Advice for Parents – Helping your child to feel ‘Respected’

Information to help you in keeping your child feeling respected.

Respecting and responding to your child’s feelings

It is normal to feel stressed, overwhelmed or even scared in the current circumstances. You may also notice this in your children and be seeing a change in their behaviour. Some of the changes you might see are on the World Health Organisation website with some ideas of how to support children. Some other reasons children might be feeling this way, the reasons for each and how to manage them can be found using the link Barnardos – Talking About Feelings.

All behaviour is communication

Try speaking to them about how they are feeling. A helpful visual for this is an anger iceberg. You could also talk to them about different feelings and times you have felt happy, excited, sad, stressed or angry – at an age appropriate level. Advice on how to talk to children about feelings can be found on Barnardos – Talking About Feelings and for younger children, have a look on cbeebies. Remember that all feelings are ok but not all behaviours are.

Planning and working together

One of the key factors that can help your child develop is by ensuring that they are involved in decision making about them and that their opinions are listened to. This can help build their self-esteem. This can be done in lots of ways, including working together to plan routines, activities and what help they might need. Some ideas to help with this can be found on this Home Schooling site.

Showing gratitude

Showing appreciation should be done for each other in the home too as this supports emotional development. Some ways to do this can be through using a kindness calendar which can help children and young people show respect though learning about and carrying out kind acts.

Another way to practise gratitude is by scheduling time with your child to have a think about how to document this, and respecting the way in which they would like to. Some ideas and choices include making use of a gratitude journal.

Helping children to see and respect other people’s views

Children can also be supported with their emotional development through discussion that people might have differing thoughts, opinions and views about different situations. Lots of ideas for helping your child develop respectful relationships with others can be found on Kidscape.

Sometimes the use of social stories and conversations can be a great way to develop their ability to understand and relate to the positions of others, and be able to accept that others may have different opinions than them. These resources were developed for children with autism, however can be very useful for all children and young people.