How to Make Your Child Bold in His or Her Ideology

Every child is unique and different. As they grow up, they exhibit certain characters and attitudes that are unique to them. Likewise, they also get drawn to certain beliefs, philosophies or ideologies that distinguish them from others.

Some of these ideologies are a norm and so requires no justification. However, some of them may not be widely accepted for some reasons. As parents, it is your responsibility to ensure that every such belief is safe for your child and if so, work towards helping them become bold in what they believe in.

5 Ways of Making Your Child Bold in Their Ideology

1. Welcome Their Ideas

Ideas thrive on acceptability. Cultivate the habit of hearing your child out when they speak to you. By cutting them short, you not only lose out on any important information they wish to share at the moment, but you also lose out on future communications.

Not only this, by shutting them down, you clamp down on their boldness and make them shy about their belief systems. Rather than doing this, always welcome their ideas first. After this, you can then sift out the wrong ones and work on teaching them the right way.

2. Praise Them for Their Ideology

In addition to welcoming their ideologies, learn to compliment them when they exhibit positive behaviours or mindsets. Compliments do a lot for the confidence of a child. It impacts on their self-esteem and faith in their abilities. This positively affects their psychology and results in making them bold enough to defend their ideologies.

On the other hand, when your child faces incessant rejections, this negatively affects their self-image.

3. Learn to Encourage Them

A piano prodigy named Harmony Shu, once told Ellen DeGeneres that she started practising when she was just 3 years old. According to her, she received a lot of encouragement from her parents.

Encouragements boost your child’s dopamine level ( a hormone responsible for joy) and motivate them to strive for more.

4. Give Them New Things to Think About

Another way of making your child bold in their ideology is by encouraging them to think about things. Every great ideologist is a deep thinker. By encouraging your child to think about a thing, they own whatever ideas they birth in the process.

As a result, their boldness will not come from the fact you gave them the idea, but because this was their brainchild. Nothing emboldens a person more than this.

5. Never Criticize Their Ideas

“More often than not, parental criticism reduces the child’s self-valuing and motivation,” says Pickhardt.

For an adult, criticism can be beneficial especially when it is constructive. But for a child, it could be very detrimental.

Often times, parents in a bid to correct their children end up adopting a critical approach. This does no good for your child in the long run, as it reduces their self-esteem and worth.

In other to make them bold in their ideologies, gently correct but don’t criticize no matter what.