Making Your Family Home A Positive Environment

If there’s one thing everybody wants for their family, it’s ensuring they grow up in a positive environment. A negative home environment can have a terrible effect on kid’s lives overall, from things like their confidence and relationships to whether they struggle to hold down a job or secure a decent career. If you want everybody in your home to be happy and your kids to get the best start in life, make sure you take the following advice to make your family home a positive environment:

Choose Your Words Carefully

First of all, you need to make sure you’re choosing your words as carefully as possible. The words you use will become the words your children use, so make sure they are as positive as possible. You should make sure you’re not putting yourself down in front of them, or saying things to your spouse that you don’t want them to start saying to themselves/each other (why do you think so many people have a little voice in the back of the head saying they’re stupid, or just not good enough?). The words you choose will become your children’s reality, so make sure they are words you’re happy for your children to live out.

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Give Genuine Praise

If you’re not giving your children genuine praise, it’s going to be damaging to their self-esteem. However, there’s a right and wrong way to give praise too. Don’t give praise by telling your kids how talented they are. If they think that things should just come naturally, they won’t want to actually try or practice to become good at anything. They’ll get frustrated when something is hard, likely give up, and give themselves a hard time about it. They might not try at all through fear of failure. Give genuine praise about how hard they’ve worked, how much they’ve practiced, and how much effort they’ve put in. This is the praise that truly matters when praising your kids.

Help Your Kids To Create A Positive Mindset

Choosing your words carefully is already going to help you on your way to creating a positive mindset for your kids. However, you can help them a number of other ways. How about teaching them about deep breathing/meditation? How about applying things you can learn from self-help books/articles in an age-appropriate way? One of the best ways you can encourage a positive mindset in your kids is by having a positive mindset yourself.

Model The Behaviour You’d Like Them To Copy

It doesn’t matter what you tell your kids to do or not to do; if you’re doing something in front of them, it’s likely they’re going to do it at some point too. Don’t want them to smoke? Stop smoking. Want them to go outside and get active? Do it yourself. Want them to eat vegetables? Pile your plate high. It really is this simple. They might not want to copy you straight away, and they may resist some stuff, but eventually, they’re going to pay attention.

Recognize And Celebrate Individuality

You don’t have to bring your child up as ‘gender-fluid’. However, you should definitely recognize and celebrate individuality. Don’t push things on them that society has deemed appropriate – e.g. dolls for girls and cars for boys. Girls will drive cars one day, and your boys will have children. Let them play how they want to play, and be as imaginative as open as they can while doing so. If they draw their flowers with a face and make the sky orange, let it be. There’s no quicker way to kill off their creativity and make them question themselves than by telling them it’s unsafe to be themselves and stunting their imaginations.

Make Sure Your Home Is Beautiful And Safe

If you want a positive home environment, your home must also be beautiful and safe for your family to live in. As a rule from now on, don’t bring anything into your home unless it’s either useful or beautiful. Think about things carefully before buying them. Make your home as safe as possible by child-proofing, but remember it’s important for them to interact with adult things too. Make sure the garden is safe. Make sure you invite wildlife into the garden (great for learning). If you have to, you can contact caretreepro.com today to get rid of trees that could be taking up space and blocking natural light from entering your home. Do your best to make everything a learning experience for them. Install safety features that interact with one another to make your home as safe as possible – smart systems are the way forward.

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Get A Pet

What sort of home is it without a pet? There are so many pets that can benefit kids in many ways. They teach empathy and compassion. They give responsibility. They’re a friend and give unconditional love. They teach patience and all kinds of other things that kids need to learn. You don’t need to get a dog or a cat. Rats are even great pets for kids and can be taught tricks. Don’t rule something out until you’ve researched it!

Encourage Self Directed Play

How will your kids ever learn to be happy with what they’ve got if you’re always stopping them from being bored by giving them toys and telling them what to do? How will they think for themselves? Encourage self-directed play without buying them new things and telling them what to do. Encourage them to come up with their own activities and games. It can be tough to learn for kids, especially if they’ve started school and they have teachers telling them what to do all the time. It’s only natural they expect you to tell them what to do too. Make sure you encourage self-directed play as often as possible.

Ensure Proper Nutrition, Sleep, And Exercise

Your family should be getting proper nutrition, enough sleep, and plenty of activity for optimum health. The better the habits are you get your kids into while they’re young, the better they tend to be at it when they’re older. Did you know you usually have to get your kids to try new foods over 10 times before they actually get used to it or say they like it? Start giving them vegetables while they’re young, and don’t stop giving them just because they say they don’t like them. If you keep trying and keep a positive mindset, they should eat them eventually. Remember, the more pressure you put on kids to eat well or tell them that they are fussy, the more they’ll likely be fussy to keep on getting that attention. Do your best but make sure you’re not putting so much of a focus on it that you’re making them build up a worse habit!

Make Sure Everybody Chips In

Everybody should chip in around the home. You don’t want to do the chores alone all the time, do you? Create a rota for the chores, and give your kids chores when they’re old enough. Start them as soon as possible by letting them help you with little tasks. Everything will get done quicker, and you’ll all live in a much nicer environment. Again, this gets your children into good habits later on. You can’t do everything for them while they’re young and then expect them to suddenly start wanting to do it themselves when they’re older!

Daily bed making is especially important. This one small task has been scientifically proven to help set people up with a positive mindset for the day and can instill a sense of discipline. Not to mention, it’s so much nicer to get into at the end of the day!

Keep It Clutter-Free

Keep your home as clutter-free as possible so that clutter doesn’t start to rule your lives. Be vigilant and get rid of something every day. Don’t allow mail to pile up by dealing with it ASAP. Encourage your kids to clear out and give things to charity regularly.

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Encourage Journaling

Journaling is one of the fastest and best things anybody can do to feel happier. Write down things you’re grateful for at the end of the day, and encourage your kids to do the same! Teaching your kids to be grateful, even for the small blessings and pleasures in life, will help towards their positive mindsets and ensure they grow up to be wonderful people.

Teach Kindness And Compassion

Teaching your kids kindness and compassion from a young age will help them to have more empathy and self-awareness. Teach them why we need to be kind to other people no matter what. Teach them that one of the quickest ways to be happy isn’t through buying things, but through helping others! It sounds cliche, but it’s true. People who help others are generally happier.

Hopefully, you enjoyed this post and you’ve found a few helpful pointers you can use to make your family home a wonderful place to be!