If we are able to make our child say and believe “I can do it,” chances are that he or she actually will do it.

Some call this positive thinking. Some call it self-fulfilling prophecy. Still others call it ego boosters.
No matter how you call it, it leads to the same thing: self-confidence.

All children need loads of it.

1. TEACH YOUR CHILD HOW TO HAVE A POSITIVE SELF-IMAGE. Hold in your mind’s eye the most positive vision possible of an individual. Avoid labeling your kids. Do not call them stupid, crazy, or wild because they will later tend to hold a negative concept of themselves.

If your children are having trouble in school or at home, the last thing they need to be saddled with are labels. What they need, instead, is to be surrounded by adults who see and help bring out the best in them.

2. TEACH YOUR CHILD THE VALUE OF TEACHING A YOUNGER CHILD. Cross-age tutoring seems to help older children for many different reasons. For one, it requires them to review basic materials that may not have been fully mastered the first time around.

Also, tutors must think through the processes before presenting them to their younger charges. Doing so helps awaken mental processes that can be applied to course work at their own level.

Most importantly, cross-age tutoring puts kids with behavior problems in the “adult” role, thereby eliciting from them their most responsible social and behavioral skills. It also enhances their self-esteem by acknowledging that, as tutors, they know something worth teaching.

Parents can support cross-age tutoring at home by encouraging their children to work with younger neighborhood friends or younger siblings. Cross-age tutoring suggests that one of the best ways to develop maturity and responsibility isn’t by striving to become a model student, but by becoming a model teacher or tutor.

Encourage cross-age tutoring; do not impose it as a burden or as a punishment, as this may do more harm than good to either.

3. TEACH YOUR CHILD THE VALUE OF HOLDING FAMILY MEETINGS. A family meeting is a regularly scheduled “coming together” of all family members to discuss issues of mutual importance. Such meetings provide parents and children a venue for sharing positive experiences, expressing feelings, planning fun things to do together, establishing family rules, settling conflicts, dealing with recurring
issues, and problem-solving in a cooperative climate.

Parents and children must function as equals during a family meeting. Such a set-up will provide children the opportunity to develop problem-solving, decision-making, consensus-building, and many other skills important to getting along with others in life.

Children who begin to experience being equal to their parents during family meetings gain the chance to activate their inner powers of self-control and self-discipline, and to use these powers to help solve not only their own difficulties but those of other family members as well.

4. TEACH YOUR CHILD HOW TO FOLLOW RULES, ROUTINES, AND TRANSITIONS. In a study conducted by Diana Baumrind and her colleagues at the Institute for Human Development in the University of California at Berkeley, they posited the existence of three primary parenting styles.

• The authoritarian style (rigid brick wall family) consists of dictatorial parents who demand blind obedience from their children. It is characterized by high expectations and high control with low levels of warmth and communication.

Kids tend to be obedient but less independent or confident.

• The permissive child-rearing style (jellyfish family) is essentially the opposite of the first type as it typically consists of high warmth and communication without much control or clear expectations. Children seemed to lack social responsibility, were not particularly independent, were low in self-confidence, and were high in anxiety.

• The authoritative parenting style (backbone family) combines the best aspects of the first two patterns with parents providing clear and consistent rules and expectations within the context of a caring and loving family. Kids show the greatest independence, leadership, social responsibility, originality, self-confidence, and achievement orientation.