Building Self-esteem with your children

I would like to thank everyone who attended our coffee morning and shared their experiences with all of us. I think that this is the best way to learn and know that we are not alone, in this difficult, but enjoyable task of being parents.

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For those of you who were unable to attend, listed below are the points we discussed about how to help our children improve their self esteem.

Self esteem is how we see ourselves. It´s not something that we are born with, it is something that we learn from the environment we grow up in.

How can we help our children to build their self esteem?

Set a good example: Children learn by what they see and hear, watch your words and actions.

Be encouraging: Encourage your child to try new things and to keep trying, even when they struggle or faSELFil.

Be a good communicator: Talk in a positive way with your child, not to your child. Listen to them attentively and keep lines of communication open. Value their thoughts, even if you do not always agree.

Discipline with love: Separate the child from the action and punish the action not the person.

Help them to set realistic goals: Write it down and your child to follow them.

Energise your child with a healthy lifestyle: Exercise daily, eat healthy and get sufficient sleep.

Allow your child to make mistakes: When your child fails, support them and discuss the lessons learnt and ways to improve the next time.

Spend time with your child: Acknowledge their effort. Give support even if you don´t agree with their choices.

It is never too late to star building self-esteem. START TODAY.

How to plan the first school term: a study strategy that saves you time

Try these four steps to develop a plan for your semester that will ultimately save you loads of time.

1. Plan your first school term in writing

First, makes sure when you do this, write it down. This can be on a regular old calendar. It could also be on a student-specific agenda/planner. It doesn’t really matter where you write it down — what’s truly important is that you write it down. 

If you’re paperless, that’s no problem either. Just type out your plans on a digital planner or calendar.

2. Use your syllabus to plan your first school term

This is key. If you don’t have a syllabus yet, you can’t really do this. You need a syllabus.

Specifically, we’re looking for any assignment due dates. That’s the biggest piece of info for this first step. Also, it’s really important that you have a sense of how big a project or assignment actually is. To plan out our calendar effectively, we need to know how much of that calendar is going to be taken up by working on that project.

If you just have a few pages to read, that’s not a big deal. If you have a few books to read, you need to start thinking long-term rather than just short-term.

3. Record all big events and due dates

This is putting feet to our syllabus. Having a syllabus isn’t much help if you never use it… so use it.

Put down those due dates wherever they show up. If you have a paper calendar, make sure you have a way of identifying what is an assignment due date and what is not a due date. Consider writing all due dates in red, for example.

 

4. Break those due dates into daily tasks.

Recording due dates is not the end-all of school term planning. You need to make sure that you are breaking them down into daily tasks.

This is really the key to being a highly productive student. If you never break tasks down, you can get caught off guard when big projects come due. Research papers are just due one day. That doesn’t change the fact that they require you to work on them for at least two weeks in most cases.

 

 

 

Helping others.

I will like to share with all of you an interesting video. I am sure that this short film will make you think about the importance of helping others.

9 Ways Students Can Develop a Growth Mindset

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Key points for supporting children’s friendship skills.

Parents, carers and teaching staff have important roles to play in helping children develop friendships. They set examples for children to follow through the ways they manage relationships. They can also act as coaches and mentors for children, teaching them helpful social skills and talking through friendship issues to help with solving problems.

Provide children with opportunities to play with peers. Children gain experience and learn important social skills from playing with friends.

Teach positive social skills. Little things like smiles, looking at the person, knowing names and using a confident, friendly voice can make a big difference when making friends. Being able to better control negative emotions and paying attention to the needs and wants of others are also very important.

You may act out the situation and even demonstrate what to say. Take turns ‘acting’ until your child can demonstrate what to do.

Be a coach. Coach your child to practise positive social skills in everyday situations with family members and friends. Support children’s learning by giving positive feedback and praise.

Help children solve friendship problems
Talking problems through with a supportive adult helps children to think about what happens, how they feel about it and what to do next.

Don’t be too serious. Make it a fun experience.

GRAPHS, STICKERS or POINTS

How to improve your child´s behaviour at home using GRAPHS, STICKERS or POINTS.

The Graphs are a means of reinforcing specific types of behaviour and in order to do this we can use stickers or points.

1. You can choose 3 types of behaviour to focus on, they should be obvious and always formulated positively. For example don´t say to your child, behave yourself, be good, be quiet, instead try and get them to do something positively, for instance, dress yourself, tidy up your toys, fasten your seat belt in the car…..

2.You should inform your child that you will give him or her points or a sticker every time they behave correctly, and these should be given as soon as possible so that your child sees this as a prize.

3. Points or stickers should never be removed or taken away from the child for bad or inappropriate behaviour, in this case different measures should be taken.

4. When the graph has been completed you may want to consider giving a treat to your child, this could be something that you have previously agreed with him or her.

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9 steps to manage temper tantrums.

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1.  We should not pay attention to the tantrum. If you give in to your  child while he is having a tantrum you are not allowing him to learn to tolerate his frustrations.

2. Wait for your child to calm down.

3. Explain that when they are calm you will pay attention to them and help them solve their problem.

4. It is very important for us to stay calm at all times, children recognize our frustration as well and that in turn makes them more frustrated.

5. Be firm and consistent, but show your child affection, not anger.

6. Try to divert your child’s attention to something else.

7. You have to act as a role model therefore when you feel frustrated or angry try to control the situation and don’t lose your temper.

8. Talk to your child, express your own emotions and help them to feel comfortable when expressing their emotions to you.

9. Do not judge your child, be understanding and only criticize exactly what they did wrong, do not make a general criticism of your child, as this can  be negative for your child’s emotional development.