Now that we have had New Year's Eve, many people are starting their good intentions. More sports, eat healthier or stop with that one bad habit that you couldn't let go in the past year. Strangely enough, research shows that good intentions often fail at the beginning of the year - about 80% of people do not succeed in achieving their good intentions. What you can do better is teaching yourself good habits. And, the earlier, the better. In this blog you will find everything about how to teach your children good habits.
Why is it so important to teach children good habits?
Where good intentions may be doomed to fail, good habits ensure positive patterns in daily life. By teaching your children at a young age good habits, you help them on their way to a healthy and happy life. For example, if children learn to exercise regularly and eat healthily at a young age, there is a greater chance that they will continue to do this later in life. In addition, that kind of good habits also ensure that children can deal with challenges better. If you teach your little ones to go to bed on time and to do their homework, then dealing with stress will go a lot easier. And did you know that learning good habits also helps create self -confidence and discipline? Both important character traits that are good for the development of every child. There are countless other benefits of learning good habits at a young age. It is best to just start!
5 tips that help you learn good habits in children
Of course you don't just learn a good habit. Time, energy and repetition are important here. To help you on your way, we have five tips for learning good habits with children.
- Use positive attention and rewards to reinforce good behavior. If your child does something good, give positive attention and reward this behavior. This way you show that you are proud of what your child has done. As a result, children, and secretly also adults, are more likely to repeat the same behavior. This makes it a good habit in no time.
- Give clear guidelines and express expectations to each other. For everything is the first time. This is no different for learning (new) good habits. When children know what is expected of them, they are better able to learn good habits. For example, do you want to make clear to your children why it is important to do the homework on time? Then explain what the benefits are and what it takes to learn this habit - by, for example, immediately starting from school.
- Work with "natural consequences". Punishment is often out of the question and is counterproductive when you want to learn good habits. But "natural consequences", on the other hand, can help. This means that your behavior is related to the consequences that arise from this. Don't feel like brushing the teeth? Then you get a bad breath or worse, you get holes! By emphasizing this kind of natural consequences, your child can learn that certain behavior has consequences. This way of parenting encourages children to make healthy choices for themselves.
- Be a good example. As a parent you are the most important example for your child. If you have good habits yourself, such as going to bed on time and regularly brushing teeth, your child will probably do this too.
- Make repetition and consistency. Learning good habits is to a large extent repetition and consistency. After all, learning good habits takes time and energy, so be patient and stay consistent in encouraging good behavior. It can also help to create certain rituals or routines, so that learning good habits becomes easier. Think of a sleep ritual or morning ritual, we wrote blogs about this before!
What good habits are you (your child) learning this year?
