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How to teach respect to our children without instilling fear
For all parents it is important to establish a bond of love and respect in parent-child relationships, we hope that children love us, and we forge a healthy and loving bond.
This aspiration is wonderful and should be precisely the impulse that motivates the development of parent-child bonding practices.
If we want to teach respect to our children we must understand that it is vital to teach from respect, children fear their parents when they are yelled at or hit, when they understand teaching and its value, learning does not generate fear.
Communication from good deals increases the bond with our children, makes them safe, respectful children and good adults.
As parents, one of our jobs is to adequately teach our children respect, let us accompany them to know what is this appropriate way to teach it.
We must strive to achieve the right balance in our parenting ways, when parents are extremely permissive, children do not learn that the rules must be respected, and they transgress them.
In the opposite case, when parents exercise abuse as teaching methods, they are not teaching respect, on the contrary, they only foster fear and resentment within the relationship with their children.
Where should they do respect?
Respect is essential for children to be good, functional adults, valued by their peers in society.
Respect and teaching it is not limited exclusively to the home, initially children must learn that respect must be given to all people in society regardless of their differences.
It must arise from home, but it must be able to be generalized to all spheres of children's lives.
This happens by teaching and promoting the value of respect for the child, he must learn why it is important to respect his parents and his peers in the world in the way that it is important that they respect him.
We know then that respect must be explicitly taught and not only expected spontaneously, now it remains to be resolved how?
How to talk to our children without resorting to violence?
We must clarify that violence is not tolerable neither towards children nor towards any other member of society, paradoxically those parents who teach from violence are disrespecting their children in the teaching process and this should never be an option.
So if we want to teach our children respect and its value, we must be the first to set an example by respecting them, treating them with good treatment and love.
The main method by which children learn is by imitation, so if we are respectful with our children, our partner and all the surrounding people, our children learn that this is the correct way to act and incorporate it into their behaviors…
1. Be their role model
As we mentioned before, we must be respectful if we want our children to be respectful, with us and with their peers.
When children find themselves in conflictive environments in which parents treat each other badly and disrespect each other, they learn that this is the correct way to proceed and no matter how many parents tell them that respect is important, in practice children cannot understand the importance of those words.
If we want to teach our children that respect is valuable, we must give it value.
2. Apply the rules of a good listener and good speaker
These are basic rules that allow us to establish good and effective communication from respect.
When your child makes an intervention in a conversation or tells you something, listen to him without interrupting him, he will feel valued, and he will understand that he must value the word of others as well as he likes to value his.
In addition, this practice increases the self-esteem and safety of children.
3. Do not promise things that you will not be able to fulfill
Children will not be able to understand what is the value of your word and then theirs if you are not able to respect the commitments and agreements that you have made with them.
Teach them through example that when a person establishes a commitment with another, they must keep their word because this is to respect the agreement and the other person.
Do not try to make them believe something that is not true just because it is easy or because they will believe it, this will only affect the trust that your child has towards you that will be very difficult to recover later.
4. Talk to them with love
Even when they make mistakes, teach them that you love them, that the mistake is not them as people but their behavior and that it can be modified if they work at doing it.
Teach them the value of courtesy words by using them and reinforcing your child each time he uses them.
Acknowledging our mistakes and asking for forgiveness for them will teach our children that we must be responsible for the consequences that our actions bring. And if you have made a mistake and ask your child for forgiveness, then learn the value of forgiveness, and you can create a healthy and loving bond.