Tip 5 – Think about how you praise

Praising our children – for working hard, for making progress, for trying something new, for being a part of a team or for simply taking part in a competition – gives them a healthy sense of achievement and encourages them not to define success by having to come top.

When a young child shows you his/her painting, instead of simply telling her it is brilliant, respond to it and ask questions about it. Say something like ‘you’ve used lots of red here and I like those gold dots there. Is the lady smiling?’ Children want our attention and interest, not a mark out of ten. With an older child, we might say ‘I like the title of your project. How did you come up with the idea?’ This type of praise shows them we are really interested.

Tip 6 – Ask open questions

Open questions such as ‘what did you like about this or that?’ encourages more than a one-word answer and helps children to express their feelings. If a child has done well, we might say ‘how did you do it?’ and if they were not so successful, we can ask ‘what do you think happened?’ or ‘is there something you could do differently next time?’

Hope these tips are helpful to you in helping your children to cope well with anxiety and stress. Keep looking forward to a couple more of these tips.