23 Nov 2018
Helping your child to experience success
Teaching your child how to set goals and achieve them by making a plan, working hard, solving problems and not giving up helps them to build life skills that are important for their future. These life skills build their self-confidence and motivation and the ability to persist when they find things difficult. An important starting point is to help your child identify their particular character strengths or personal attributes like being brave or kind, or being a hard worker or a good organiser. Abilities and strengths are things that they do well such as writing stories, drawing cartoons, playing sport, playing a musical instrument or understanding and working with animals.
Key messages to communicate to your child about being successful
· Stick with it and don’t give up.
· Mistakes help you to learn.
· No one is good at everything. Everyone has different strengths.
· Always make a plan.
· Remember to try hard and work hard.
· Have a go and believe in yourself.
· Try to be well organised.
What can you do to help your child learn the skills that underpin success?
Encourage your child to set a goal and plan what they need to do to achieve. For young children goals need to be simple, specific and very short term (e.g. reading for ten minutes each night for two weeks, making their bed every day for a week, improving their knowledge of specific number facts). Help them to think about what they did to achieve their goal (Ask them what steps did you take? What was hard for you to do? How do you feel now that you have managed to do it?)