Be an Encouraging Parent to Your Child
Are you an encouraging parent to your child? Yes, you’re a busy parent. Sometimes you get so busy that you may forget that your little one really needs a lot of your encouragement. You also may not know exactly how to encourage them as well.
We all need regular doses of encouragement. But sometimes we only touch on the surface. It can even sound like false praise when we’re giving encouragement. Even worse is that being encouraging just seems to require so much effort. It can become frustrating and even negative.
What Does Real Encouragement Look Like?
So let’s talk about what real encouragement looks like. Parents encourage their children to inspire and motivate them. We gently support them in learning new things. You need to let your child know that you believe in their abilities to grow and learn.
Focus on their efforts and how they’re making progress improving in a particular task. Tell them that you see how hard they have worked and that you’re proud of them for sticking to the task until they’ve learned it.
When parents encourage their children in this way, it helps them grow to have confidence and believe that they have the ability to do many things if they work hard. They’ll come to understand that all their time and effort to learn a task are worth it.
They will also become more independent as they grow. They’re are less likely to compare themselves to others or feel the need to compete with others. Your encouragement helps them to develop confidence in their abilities to stick to the task. It will also help them to learn to focus on making the effort to overcome problems.
on the first day of a their birth and continue throughout their life.
Encouragement Is Essential
One of the Suzuki Early Childhood Education Concepts is Encouragement is Essential. In “Your Musical Baby” Class, I encourage parents to model activities and behaviors for their babies and toddlers.
Then parents model those positive things for their child at home. Also, in the class, the older toddlers model the activities for the babies. They are learning to become leaders and encouraging the little ones.
Encouragement is the heart of Dr. Shinichi Suzuki’s Mother-Tongue Method of Education. There’s a joke in the Suzuki teacher community that goes like this:
What is the difference between a traditional teacher and a Suzuki teacher? The answer:
The traditional teacher will listen to a student play and say, “Now fix this, this, and this”.
The Suzuki teacher listens to the student play and says, “It is good that you played for me. Now fix this, this, and this”. Well, it always gets a chuckle and you get the idea.
How Does Real Encouragement Work for Parents and Children?
But the truth is that Dr Suzuki inspired each of us to teach in an encouraging way. For example, let’s think about how parents encourage babies to learn to speak. You’ll repeat a word to your baby over and over and you don’t get tired of doing it and they don’t get tired of listening to you.
As a parent, you instinctively know to keep repeating the word and soon the baby is going to repeat that word. Now, are you going to scold your child because they didn’t say the word correctly or perfectly?
Of course not! You are beyond excited to hear them say their first word! So you keep repeating that word and encouraging your child to repeat it. Meanwhile you’re repeating another new word to your baby and encouraging them to repeat that one.
So, what if you treated every learning situation with your child just like that? Learning might look much different than it usually does.
Most importantly, when parents encourage their children, it needs to be specific to a situation. We need to avoid just saying, “Good job” or “You’re so smart” or “You did it”.
Effective, specific encouragement is what we’re talking about. It can be as simple as saying to your baby, “You said ‘Mama’. That is so exciting!” Maybe your child just said the word “apple”. So you can say something like, “Yes, that’s an apple. Do you like apples?”
In this way, you’re engaging your child in conversation. It helps them to really learn to communicate. You are encouraging them to think and form their own ideas and opinions while helping them to build their language skills.
Your child’s learning could look much different in the future if we encourage in this way.
“Your Musical Baby” Class Embraces Encouragement
In “Your Musical Baby” Class, we embraces this kind of encouragement for parents and babies. It encourages the thorough mastery of not just musical skills, but social/emotional skills, motor skills, listening skills, and life skills.
As your guide, I work to create a passionate, sensitive, and self-disciplined atmosphere in every “Your Musical Baby” Class. I also work to create a non-stressful approach to learning. We can work together to understand and follow your child’s natural timetable for learning.
Often, as parents, we get so anxious for our child to do a particular activity. We may not mean to, but we try to force them to do it. Or we get upset that they won’t do it when you know they can do it.
But, that only frustrates you and your child. Needless to say, if there’s frustration happening there is no encouragement going on.
So, in “Your Music Baby” Class activities, you and your child can learn to give and accept genuine encouragement. It isn’t always easy, but it’s always worth it.
Your encouragement and love will give your child the hope they need to learn new skills and deal with the problems in life. My goal is to guide you and your child to learn these things through musical activities in “Your Musical Baby” Class.
Beautiful Heart Musical Journey: Babies & Beyond
Would you like to learn more about giving effective, specific encouragement to your baby? Then I have an opportunity for you.
The ONLINE “Your Musical Baby” Class is one of the programs in the Beautiful Heart Musical Journey; Babies & Beyond Studio.
Right now, you can observe a “Your Musical Baby” Class for FREE on any Saturday morning. Just sign up below:
Come join us and see for yourself how you can encourage your child. You and your child can also become lifelong learners together and develop a deeper relationship with each other through musical activities.
I hope to see you and your child in the next “Your Musical Baby” Class.
On the “Beautiful Heart Musical Journey” with you,
Susan
