This past week I had a nice reminder of an important parenting principle that I find myself too frequently overlooking. I had the opportunity to attend a simple little awards ceremony at my son's elementary school. The students were being awarded for having completed certain amounts of reading over the past several weeks.
Now, I wish I could sit here and tell you that my 6-year-old son had read the largest number of pages out of the entire school. I can't tell you that.....because he didn't. In fact he was receiving a certificate along with about 40 other kids for reading the minimum number of pages to qualify for getting a certificate. There were many children who had read significantly more pages than he had read. Nonetheless, I was proud of him. And more importantly, he was clearly very proud of himself, along with the other 40 children in his group.
It was a reminder to me of how important it is to acknowledge, praise, and reward children, sometimes for even relatively small accomplishments. Now does this mean that children need to be praised and rewarded for every single little task? No, it doesn't. I'm not a big fan of, nor am I espousing the "everybody's a winner, everybody gets a trophy" mindset. However, I am a fan of complimenting and acknowledging children when they are doing positive things. Too often I get caught up in life and don't take the time that I should to do this with my children, two of whom are teenagers and need the praise, compliments, and acknowledgment just as much as the 6-year-old needs it. So, here's to all of us making a little better effort to notice those things in our children's lives and give them the praise/acknowledgement that most children so clearly need and desire.
Happy New Year to all of you!
Monte Criddle, LMFT
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