Little Ways To Inspire Your Kids To Be The Best They Can Be
Inspiring your kids can sometimes seem like a hard thing to do. After all, they’re growing all the time, and the older they get, the less likely they are to listen to you. At school they can hear all kinds of things from their friends and teachers, and who knows what they’re really seeing online? As such, it can be hard to always have the conversation you want with your son or daughter.
But as their parent, you’ll always have the most direct and closest contact with your child. And because of the wonderful relationship the two of you share, you’re always going to be able to guide your child’s actions and help them make their own decisions. Never forget that!
And inspiring your kids can happen in many different ways. So, if you’re struggling to find ways to teach your child lessons of life, make sure you keep the ideas below in mind. There are a lot of little ways to help them gain some experience of their world – even from the comfort of your own living room.
Make Chores a Happy Task
It’s a good idea to have your kids do some chores around the house. Not only do you get a helping hand with keeping the place clean, but it teaches kids a bit of discipline and responsibility. It helps them to build cleaning skills they’ll need later on in life, and it’ll help them realize that when you live somewhere, you need to take care of it!
As such, chores should never be given out as a punishment. They should be a normal part of the routine, and more than that, they need to be a little bit fun. If your kids enjoy washing the dishes or putting towels in the washing machine, they’re much more likely to keep up with the habit, and even offer to lend a hand when you haven’t specifically asked them to. So turn chores into a game!
Have a reward chart up on the wall to track who’s done their chores without needing to be asked, and then have a treat ready at the end of the week. Have a race to see who can sort the laundry into piles the fastest, or set a competition for collecting the most trash from around the house in a collection bag. Simply doing any one of these things can really get your little ones to settle into their responsibilities for the future.
Read More Books Together
Reading books with your child is always going to be a nice thing to do; you’ll both have some quality time together, and your child will be able to weave into an imaginative narrative that’s guided by your voice. And when you can do a lot of different, silly voices for all the characters, it’ll make reading time extra fun and special!
Reading is one of the best ways to spark curiosity in young minds. It helps them to see more in the world around them, and to ask questions about it. It also helps them to interact on a deeper scale with what they see, and having a rich imagination helps to prevent boredom in the long run.
And not only that, but there are a lot of social skills reading books can teach kids. It can help them to work out what’s right and wrong when meeting someone for the first time, or how to treat a friend in a fair way. It can certainly help them to realize what’s real and what’s just fiction, and why and how these differ.
Let Them Help Cook
Cooking is a big life skill that not a lot of people have. As a result, people turn to junk food and takeaways, and a lot of unhealthy ready meals that can be popped in a microwave. And that’s not something you’ll want for your child as they grow! You want them to get the right nutrition from their food, and to eat big, healthy plates of good food.
So you’ll need to teach them how to cook! Kids can pick things up pretty quickly in the kitchen, thanks to food being a universal motivator for all age groups. And when your child has had a helping hand in cooking up a delicious meal, they can take pride in just how many people have enjoyed it.
And cooking can be a lot of fun too. Getting to whip up exciting foods, as well as taste a lot of spices as you go, can be a really enriching experience. And seeing as kids have more active taste buds than adults, they’re likely to find that perfect balance of flavors better than you can!
Watch a Movie
Watching a movie is one of the easiest things you can do when you’ve got kids, and that’s what makes them such a useful teaching tool. Sure, they might fidget and squirm and get a bit bored if they’re forced to sit still for a couple hours, but even their favorite animated films and Disney movies can have a lot of great messages.
So sit down once a week to watch something together. After the film is over, ask your child what the film was about, and what the characters were doing. See if they can identify any themes, and talk about how certain scenes made them feel. You can even do a little quiz: if you put something like The Lion King on, ask them about some quotes from The Lion King and what they mean.
Get your child to put the concepts into words themselves, and then discuss why these quotes have meaning. And a conversation like this doesn’t have to take more than 10 minutes, and if your child loves the movie, they’ll love getting a chance to rave about it!
Plant Some Seeds
Gardening is a great skill to have, simply thanks to its involved and green nature. However, if you teach your child that planting a few seeds can lead to long term rewards, they’ll be far more likely to make eco-friendly choices later on in life as well. And it’s alway nice to see kids being kind to the Earth, and knowing that their actions have consequences on their surroundings.
And when your child knows that the ground needs looking after, they’ll be far less likely to litter, and may even pick up rubbish they find in the park or the playground to put in the garbage. They’ll be kinder to bugs like worms and spiders, and they’ll be a lot more curious about different plants and how they grow. They might even learn to love weeds, and won’t be picking out all the dandelions whenever they’re sitting in the grass with their friends!
Encourage Plenty of Questions
Kids should be able to ask questions. They’re little balls of curious energy and want to learn as much as they can, and that should be encouraged both at home and at school. So let your child ask ‘Why?’ and ‘What for?’ – even if you don’t have an answer ready, it’s still a good attitude to maintain.
Because we don’t want our kids to simply accept what they’re being told. We want them to have reasoning skills, and to be able to think critically, especially in the modern age of social media. We want them to be able to fact check, and to learn the importance of doing your own research in order to make a decision.
And when you don’t have an answer for them, you can simply tell them so! You can even allow them to go away and do some research, and then come and tell you all about it. Your child will love being able to teach you something!
Give Them Some Control
Finally, kids love to have a little bit of control over their lives. All day long they’re told what to do and where to go, and that can make them rail against authority. To prevent this kind of behavior from spiraling out of control, let them make a few decisions, even if they’re inconsequential.
Let them pick what they have for lunch, or what soap they want to use for their morning wash. Let them choose the color of their reward chart sticker, and let them sometimes pick what movie you’ll all be watching. Simply make sure they have a voice and that they know they can use it. Even when they frustrate you by questioning something they’re being told to do, you know that your little inspiring lessons are getting through to them!
If you want to inspire your kids a little more often, ideas like these can go a long way. Your children can pick up on all sorts of lessons, no matter what shape they come in, as long as a trusted authority figure is delivering them. Put that to good use, and help your kids push themselves to be the best person they can be!
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