Do you know that your way of talking affects your child’s growth?

Many of you don’t know the impacts of it but you will understand it once you read this till the end.

Yes, Your child has been learning to speak by watching you and by watching your words from the very first day he starts to speak. It means the way he talks is an imitation of yours. 

You can realize it once you have keen notice of him. His way of talking, slang of his language, reactions or responses for any of his activities, everything resembles you or your partner. 

Am I right?

Then obviously your child is learning everything from your activities only so you have to Be careful how you speak to your child. Now let us see why it is important to concentrate on your way of talking to your child.

Why is the way of talking to your child important?

You might tell here that the way the child behaves and talks is everything based on the gene. Though there is a factor of gene, the way you talk to your child really matters.

A  farmer is responsible for a seed to cultivate as a Plant. Though it is based on the rain, availability of groundwater, fertilizer and climate change, farmer’s decisions about the right time of Sowing, Maintenance, right time of Watering, etc., are the major factors involved to get the benefits after harvesting.

Likewise you are responsible for your child to bring him as a strong, passionate, independent and successful person in his life.

If you sow the right words on him, you can harvest the right words in return, else you cannot expect him to return the right words. So let me explain to you how to talk to your child in a good way that is in a positive way.

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How to talk to your child positively?

As a parent, you must believe that you are   the everyday hero of your child and you   have to change yourself as how you want   your child to be.

 In the same way, you have to change your   way of talking to your child in case you are   not before and you must learn how to talk   to your child in an effective and positive way.

Here are the few positive ways that describes how to speak positively to your child, 

1. Avoid Bad Nicknames to Call Your Child

Can you imagine how you respond to others when they are labelling you with bad nicknames?

I am sure that you cannot say I am okay with that and I don’t have any problem. Even if you are not ready to show your objection directly, you might have some inconvenience within you.

It is the same for your child also. Though he doesn’t know how to show it outside, definitely he might have some inconvenience with that bad nickname.

Also one more issue is there by calling your child with bad nicknames.

Yes, I will explain to you with a simple word “Lazy” as an example. 

Do you think that Lazy is such a simple word to make any changes to your child? 

You cannot say ‘Yes’ to this. Though it doesn’t sound much, labelling your child with the word lazy motivates your child to behave the same because the repeated word which he is hearing from you would probably register in his mind and naturally It leads him to become a lazy person.

So avoid calling your child with the bad nicknames. 

Note: If you want to label your child with a nickname and make him more close to you, you can choose the appropriate and appreciable words as nicknames instead of discouraging words.

2. Say “Do That” instead of saying “Don’t do that”

How will you react when your small kid is carrying a mirror in his hand?

As an usual practice, you would say “No, Don’t take that”. Right?

Imagine how it will be if you change the tone like this, “Hold on the mirror carefully so that it will not injure you”. Here you are trying to approach in a positive way and obviously he too comes to know the effects of it.

But when you say don’t do that activity, naturally he gets more interested in it and his mind tells him to do that again eagerly. Repeating the activity when you hear Don’t is human nature.

Kids also behave in the same way. So always try to use positive language, it helps your child to become a confident person.

3. Ask to do instead Tell to do

If you want your child to do some activity, ask him in a polite way to do it so that he too gets interested in doing that and in turn he will become a polite person in nature.

For Example, 

When your child is watching his favorite channel on television, You can ask your child “Shall I change the channel for sometime?”

If you do that, naturally your child gets the practice of asking permission from you when he is looking to watch TV.

What happens if you behave opposite? I mean you are just telling your child to change the channel and make it happen.

It looks like you are motivating him to control others. 

Also when you are going to do something, you can ask like “shall we do this” instead of saying “we have to do this”. 

I am not encouraging here to grow your child as a pleasing nature but it is better to be pleasing up to some extent.

4. Don’t Confuse Your Child with Different Answers at Different Time

You would get a bunch of queries from your child everyday and there is no surprise that if you get for every minute also.

But when you are replying to your child, beware of your answers and you have to remember your answers at any cause because you must tell the same answer when he is coming with the same or similar question again.

Moreover, When the situation is not favorable to you, you can mention the fact and can give alternate solutions but don’t respond for the sake of convincing because keep this in mind you are not just conveying or sharing, you are recording.

Another thing to be noted is, have the habit of giving the same answer by everyone in your family for a particular question. Else he would be confused with the different answers at different times and he would not have the clarity which one to follow. 

For Example:

A mother of a 5 year boy encourages him to brush his teeth and to take bath twice a day but his father tells him to do it at least once. Then the child would get confused automatically which one to follow.

So don’t confuse your child with different answers at different times. 

5. Don’t fail to Keep Up Your Words to Your Child

Do you keep up your words?

It might not be to everyone. But don’t fail to keep up your words to your child. When you are committed to do something, be honest in your words and do it without any excuses so that he will also learn to keep up his words in his life.

And Never try to cheat your child by giving false commitments.

For Example,

When your child is asking for your time to do something, you can mention a particular time to spend whenever is comfortable for you. But make yourself free at the specified time without making any excuses.

Even if you are unable to do it, don’t fail to apologize without any second thought.

If you do not follow that, don’t expect your child to honour his words and when you say something to your child, you should actually mean it.

It establishes your own character in front of your child because your child is forming an opinion about you with every engagement you have.

So be a Confidential Person to encourage your child to become a Confidential Person like you.

6. Give Your Responses to Your Child’s Clueless Stories

Children are so brilliant to narrate the stories with their imaginations. Sometimes there might not be any meaning in that. 

I wish to tell a simple story here in just three lines which is said by my son after drawing the below one.

In this house, an old man was staying alone. One day he was so hungry but he couldn’t find any rice, fruits, snacks or anything, nothing was there in his home to eat. Then he came out, plucked the fruits from the Trees he had, went inside the home and ate happily.

He was trying to tell something with the drawing he made. I knew that there was no moral or any special thing in this story but if i told the same, he would not come with the new story again. It might stop him from discussing his stories to me further.

So I responded like, you are a good storyteller and it will be better if you add the moral for your stories.

I told him to add a moral as “since the old man was planting a lot of plants and trees in his earlier ages, he was able to have the fruits when he was hungry. Hence everyone must plant Trees”.

Though your child is coming with clueless stories, encourage him by adding value into it.

7. Believe in Your Child and He will Believe in Himself

I came across some situations where my relatives pointed out to my son that he was the liar though he was not supposed to. 

For Example, Sometimes he used to cry as he had stomach pain but others say that he was acting just to have crepe water. Even I was unable to realize the situations whether he was actually lying or not because children are more clever than us to handle the situations. 

He might have lied to have his favorite thing and sometimes to protect himself but I was confident that he didn’t learn to tell lies so far. So I try to convince him as I believe you always and I know that you will never tell a lie in any situation.

In reflection of that, fortunately he himself learnt to accept his mistakes in recent days though he has the fear to face the situation. Hence make your child to feel proud about your belief in him, then he learns to believe himself. 

Moreover I am not insisting you to believe anyone or even your child blindly but you can see the impact of your words with the good results.

Believing is not only to point the character, you should tell him frequently I believe you that you can do anything. It makes him believe in himself and it gives unbelievable results.

8. How to Say “No” without saying the word “No” to Your Child

Objection is always important to a child to make him handle rejection. You can know in detail here about how to help kids to deal with rejection.

But as you practise to say no, you also have to know how to say No Positively to your Child.

Yes, when you are showing an objection to any of your kid’s obligations, you can show it in a positive way instead of just saying No.

For Example, 

When your kid is looking for a Toy which costs around Rs. 5,000, how will you show your objection in case you are not in the situation to afford that toy. You usually say including myself as I don’t have that huge amount right now to afford for this so I will get you later or I will get you some other toy.

But Instead of saying I cannot afford this, you can tell as we are saving money for your studies/future/some other thing.

By that, he learns three important things which is going to benefit his life,

• How to say No in a polite way
• Learn for Savings
• Know the Value of Money

Final Words

In this article, we have covered some of the important areas like 

Why is it important to talk to your child positively?,

How to talk positively,

What are all the ways that need to be followed to make your talk positive?

and 

How do positive ways of talking help in your child’s growth? 

We have discussed only a few things about the positive way of talking to children and a lot more things are there to discuss which will be continued in my upcoming articles. 

Hope this article helps you in your parenting life and I expect you to share your real time situations if you have come across any with your child.

Looking forward to hear about your real time situations and how you handled them.

Thank You!!