Every parent desires that their children will grow up with minimal worries and live happily ever after. To achieve this objective, every parent will go out of their way to give their young ones the necessary life skills and a strong moral foundation.
But bringing up a child is not any different from painting a picture stroke by stroke. With a picture, you never get to know how the final image will appear until it’s fully drawn. You’ll agree that the same can be said with raising a child.
And because your child is with you only for a brief moment before they venture out in the wild, you can just shower them with as many gifts. You’ll probably hope that the gifts will be sufficient to protect, comfort, and sustain them when you’re no more.
The thing with a gift is that it brings magic to your child’s life and lights up their eyes. But the real magic is closer to home. After all, there is no gift more prominent than your presence.
Be that as it may, every child wants a present and attentive parent who’s emotionally generous and stays patient, especially when the child goes off-script. Such a parent will often be inclined to gift their child every now and then.
Today, every parent can attest to the fact that gift-receiving memories were pretty sparse. Back then, gifts never came around so often. Which begs the question, what is it that you should gift your child that they will never forget?
Here’s a rundown of the gifts that will truly impact your child’s life and change them forever.
Love
As a parent, it’s expected that you’ll love your child unconditionally or so the belief goes. With unconditional love, you’ll gift your young one with a sense of self and value that doesn’t seek credence from acquired or inherited values or physical looks or abilities.
Every moment you express love to your child, you’re teaching how to love as an adult. Besides, love is a gift that shows a child how to be compassionate, kind, empathetic, and sympathetic.
And since happiness is the “meaning and purpose of life,” there can be no happiness without love.
Confidence
There’s no child who does not want a belief in themselves as they bid to face the fears of life. By instilling your child with confidence, they will exercise restraint if need be and commit when necessary.
Because confidence is a by-product of experimentation and accomplishment, you’ll cultivate in your child the foundation of courage and self-esteem.
If your child harbors the dream of being an architect, you can get them to study house plans for small homes in their free time. This simple gesture will give your child the confidence to pursue their dream. While at it, you should give your young one room for failure and encourage them to go again.
Discipline
For physical and mental gifts to see the light of day, there has to be discipline. When you instill discipline in your child, they will hardly embrace immediate pleasure at the expense of longer-term goals.
Without discipline, any other gift you’ve given your child will be squandered and left to wither in darkness. But by gifting your child with discipline, they will embed themselves in their owner’s actions and character.
And when they reach the peak of their career, they will hardly remember the hours of practice and countless failure and improvement situations.
Hope
It appears like humans are hardwired always to see light at the end of the tunnel. Numerous studies have established that when a child receives encouragement and positive feedback, it’s likely that they’ll adapt to different circumstances and succeed in tasks.
You’ll shatter your child’s hopes if all you give them is negative feedback. By giving them hope, you’re training your child to be an optimist rather than a pessimist. Needless to say, optimists live longer and healthier lives than pessimists.
Resilience
Success is a culmination of financial hardships, career setbacks, illness, and sorrows. But your child’s ability to weather the storm boils down to their resilience. It’s during childhood that your child will gather the skills to deal with stress and adversity.
If and when you cultivate a culture of resilience, your child will be better placed to bounce back from adversity. With time, these skills will continue to develop over their lifetime.
Imagination
It doesn’t hurt to dream, does it? Even as you raise your child to be a meaningful person in society, you should gift them with the ability to dream. Let your child learn to see things as they can be, but not as they are.
Imagination will animate your child’s spirit because it breaks down boundaries, spurs creativity, and eggs on resourcefulness.
Contentment
As you well know, the antidote of life is learning how to embrace “less is more.” Contentment is a gift that will allow your child to appreciate what they have at any moment in time.
Lack of contentment might turn out to be contagious if your child always craves for more. Your child should always be content with who they are.
The Ability To De-stress
When your child is stressed out, they’re likely to have a harder time self-regulating. In this case, you should teach them how to de-stress by helping them develop a repertoire of habits, such as meditation, regular exercise, hot baths, yoga, and so on.
If need be, you can encourage them to take a walk in the woods, put on some music and dance, or catch some sleep. When your child knows how to de-stress, they can easily maintain their own well-being.
How To Break the Cycle
It will augur well with your child if they know when their anger is escalating. This way, your young one can easily hit the pause button if at all they’re well down the wrong path.
Knowing how to break the cycle will help your child to cultivate good anger management skills. With these skills, they won’t be embarrassed even when they have a tantrum.
There are no proven theories about good parenting, but this does not stop you from being a good parent. With parenting, you’ll have to learn on-the-job. Being a parent, you can only do as much with the hope that you’ve passed down to your child the requisite tools for a happy and successful life.
Kori
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