Parents play a great role in shaping their child’s personality early. Children often imitate their parents which is a mode of learning in early childhood. The immediate circle of your child is ‘YOU’. Your child will be affected by your words, actions and behavior. In numerous ways, children follow suit of their parents. Hence, it is vital that parents set the right example and ideal and also ensure that their children imbibe the right qualities to have a positive impact on children’s personality development.
“Parents can either knock down a child's personality with neglect or they can nurture it with love.”
Why do parenting styles matter?
Research (Influence of parental personality on parenting styles published by International Journal of Psychology Sciences) has found that certain personality traits are associated with parenting styles. Parents high on forwardness, openness and agreeableness are more likely to be authoritative in their parenting style. Dysfunctional parents are likelier to engage in inconsistent and hostile behaviors with their children. Parents with high neuroticism may become anxious, or high conscientiousness, or may be highly demanding. An early screening of personality and parent training can facilitate better parenting.
What are the ways parents can positively affect their children’s personalities?
Let us one-by-one look at these ways parents can positively affect their children’s personalities.
1. Create the right atmosphere at home
A peaceful, clutter-free and encouraging home environment stimulates your child’s physical and mental growth.
2. Admire your kids whenever required and be emotionally supportive
Admire your kid’s enthusiasm, innate sense of fairness, empathy, creativity, memory, patience with their siblings, and other qualities that they reflect time-to-time.
3. Encourage independence and self-esteem in children
Encouraging your kids to make decisions instills independence in them. Creating opportunities for kids to do and learn things is a way to build their self-esteem and confidence.
4. Replace screen time with engaging activities like sports
You can prevent addiction to screens by replacing them with engaging activities like sports, travel, and playing games with them. Other than health benefits, sports instill sportsmanship, self-confidence, and the need to respect and adhere to rules in your kids.
5. Give a touch of emotional intelligence to your parenting skills
In times of emotional turmoil, empathetically guide your children through the problem and help them move on, leading to better social, academic and overall well-being.
6. Introduce meditation magic with children for bonding
Family meditation time is a stress reliever, but it can also be your favorite family pastime for improving your bonds. Prepare your kids and teens for every eventuality. Enroll them in the Children and Teens programs.
7. Introduce the idea of sharing
Appreciate good sharing when you see in your child or their friends. The positive reinforcement of sharing habits involves your child too.
8. Allow free time to play the way they enjoy
Give freedom to your child to play their favorite game the way they prefer. It will give wings to their creativity and improve their self-confidence.
9. Inculcate moral values to be better citizens and human beings
You can be their role model in instilling moral values like honesty, compassion, caring and sharing, in their early years. Your acknowledgment of your child’s good behavior will reinforce your child about his behavior and he will continue his ideal conduct.
10. Implement effective alternatives to harsher punishments
Harsh punishments could make your children stubborn and reduce their self-esteem. Alternatives to harsher punishments are needed. You should patiently make your children understand the logical consequences of bad behaviors.
Rashmi shares, “We knew the problem, but not how to handle it. Online Know Your Child Workshop helped me follow certain ways to raise a well-cultured and good individual.”
To summarize
Neither two kids are the same, nor two parenting styles are the same. Identify children’s personality types (resilient, over-controlled and under-controlled) to narrow down their needs.
Sometimes, the temperaments of parents and kids are compatible and other times, families struggle hard to fill in the gaps. Imagine a highly active child with low-energetic parents. In these cases, parents need to uplift their energy and enhance their creativity to nurture the immense potential in their children. Here, meditation and pranayamas have proved to be beneficial.
Learn more about Online Meditation and Breath Workshop
Inspired by Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar’s wisdom talks
Written by: Pratibha Sharma
Reference link
Related article and video
“How to be a good parent” is a blog that renders a few useful tips in parenting.
A video on parenting tips by Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar.
FAQs on Parenting
School teachers, peers, experiences on maturation, success and failure, cultural traditions, environment, birthplace and other people’s lifestyles also affect children’s personalities.
You get hints of a child’s personality from an early age. Some infants crave routines, and others prefer greater flexibility.
Your special attention and guidance can assist your child in channelizing their emotions and tendencies in a positive direction, by working to compete in sports and academics and nurturing other skills, rather than bearing hostility towards others.
A shy child with your admiration, socializing opportunities and specially designed programs for children and teens can remarkably transform into a confident child.
13-year-old Meera says, “Before the Medha Yoga Program, I would shy away from my classmates. I would not talk to them without any reason. I have become more confident after the program. Now, I can deliver a speech in my school assembly without hesitation.”
Know more about Medha Yoga Program.
Ten ways parents can positively affect their children’s personalities -
1. Create the right atmosphere at home
2. Admire your kids whenever required and be emotionally supportive
3. Encourage independence and self-esteem in children.
4. Replace the screen time with engaging activities like sports
5. Give a touch of emotional intelligence to your parenting skills
6. Introduce meditation magic with children for bonding
7. Introduce the idea of sharing
8. Allow free time to play the way they enjoy
9. Inculcate moral values to be better citizens and human beings
10. Implement effective alternatives to harsher punishments
Research has found that certain personality traits are associated with parenting styles. Parents high on forwardness, openness and agreeableness are more likely to be authoritative in their parenting style. Thus, parents can influence personality traits.
The child's traits are inherited biologically from their parents, and later as the nearest caregivers are parents, they are partly responsible for the children's traits in their personality. Dysfunctional parents are likelier to engage in inconsistent and hostile behaviors with their children.
A child inherits certain traits from their parents. The interaction of these traits with the situations and the learning that happens unconsciously in the child determines a child's personality.
Family interaction shapes a child's thinking, reasoning and problem-solving strategies. Family values and coping mechanisms influence a child's cognition and how they perceive themselves and the world around them. If the family members cope with difficult situations calmly, the child also learns to be calm in challenging situations.
Personality is both inherited and learned.
Genetically, the traits inherited from parents are -
- Eye, skin and hair color
- Shape of lips
- Blood group
- Bone and teeth structure
- Height is inherited from parents, but available nutrition also plays a vital role.
Traits you inherit from your father are -
*A study says boys had the same eye color as the father and female offspring had the same eye color as the mother.
*Mental health passes from fathers more to male offsprings than female offsprings
*Biological sex
*Height
Traits you inherit from your mother -
- Metabolism
- Weight is inherited from mothers, but lifestyle also determines your weight
- Intelligence
- Focus ability
- Early puberty
- Wrinkles, gray hair, laugh lines and other signs of aging
- Mood disorders like depression, is more likely to be passed down from mothers to daughters than from mothers to sons or from fathers to children of either gender
- Memory
