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Formative years are one of the most pivotal time for any child, as these years forms the basis of their personality, worldview, and attitude towards life. The formative period, which is considered as 0-8 years, forms the groundwork for their mental and emotional well-being. Children introduced to love, independence, abundance, and gratitude in their early years are more likely to retain these qualities as they progress through life. When you adopt parenting tips to strengthen a child emotionally and instill the right values in him, you effectively mold the blueprint for a prosperous and accomplished adult in the making.
It’s widely acknowledged that adverse childhood experiences, such as trauma, loss, abuse, or parents’ divorce, can exert a profound and lasting impact on a child’s physical and mental well-being. Fortunately, a significant number of children are shielded from such extreme life events. However, there are often subtler nuances that parents may unintentionally overlook. In this article, we will discuss these simple yet profoundly impactful parenting tips that, when adopted during childhood, possess the potential to revolutionize your child’s life in their adult years.
Why Formative Years Matter
Have you ever pondered the profound impact of instilling qualities like love, kindness, and empathy, and cultivating an abundant mindset in the early years of a child’s life? It’s a subject that often goes underestimated, yet it holds the key to shaping the future success mantra.
Research and studies offer compelling evidence that nurturing happiness and fostering independence during a child’s formative years significantly contribute to the development of a confident individual. These seemingly basic human characteristics are, in fact, the building blocks of a resilient and accomplished future.
Take, for instance, the remarkable power of gratitude. It’s a concept we’ve all heard of—the idea that appreciating the positives in our lives attracts more positivity. Now, imagine if gratitude was not just a conscious effort but deeply ingrained within you, an automatic response, and a way of life. Picture a reality where gratitude flows effortlessly from your being, where it becomes second nature. This is what introducing the right habits and emotions in the formative years does to you in adult life. They become your primary nature, and you become the living embodiment of those values.
How can you Nurture the Unborn Child
Research indicates that even before birth, babies are already exposed to language, taste, and emotions, largely influenced by their mothers’ decisions and experiences. Remarkably, a child’s mental health is intricately linked to the mental and emotional well-being of the mother during pregnancy. According to a study, maternal depression during pregnancy can influence the pattern of brain development in babies.
To foster a positive environment for your baby’s development, consider making some beneficial changes. Surround yourself with uplifting and supportive individuals, connect with friends and family members who bring you comfort and joy, engage with your favorite books, and, above all, prioritize your own mental health. Try out some of these simple tips to ensure that you give the right start to your little one:
Interact with your Baby
Talk about your day with your baby, mostly all the wonderful things that unfolded during the day. Share anything interesting you did today, your daily joys, or simply converse about almost anything while doing random household chores. This simple act of conversing can significantly contribute to bonding with your baby during pregnancy, ultimately aiding their development after birth.
Meditate to Foster Connection
Going beyond verbal communication, foster a deeper connection by connecting with your baby through meditation. In your deep, relaxed meditative state, communicate how much you love your baby, and how eagerly you are waiting to hold him in your arms. If breath meditation is challenging for you, try some short guided meditation or mantra meditation to connect with your inner self.
Immerse in Reading
Read that spiritual or inspirational book you always wanted to read. Choose a book that resonates with your interests because it doesn’t matter what you read. What matters is the relevance it has for you. Allow your child to connect with this cherished aspect of your life.
Monitor your Emotions and Thoughts
Finally, pay close attention to your prevailing emotions and thoughts. If you’ve been consistently preoccupied with worries, it’s essential to recognize that your child may be affected and may potentially develop a tendency to get stressed.
Parenting Tips for Formative Years: How to Raise Healthy, Happy, Peaceful kids
1. The Power of Gratitude
If you have ever practiced gratitude, you would agree that it is a life-altering practice. Gratitude not only reduces your stress levels but also transforms your state of mind to focus on the positives in your life. Introducing gratitude in the formative years will help the baby turn into an optimistic adult who cherishes relationships and values little things in life. But how can you instill gratitude in children? Try some of these parenting tips:
Reflect and Discuss Happy Moments
Beginning at the age of three years or when the child is comfortable in expressing themselves, start discussing all the great things they have in life, what was the highlight of the day, and what made them happy. You can share your happy moments as well in the process, and together, you can thank the people or God who made you both happy.
Leveraging Drawing
One of the powerful ways for children to express themselves is by drawing their hearts out. Give your child a blank paper and his favorite colors to draw the cherished moments. Avoid imposing any specific agenda for their artistic expression. Instead, let him freely scribble, draw, color his favorite fruit, or craft stories through his artwork. Encourage them to illustrate happiness, and you might be astonished by their deep and reflective thinking. Regardless of their creative choices, the idea is to give them a platform to recall the good in life and express it.
Gratitude Stories
Stories serve as a captivating means to convey messages to children. Read gratitude stories to them or craft your own tales that emphasize the value of gratitude.
Don’t Impose Gratitude
Many a time, we tend to push ‘manners’ to our children by forcing them to say ‘thank you’ and ‘please’. The problem with that approach is that children don’t really understand the logic of our thrust and thus may prefer doing otherwise as they grow old. On the contrary, letting them acknowledge and express the beauty of gratitude on their own, goes a long way.
2. Being Conscious of Living Beings and the Environment
Teaching children to be conscious of living beings and the environment is a valuable lesson that fosters empathy, responsibility, and a sense of stewardship for the world around them. Here are some effective ways to instill this awareness in the formative years:
Spend Time in Nature
Encourage your children to spend more and more time outdoors. Allow them to closely observe plants, leaves, flowers – taking in the vibrant colors, intricate patterns, and the fascinating process of growth. Let them watch, follow, and study ants, worms, and the gentle caress of the wind. And while doing that, avoid the urge to provide scientific explanations; instead, let them practice mindfulness and form their unique perspectives. Interestingly, children are much more mindful and spiritual than most of us. They are keen observers and have the ability to not just see the beauty in everything but also feel the vibration energy carried by all living beings.
Embrace Messiness
Don’t fret about the state of their clothes or their hands getting covered in mud. Instead, let them run freely with the wind, or revel in the rain if the weather permits. Children learn with their experiences, and what can be a better way to connect with earth, water, and air than playing with them!
Gardening
Gardening is an excellent hands-on way for children to learn about the environment. Planting and caring for a garden not only teaches responsibility but also demonstrates how our actions impact the growth of living beings.
3. Practicing Empathy
Being empathetic not only strengthens your relationships, it is the quality that defines your leadership skills and your professional growth. Empathy instilled in the formative years ensures your child values people in his life. Try these parenting tips:
Share stories
You don’t need to be a skilled writer to impart the concept of empathy to your children. Simple narratives, like recounting a story of a monkey falling from a tree branch and another monkey rushing to its aid, provide effective ways to underscore the significance of empathy.
Teach by Practicing
Children often learn by observing the behavior of adults. Set a positive example by showing respect and empathy toward living beings and the environment. Your actions, such as recycling, conserving resources, and being kind to animals, will leave a lasting impression.
Nurture Life
If you have pets, involve your child in their care. Teach them about the needs and behaviors of animals, emphasizing the importance of kindness and proper treatment.
Recognize their Empathetic Move
Most importantly, acknowledge and celebrate instances when your child displays empathetic behavior. Whether it’s understanding the value of sharing toys with someone less fortunate or tenderly applying medicine to your skin rash, recognizing these acts reinforces the importance of empathy in their young hearts.
4. Happiness and Peace
While all of us aim for cheerful and calm approach to parenting, the reality often involves quirky, embarrassing, and even angry moments. While some of us may lose our cool and ‘perfect’ parent image more often than others, the key to parenting involves managing our emotions along with that of our children. Explore these effective parenting tips to navigate through the negative emotions in the formative years:
Embracing Emotions
When your child approaches you with feelings of anger, hatred, or sadness, it’s important not to hastily dismiss these emotions. Allow them to articulate and express the emotions they’re experiencing and the reasons behind them. Engage in a conversation about these emotions when necessary, but in most cases, grant your child the space to sit with and comprehend their emotions fully. Encourage them not to evade any emotion and offer them the freedom to experience it without fear or judgment.
The Act of Non-interference
If your child is brimming with happiness while engrossed in playing with a new toy or sharing a story with a friend, it’s best not to disrupt their moment. Similarly, when a child can manage their disagreements independently, it’s wise to permit them to do so. Trust in their innate ability to cope with a spectrum of emotions without your constant intervention.
5. Living Abundance
Cultivating an abundant mindset can be quite challenging for many individuals. Often, we either don’t perceive the abundance that surrounds us, or we struggle to acknowledge it. The seeds of this mindset, whether abundant or scarce, are often sown during our formative years. The impact of parents discussing financial limitations or lamenting hefty bills may have contributed to the limiting beliefs that influence our outlook on life. However, it’s never too early to introduce the concept of abundance to your little one. Here are some parenting tips to go about it:
Affirmative Abundance Statements
Abundance is not solely about money; it encompasses all facets of life. To introduce an abundance mindset to your child, it is crucial that first you realize abundance in your life. Use positive affirmative statements when your kids are around. Express gratitude for the abundant love in your life, and convey to them that they possess abundant capabilities, an abundance of nourishment, freedom, and countless reasons to smile.
Experiencing Abundance
Encourage your children to experience and express the abundance in their lives. It’s important for them to recognize and relish the abundance they encounter, whether it’s the joy of playing with friends or the simple pleasures that surround them.
6. Inclusion and Diversity
We all want to raise inclusive children. We aspire that our children feel comfortable in their own skin while appreciating that not everyone looks, talks, or thinks like them. Here are some parenting tips on how you can introduce diversity and inclusion:
Give Exposure
As children observe more than you think in the formative years, actively introducing the diversity around us can be a good idea. Let them join you in social gatherings with the LGBTQ community, take them to visit a specially-abled school, or introduce them to festivals, rituals, and customs that extend beyond your own religion and belief system. Don’t worry if all of this seems too much to do. Pick up your easy choices and introduce how diverse opinions, races, colors, and body types coexist around us, each embodying a unique and extraordinary form of beauty.
Practice Acceptance
As you acknowledge diversity, an essential parenting tip is to also emphasize the acceptance of these differences. Communicate why it’s perfectly fine to have disagreements, varying opinions, and diverse belief systems. Encourage your child to embrace the idea that diversity is not just about tolerating differences but celebrating them.
Emphasize Similarities
While teaching differences is important, so is highlighting similarities. Explain that despite our differences, we all share the experience of being human. We are connected by the universal desire for human connection, love, and the pursuit of dreams.
7. Wisdom to Make the Right Choices
Empowering our children to distinguish between good and bad choices, and instilling the wisdom to make the right decisions for themselves and others, is a fundamental goal for all parents. Here are some valuable parenting tips you can implement during their formative years:
Believe in Your Child
To start with, have faith in every choice your child makes, both the good and the not-so-good ones. The objective here isn’t to endorse poor decisions but to provide them with the confidence to explore, learn, and adapt. It’s essential to understand that it’s perfectly okay for them to experience failure or make mistakes along the way, as these moments are invaluable for their growth and development. Unless there’s a risk of physical harm, it’s advisable to refrain from constantly intervening and correcting them. Allowing them to explore the world to the best of their ability is a crucial part of their learning journey. Moreover, make sure to acknowledge and celebrate their small victories and successes, however modest they may seem.
Acknowledge Their Uniqueness
One aspect we often overlook is celebrating our children unconditionally. By appreciating them for who they are, we convey one of the most powerful messages to our children- that they are always worthy and loved.
8. The Art of Questioning and Wondering
Encouraging young minds to ask questions and embark on a quest for answers is not only inspiring but also one of the most profound ways for them to learn and grow. You can support them in this process with these simple yet effective parenting tips:
Hear out Without Judgments
Never dismiss a question raised by your child in formative years. While it may seem tiring to provide answers to thousands of questions in their curious mind, these questions actually foster innovation, and a deep-seated desire to comprehend the world around them. Even if the questions seem vague, unusual, or perhaps a bit embarrassing, it’s vital to listen attentively without casting judgment.
Creative vs. Factual Answer
Don’t feel compelled to provide a strictly scientific or logically precise explanation to queries like how plants grow or the mystery of childbirth. Instead, consider offering responses that combine factual information with the art of creative storytelling. Tailor your approach based on your child’s age and level of understanding, ensuring that the answers are both engaging and educational.
Encourage Independent Exploration
Instead of feeling the need to provide instant answers to their unique questions, engage with your child in a spirit of wonder and curiosity. Explain to them that you will jointly ponder and seek answers together. Encourage them to discover and formulate their own responses. As they engage in this process, your role shifts from providing answers to guiding their exploration in the right direction. Over time, they will gain the confidence and empowerment to unravel the mysteries and questions on their own.
9. Leveraging Music
Music wields a substantial influence on the mental and emotional well-being of children. During their formative years, you can introduce a diverse range of music that contributes to their development and nurtures their emotional landscape.
Enchanting Mantras
Playing powerful mantras is an excellent way to instill calmness and compassion, and alleviate stress and anxiety in children. Mantras have the remarkable ability to elevate the vibrations of young minds. Whether it’s the soothing resonance of “Om” or mantras dedicated to peace and tranquility, these melodic affirmations can foster emotional balance in children.
Relaxing or Meditative Music
Introduce your child to relaxing or meditative music, especially when they are engrossed in activities like coloring or reading a book in silence. Whether it’s the gentle sounds of flowing water, the calming notes of instrumental music, or serene nature sounds, such music will foster creativity and well-being.
10. Introducing Meditation
The practice of meditation holds a profound impact on our overall well-being, offering a range of benefits for individuals of all ages. When it comes to introducing meditation to children, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer. Instead, it depends on their capacity to sit still for a brief period and their willingness to engage in the practice. Here are some parenting tips for introducing meditation in formative years:
Avoid Imposing Meditation
It’s natural for a parent who practices meditation to wish to introduce it to their child. However, it’s important not to push meditation onto your child before they are ready. A more gradual approach can be highly effective. Start by practicing simple chanting or mindful activities together. For instance, invite your child to join you in a meditation session where both of you sit quietly and chant “OM” together five times. Encourage them to share their meditation experience, including their thoughts, emotions, and any images or sensations they may have encountered.
Mindfulness Practices
You can also incorporate mindfulness exercises into your child’s routine. These can be simple and fun activities that help them become more aware of their surroundings and their own feelings.
Age-Appropriate Techniques
One of the key parenting tips is to tailor your meditation and mindfulness techniques to your child’s age and developmental stage. Younger children may benefit from short, playful activities that engage their imagination, such as guided imagery or storytelling exercises. As they grow, you can gradually introduce them to mantras, loving-kindness meditation, or focused breathing.
Conclusion
The formative years of a child’s life are a pivotal chapter in their journey of growth and self-discovery. As parents, guardians, and caregivers, it is our sacred responsibility to provide the nurturing environment and guidance that will help them flourish into compassionate, well-balanced, and spiritually aware individuals. Our role as spiritual guides and mentors is not merely to shape the individuals they become, but to help them uncover their own path to wisdom, inner peace, and a profound connection with the world around them.
