Focus on the positive behaviors and attitudes

We all want to find means and ways to improve our child’s behavior and self esteem- Positive feedback is your most powerful tool.

Positive feedback means using praise or incentives to encourage good decision making. It is not something new, but we often forget to use it. There are two ways you can use positive feedback; first to increase desirable behavior second to decrease undesired behavior.

It is easy to use positive feedback to encourage desirable behavior, simply look for good behavior. When it occurs, reinforce it. When your children are well behaved, or have done something good or what was expected of them, reward them with words of praise or encouragement, a hug or a privilege.

We like our children to share things with each other. When they share something, reinforce the sharing. You could say: “I like the way you are sharing.” “I see you have decided to share your toy today, that’s really nice/ good.”

Positive feedback is simple to use. The difficult part is to remember to keep looking out for the good behavior. Usually we notice only misbehavior in our children and take the good behavior for granted. We can strengthen good behavior by telling our children how much we appreciate it. Key is to focus on positive aspects of our child’s behavior and this takes practice. If we just increase our use of positive feedback and make no other changes in our parenting behavior, our children will start making better decisions.