Encourage a child with good faith,  and you will be able to watch a flower bud blossom into a beautiful flower or a chick evolve into an eagle.  Believing in your child’s potential increases your child’s potential in life.  A parent’s faith and belief will help children to have faith and believe in themselves, thus enabling  them to achieve their goals in life. In the educational profession this theory has been called the Pygmalion effect, or the self-fulfilling prophesy.

Know that each of your children are different, with different talents, no child is the same, each child is unique, like snowflakes … not one alike,  so accept John being different from Jimmy. You may become disappointed when the career for your children are not met or they quit the occupation you selected for them. Instead, nurture their spirit to have faith and be pleasantly surprised with their successes in what they choose freely to do in life.  Our love must be unconditional, nurturing, and disciplined.

Here are some words of encouragement.

“Ruth, you have a good memory.”

“Mark, you play the ukulele so well.”

“Deborah, you read well, let’s keep reading.”

“Kimberly, you want to do another math problem, that’s good.”

“Arnold, where did you get all your strength”

“David, wow you sure kick the ball good.”

“Jeffrey, wow you sure can swim and hold your breath a long time.”

“Johnny, you sure planted a lot of seeds, let’s be patient and watch them grow.”

“Justin, you sure can keep focused on playing Lego a long time, that’s a neat car you made.”

Tame Our Tongue not to Speak Discouraging Words

Discouraging words tear down a child’s future so we need to tame our tongue.  When we seek to refrain from discouraging speech, we will find that it will be easy to do.  Often, parents who were themselves raised with discouraging speech will follow the way they were brought up; it’s up to the parents to break this generation curse.  Here are some examples of speech that will discourage a child:

“You’re not good at anything”

“You won’t amount to anything”

“Why can’t you get that right”

“Why aren’t you more like your sisters and brothers?”

“You’re just being silly”

Whether we’re raising our own biological children, adopted children, or those from another family member, remember that each child is different, with unique personalities and talents.  Despite these differences, all children need encouragement and  need to know that their parents believe in them.  What matters is as parents,  we whole-heartedly believe that our children are bright and will reach their full potential.  Believe it, practice it, and our children will too. Love and discipline are gifts to our children.

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Wikipedia – Robert Rosenthal is Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Riverside. His interests include self-fulfilling prophecies, which he explored in a well-known study of the Pygmalion Effect: the effect of teachers’ expectations on students. From 1962 to 1999 he taught at Harvard, became chairman of the psychology department there in 1992, and Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology in 1995. On retiring from Harvard in 1999 he went to California.