be. Becoming a good decision maker creates self-confidence and better self esteem. Growing up in a positive environment where the child knows they are loved and that the parents will always be there for them giving them a sense of security. However, being secure does not mean that there are no consequences for exceeding limits. When children realize rules and punishment they grow up to be self-disciplined and make smarter, secure choices in their life.
Behavior of a child can be...