Affirmation: An Important Way To Build A Healthy Relationship With Your Children

August 17, 2021 by Marjorie R. Rogers, MA (English), Certified Consultant

Our environment is one of the most important things which plays a huge role in building our behaviors and personalities.

Fact: As it is a scientific study that a person’s personality becomes the average of the five people he surrounds himself with the most.

A child, either a newborn or toddler, spends 90% of his day with his parents and in some cases siblings. Hence, it is essential that parents should love, support, and encourage their children.

This behavior of parents is the most important thing for the children. It empowers them to the extent which none can estimate. It enhances self-worth and optimistic behavior.

You must be thinking about what should the parents do to generate this healthy and trustworthy relationship with their children. Well, there can be many ways and many answers to this question. The important factor on which we are focusing today is ‘affirmation’.

What Are Affirmations?

Affirmations, in their true sense, are the positive things, statements, and phrases that you say to someone or to yourself to build a healthy and positive relationship.

It reminds the person about his self-worth. Our minds ( and thus behaviors) become what we feed and say to them. Hence affirmations come in handy in this case as these are the safest and decent ways to boost someone’s self-esteem and morale.

As we have already stated, our environment plays a huge role in shaping our personalities, and in this regard, it is essential to be with someone who brings the good side of your personality.

Positive Impacts Of Affirmation In Child-Parent Relationship

There are many ways through which one can prove that affirmations are the basic tools to build a healthy relationship. Some of the most important advantages are listed below:

1. Power of talking

Talking is the basis of creating a healthy relationship with your children. Every parent should ask some questions to himself/herself:

• What was the last time the parents spoke to their children?
• What was the tone of their conversations?
• How often do they talk with their children?
• What is the possible outcome of their conversation

These and many other related questions are there which parents should ask themselves. So that they can reflect back on the areas on which they need to work for building a healthy and beautiful relation with their children.

Through talking, parents and children develop an unbreakable bond. Positive comments and affirmations empower the children even from a very early age. Comments like:

•  ‘Woah! You are so brave’
•  ‘Good job!’
•  ‘That’s very smart of you!’

Note: Such phrases have a powerful impact on their brain.

This way parents and children talk to each other and as well as listen to each other. All this ultimately makes them able to understand the points and emotions in the best possible way. Children know that parents will listen to them.

Finally, this conversation would have a positive impact. All this can be possible via affirming your children. Communication gaps become negligible and issues can be resolved with fighting and misunderstanding.

They tend to feel good about themselves, and as a result, believe in themselves. This will ultimately make their childhood a fairytale of their lives! In the future, this is the best way to excel in education for the child. Besides, In practical life, this behavior will help him overcome any hurdle.

2. Relationship of children with themselves

By listening to the affirmations of parents, children develop behavior to talk to themselves according to the acquired behavior. Children become what we absorb and listen to. Also, their relationship with themselves becomes the way their parents treat themselves.

Imagine if a child always gets comments like he is wrong. He cannot do anything. Then resultantly he adopts this behavior in the self-talk as well.

There are maximum chances he would say to himself that I am not good at rough or I always make mistakes. On the flip side, if a child continuously listens that he is so smart and hardworking. As a result, he would consider this as a fact.

Hence, to develop the habit of self-affirmation, first, they need an example of such treatment, and parents are the ones who can set the basic model for this.

If a child messes up, parents must teach him in a very polite way by affirming him like, we know that you have failed a test, but this does not prove that you are any less. Failures are a part of life. Learn from them and try again. And we know that you are smart enough to overcome this situation. This way the child will adopt the habit of affirming himself too. 

3. Trust building

If parents, try to listen and understand their children. And if they do not scold them on minor blunders then the children develop a healthy relationship with their parents and they trust them.

Consequently, they start to believe that their parents are so trustworthy. They share their secrets with them. Also, they tend to listen to them too. 

Note: This trust-building quality is the one that lays the basics of healthy family life.

4. Healthy learning environment

The growth and development of a child’s brain depend on the environment in which he lives. If the environment is negative and he gets rejected and demotivated every time he learns a new thing.

Then this will have a long-lasting negative impact on him. While, if parents provide an environment where experimentation and learning have a great value, and parents affirm to their child that he has done a great job.

This learning and growing environment are necessary even for toddlers too. Parents should arrange fun activities for toddlers and when they become able to do that work, then parents should clap for them, smile at them, or hug them for their affirmation. This will create a sense of affirmation in them. As a result, learning will become their favorite hobby.

Summary

In the end, we can say that parents have the power to make or break the personality of their children, and affirmation is the healthiest way to build a healthy relationship.

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