Teach Your Child Manners and Good Behavior Early

It is never too early to start to teach your child manners and good behavior. These teachings will last them a lifetime building a caring, self confident, respectful adult.

Whether your child spends his or her days at home with you or in the care of others such as day care or preschool, both teachers and parents have a responsibility to build character in a child.

Here are 5 Tips That Have Proven Effective to Build Character and Teach Manners.

1. Involve Your Child
Involve your child in daily activities. Asking your child for help and letting them participate in daily chores, duties, and the like helps build self confidence and respect. Children like to be part of these activities and you can use this time to teach your child good manners and build character.

2. Tell The Truth
Encourage your child to always tell the truth. Teach them that they will always be in far less trouble for telling the truth then telling a lie, even if it’s just a little white lie. Parent also need to learn not to blow their top when a child tells the truth. In order to encourage telling the truth the punishment must be less severe than the punishment for lying otherwise kids will logically try to lie their way out of a situation.

3. Respect
Teach your child respect from an early age. You are your child’s most influential teacher as they watch what you do, they model after you. So if you expect your child to be respectful you best practice what you preach. Help your child learn how to treat people with respect and kindness and what friendship means. This is a lesson they’ll need throughout life.

4. Guide & Support
Make your relationship one that your child feels comfortable coming to you for guidance for any problem. Children will have struggles and conflict that sometimes they are not able to work out by themselves. By allowing yourself to be a mentor and keeping an open door policy you can help your child. Now this doesn’t mean you should be making the decisions for them. Rather you should be providing information and guidance so that they are able to make a good decision.

5. Independence
One of the biggest mistakes parents make is to baby their children and shelter them. Children need to learn independence and the lesson should start at a young age. Our children are smart and if we guide them with their independence we will be proud of the results. By the time they become teens they will have a conscious and won’t be so easily swayed by peers, they will be able to function confidently on their own and as they become adults they will become healthy productive members of society.

Children become what they see. All the talking in the world won’t have the same impact that your own behavior will have. Children look up to their parents and tend to duplicate their behavior.

So if you are pushy, obnoxious, and underhanded don’t expect your children to be any different. If your house if filled with yelling and name calling expect the same from your child. But if your home is filled with love and respect your child will quickly follow in those footsteps.

Start young! Remember teaching manners and building character starts with you! Your children are little you’s so teach them well!

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