Hope In Children
Hope in children is one of the most important values they can develop. It makes sure that children never lose faith and that they don’t get discouraged when things don’t work out as they should.
Children who have hope are happier and more satisfied with life . They even achieve better academic results and maintain better social relationships. In the opposite case, children lacking this feeling do not try to achieve their goals, have bad relationships and feel powerless.
Psychologists guarantee that a child has hope when he believes he can find ways to achieve his goals. Below, we’ll tell you some details to get the most out of everyday life.
How to promote hope in children?
If you want to instill hope in children, you should consider the following advice:
1.- Build a perspective for the future
To promote hope in children, it is helpful to ask them what they hope to achieve and how they think about doing it. In this sense, it is recommended to talk with your child about how he imagines himself in the future, in order to find out what he wants to achieve and for what reason.
You must have the child imagine where he can go so that he can see the real potential he has.
2.- Work plans with the child
When your child says, “I want to be a marine biologist,” you should encourage and then ask, “What do you think you’ll need to do to get this?” It is positive to discuss the paths, options and possibilities. Thinking about the future is fundamental to promoting hope in children.
3.- Ask questions
When your child is at an impasse, instead of offering a ready-made solution, you should ask him what steps he thinks he should take and when was the last time he was able to overcome such a situation.
These questions promote a sense of effectiveness and encourage the child to take action. Instead of letting the child receive all the solutions from the parents, it is better to teach him to trust himself, his intelligence and his initiative.
To do this, you can recall instances where the child has been successful in the past and use them to build hope that will guarantee success again in the future.
4.- Boost stimulation
You should encourage children to ask, developing curiosity to learn and interest in discovering. Teaching them to experiment and go further is good for exploring the limits, as well as being really useful and appropriate.
As a mother, you must convey to the child everything you really want him to learn through gestures, words and behaviors.
5.- Favor autonomy
Autonomy is always important in a child’s life. Overprotection can make you overestimate hope, clinging to it in an unhealthy way.
However, if the child is free to experiment and is even frustrated when leaving his comfort zone, his development will be much more appropriate.
6.- Practice active listening
The best way to instill any value in children is through active listening. You must make your child feel understood and respected.
That way, he will feel free to start a dialogue in which he can clearly explain everything that happens in his life. In addition, it will help the child to understand, internalize and issue their own critical judgments.
7.- Promote generosity
Generosity is a wonderful value that will bring concepts such as nobility and empathy into your child’s life, as well as being the best way to understand and get rewards. To promote hope in children, the ideal way is to teach how to give without expecting anything in return.
They must learn not to do to others what they would not want them to do. With that attitude, hope will rarely turn to naivete.
8.- Encourage creation
Finally, if you want to convey values such as hope, the ideal is to form a creative space in which the information received and conveyed is useful, open to interpretation and full of knowledge.
Instilling hope in a practical way
Once you’ve created the proper space of understanding for the child to take on values like hope, it’s time to put everything learned into practice. To make this possible, you can carry out activities such as:
- Use positive reinforcement when the child is doing the right thing.
- Talk and argue to establish norms that must be respected.
- Inculcate love by reading stories or fables.
- Combine experimentation with visuals so that the child can manipulate but also observe.
- Use examples without differentiating responsibilities between equals, using correct language and always respecting the particularities of each personality.
Therefore, it is important to instill hope in children because it has countless benefits. Remember that your mission as a mother is to promote hope, as it is a value that should never be lost.
