If you’re a parent you will want to learn these 4 important tips for giving your children emotional stability so they grow up confident, resilient, self loving and feeling positive about the world.
When we’ve been hurt, we all have that tendency to retreat into ourselves. So we’ve got to think that this response can feel doubly painful for children.
As parents, in many ways, our role seems straightforward. We are supposed to look after them. But, of course, the ways in which we do this can result in millions of different permutations.
In recent years, there’s been a greater focus on stability and, particularly, emotional stability.
Gone are the days when a baby is left to cry it out because now studies have shown that this has not helped in the slightest. While there are so many arguments between generations about whether the future grown-ups that we are raising are being mollycoddled or comforted too much, the fact remains: Everybody, from a basic human perspective, deserves emotional stability.
In fact, it’s this emotional stability that winds up building our resilience and helps us to navigate life. But we have to learn the right ways in which to foster this emotional stability.
Below I will show you some practical tips to create a solid foundation for your kids so your children experience emotional stability.
These days our world has many unconventional families. And with this in mind, we can’t magically summon up another parent if we’re a single-parent household. So, we need to figure out what children need for the sake of stability. And this is about creating a safe environment.
Our children should feel comfortable expressing themselves. So, if they’re not able to put forth their ideas and opinions, we’ve got to work doubly hard at creating a nurturing and supportive space so they don’t suppress their emotions. Unfortunately, we’re all guilty of avoiding difficult conversations around emotions, because we are maybe too busy to help our children when they need it. And so we can wind up feeling that we’re not giving our best to our children.
We need to recognize the gaps in our knowledge and work at filling these. This is why studies have shown that families with pets have better bonds. There are a lot of considerations in getting a pet. For example if you should get a male or a female, and choosing the male dog names. Plus you must be sure you can realistically look after one. But a pet will help you create a loving emotional foundation so your children can go out into the world and come back home to recuperate.
Many children grow up in an environment where there is no consistency. And they will have a great deal of anxiety as a result.
Many of us think that a safe and supportive environment is a physical thing. Maybe a roof over our heads or having a certain amount of money in our bank accounts. But the amazing thing about children is that they are incredibly resilient – if we nurture this resilience.
For example, we’ve all seen just how much entertainment a child can get out of a box rather than the present itself.
And so we need to prioritize creating a safe and supportive space for our children so this solid foundation becomes their metaphorical security blanket.
There is a great debate as to whether we should be giving a lot more time for our children to learn from us, but there is a major dichotomy between what we can realistically give in comparison to what we think our children should have. The parental guilt is never going to disappear, even if you would be there for your children 24/7.
This is why it’s far more impactful to think about how to deliver quality time to your kids,. And this feeds into the things that we all do automatically.
Children need to feel that we are there for them. If we are constantly staring at our phones, then we’ve got to be ready to face the consequences if our children start doing the same and ignore us later in life. Therefore, we must recognize the value of quality time really and why it’s important for a great relationship and emotional stability.
Honest conversations should form part of our relationship with our children. There is a tendency for us to shy away from hard conversations. However, what we need to remember is that as hard as conversations can be, we can always be age-appropriate.
Our children are going to want to share their feelings. But there will come a time in their development when they’ve experienced some form of setback from us that they don’t want to talk about. What we must remember at this point is the value of a safe environment. So even if kids don’t want to share their feelings, because we’ve created a nurturing foundation, then the door is open for them to express how they feel.
In addition to this, we must remember that as they share their feelings, we’ve got to be there with them. We need to completely give them our attention and our empathy. When children come to us with a problem, we need to help them to work through the issue. In fact that is more more important than solving the problem for them.
We need to watch out for our innate helicopter parenting approaches. After all, we will all feel that we’ve got to protect them from something or even respond to conflict on their behalf. In fact, this is especially true the first time they come back and someone has been bullying them. But it all begins with open communication. And if we give them the respect they crave, while also setting the appropriate boundaries. This should start a long, fruitful, and ultimately respectful relationship.
We have to nurture that resilience from within, and much like the story of the song “A Boy Named Sue,” we can all benefit from giving our children something that forces them to learn how to stand on their own two feet, emotionally speaking. Emotional regulation techniques are something we can all benefit from,. And when we recognize that stress or panic attacks are all our body’s way of attempting to force our escape from the situation. And then realize that there are actually tools to dampen this down. The mission: help the child to become a resilient person, which then feeds into their emotional stability.
We all feel fearful of things. So a solution is to experience subtle exposure to that fear. This nurtures a sense of resilience from within. There are common techniques that our children can benefit from.
For the sake of our children’s well-being and development, we need to focus on stability and what it means for them. Our children, on a psychoanalytical level, will crave attachment and security, consistency and predictability, as well as expression and validation. We all need to create an environment that covers these disparities, and provides a way for our children to become emotionally resilient. And so we learn the importance of giving our kids the tools they need.
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