Your Children’s Bad Habits and How to Kick Them
Bad habits have a way of sticking to you, and its bad effects can follow you for the rest of your life, like how the bad habit of reading while lying down can cause myopia. As parents, we try our best to prevent our children from forming bad habits of any kind (nose picking, slouching, chomping on food, screaming in public) but young children are impressionable, they have a knack of picking up any sort of behaviour from people around them. So what do you do now that your child has picked up the bad habit of unsanitary practices?
We have all heard the phrase – old habits die hard, but our children’s bad habits are new, so there is still a chance to kick the bad habits away for good. Here’s how you can do it.
Always Explain
Don’t we all hate it when someone tells us to do or not do something without offering for no rhyme or reason? As adults, we want to be respected and informed in a civilised manner that we are doing something wrong. We expect reasons and explanations behind rules. This is logical, so why do we not offer the same for our children?
In order to prevent your children from picking their noses in public, try explaining your “no” to them in a calm manner instead of losing your cool. Let them know that doing this is unsanitary and it can spread germs to their friends and loved ones, and can cause them to fall sick. This bad habit is also considered rude and disrespectful in public. Observe for any changes in their behaviour, and feel free to reward them whenever they display behaviour change.
No Spoon-feeding Here
To prevent public meltdowns with screaming, crying and constant peering from the public, allow your kids to decide when playtime should stop, what they feel like having for their meal or simply where they feel like going, to allow them to feel that their choices are taken into consideration. Encourage them to let you know how they feel and explain to them if their choice cannot be accommodated to at the moment.
Most importantly, allow your children to come to the right conclusion by themselves, with guidance from you. This is also a good opportunity to educate them about the virtue of patience, and how life will not always go their way. This trick will definitely save you from lugging your bawling kid off the playground when it is time for dinner.
Don’t Be an In-Home Discipline Master
Forget about constantly nagging at your child to sit up straight, stop reading while lying down on the couch and stop slouching. No kid wants to have a Discipline Master at home after a long day at school. However, we understand that as parents, we know too well the consequences of bad posture from our constant backaches. The consequences might even be more severe with young children as their spines are still growing and poor posture might impact their spinal growth. We wouldn’t wish that upon our children, would we?
Instead of expending all that energy to lecture your children, why not invest in an ergonomic chair for your child to solve the problem of bad posture once and for all? Kidchamp Cres, our ergonomic children chair, is specially designed to be fully adjustable, making it a worthwhile investment as it can grow with your child through adolescence and young adulthood.
Pick Your Battles
Amidst all the frustration and emotional moments, we often forget that it takes time to pick up a bad habit so it is only fair that we extend a lot of patience to our little ones when it comes to kicking one. Here at Kidchamp, we fully understand how it feels to worry about our children and we firmly believe that even though it might be important to rid the bad habits, it is equally important to cultivate good ones.
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