One of your greatest (and most daunting) responsibilities as a parent is to figure out a way to help your children to be healthier, better functioning, trauma-free adults than you are, and that’s a huge task! Figuring out how to give children knowledge, often knowledge you didn’t have in childhood and might still be lacking, is kind of terrifying. Having well rounded kids doesn’t mean they’re in every sport or activity available—America has learned that during pandemic! How can you model healthy behaviors for your kids? How exactly can you raise well rounded children?
Help Them Experience New Things
One of the most critical tools coming out of pandemic strictures will be to help teach children to do new things This includes taking the time to model learning new things as well! When your children see you practicing new skills, whether it’s sitting down to watercolor paint with them, or taking a class at a community center, they realize that adulthood is also a time for learning and growth.
Teach Them Critical Life Skills
There are a great deal of crucial life skills that adults need in varying situations, and childhood is the time to practice those. How can you do that if you don’t know what they need? Things which help children a great deal are basic tasks which grow with them slowly. For example, learning to manage money or cooking—you don’t begin with thousands of dollars or making 12 course dinners! Instead, you learn to fry an egg or make grilled cheese, and learn to save a few dollars of allowance. Swimming is one of the most important skills you can teach young children. Basic classes can be life-saving, and community centers often offer these to kids and adults.
Practice Making Mistakes
Nobody likes making mistakes! But, if you’re going to learn how to do anything, you need to be willing to take the risks needed to learn those things. A well-rounded adult practices taking judicial risks, not leaping from a cliff with no support, but practicing learning to jump! Anything worth doing is worth doing badly, at least until you practice enough to do it well. Don’t be afraid to get messy!
What you might realize while helping your kids is how very much your modeling these practices helps you as well. This is awesome! Remember, when you learn, you teach, which gives your kids confidence to learn on their own.
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