HOW TO EDUCATE A CHILD PROPERLY: 13 PRACTICAL TIPS - ECONOMÍA - 2025

Knowing how to educate a child is one of the best skills that can be learned to build a healthy family, have well-being and quality of life, and raise an educated child with a promising future.

Sometimes we find behavior problems in our children, lack of social skills, self-esteem problems, poor relationship between parents and children, little emotional control, lack of routines…

There are many situations that put us to the test as parents and where we constantly ask ourselves if we are doing well or what things we could improve. Many times we would like to find magic solutions to situations that overwhelm us and that we are not able to adequately address.

Or we would simply like to find tools that allow us to change or improve in some way the relationship we have with our children. Here are 13 practical tips that you can put into practice from today.

13 tips to educate your child

Use acceptance communication

When it comes to relating to your child, show your love unconditionally. Showing him that he is important to us and that we love him above all else implies not only what we say but how we say it.

Your child must know and understand that you will always love and accept him, that you may disapprove of his behavior but that he is valuable and you value him above all else, even when they make mistakes or fail.

Communication of acceptance is important because it is the foundation for developing a strong personality and confident self-esteem.

Some authors have studied the relationship between parents' parenting style and self-esteem in children between 3 and 5 years old. They observed that children with higher self-esteem coincided with those with a higher degree of self-esteem valued by their parents.

The child must know that he is loved and accepted for who he is and not for what he does. The child should not be guided by fear or your approval, because he must know that you love him above all else. Children need unconditional love to believe in a safe and healthy environment.

Make yourself available and accessible to your child

In relationships that foster warm bonds, that show that they are available to their children and where there is support between the two, an open climate is created towards the messages of the parents.

When they feel supported, their personal effectiveness increases and all this influences their affective and behavioral functioning. When in the first ages of life there has been little solidity in the education of children, the consequences can be negative.

The little accessibility and availability towards children, together with little communication, can lead in adolescence to their development with conflictive groups and risk behaviors are encouraged.

Being sensitive to the child's needs, taking care of and accepting his individuality and expressing affection are essential to regulate his behavior.

Set limits

Another important aspect in the education of children is the issue of positive discipline. In parental educational styles, we find the authoritarian, permissive and democratic styles. These educational styles are related to disciplinary control and emotional warmth.

A democratic father is one who has high warmth and high control. On the other hand, an authoritarian father would be the coolest emotionally and with a high control. An overprotective parent would have high warmth and low control, while a negligent parent would be low on both counts.

It is important to keep in mind that sometimes, by trying not to become authoritarian parents, we waver in control of our children and we can become more overprotective parents.

Children need limits, with positive authority, but we need to give them security. When setting limits, they must be objective and concrete. Phrases to children should be short, simple, reinforcing them one by one.

It is appropriate that we allow them to make frequent choices, which allow them to choose within the possibilities. For example, if the child has to put on the jacket, we can give him the possibility to put it on himself or help him. Or if you have to drink the syrup, you can do it in a glass or on a spoon.

It is important to be firm, children need consistency because that gives them security. And firmness is part of the positive limits.

Use the reinforcement

Reinforce your child for everything he does well and do not use punishment. Authoritarian and punishing parenting styles often generate maladaptive emotional development and deficits in emotional strategies to adapt to different situations.

Children are more receptive to positive reinforcement. Punishment should not be used and, of course, physical punishment should never be used. In addition, we are concerned that children grow up with healthy self-esteem, which will also reflect the self-concept they have about themselves.

Positive reinforcement can help us do all of this. The key is in good use, not overdoing the compliments, which are always real and not forced, because the child will perceive it.

It is better to leave “NO” for situations where it is really necessary. We want NO to have a reinforcing value, but if we use it indiscriminately, it won't be effective when we really need it.

Promotes responsibility and autonomy

When children are teenagers, parents want their children to be autonomous, responsible, independent, to communicate with them fluently and to trust them for everything.

However, for all this to take place at this stage of life, parenting guidelines must be aimed at it from childhood. Adapted to each age and the characteristics of children, curiosity, responsibility and autonomy can be encouraged.

In families that educate with solid values, adolescent conflicts for freedom and the experimentation of new experiences occur temporarily.

When children are young, one of the best ways to promote responsibility and autonomy is to propose frequent choices. Faced with certain things that children must do every day, many of them can be selected by them, even if it is between different alternatives.

This will respect their decisions, help them to be autonomous and prevent family conflicts in many cases. Establishing responsibilities to children according to their capacities and their developmental stage is also a very appropriate parenting guideline.

Take into account their emotions, emotional intelligence is important

Emotions are important too. Taking into account the emotions of our children and working on them are part of a proper education.

Different studies have shown the relationship between the expressiveness of parents (showing verbal or non-verbal expressions) and the empathic responses of children.

The reactions that parents show to the emotions of their children play a role in terms of their socio-emotional development. Emotional intelligence is learned, it is made up of a series of skills or competencies that can be learned.

We can work with our son his emotions and we will be educating him emotionally when we help him to identify the signs of emotions, to name them, understand them and know where they come from and finally when we help him to regulate them.

Helping you understand and work on aspects such as self-motivation or delayed gratification, self-control, social skills, assertiveness, active listening or empathy also involves working on emotional intelligence.

Accept your child's individuality

It is important to respect the individuality of the child. Each of us is unique and peculiar, unique and different from the others.

Children should not be labeled, because this ends up influencing our son and what he can do. In relation to the expectations we have towards children, the “pygmalion effect” stands out.

Personality and identity develops with the child and childhood is a stage where our references have great importance in our self-esteem and self-concept.

Accepting the individuality of the child also implies not projecting our wishes onto the children and letting them be themselves. They have preferences, desires, needs… and sometimes these do not coincide with ours. We must respect it.

Parenting should be based on respect for the individual, a safe and comfortable environment where they feel loved and can discover the world.

Actions have consequences, do not shirk your responsibility

Responsibility is important in the education of children. We should not punish children, but it is important that they take into account the consequences of their actions.

If a child draws on the wall or on the table, we can offer him the alternative to paint in a more suitable place, we can explain why it is not appropriate to paint on the wall or on the table, without anger.

Subsequently, the consequence would be to clean with us what has been soiled. We are not punishing the child and the way we deal with the problem says a lot about it too.

It is a consequence. In a calm way, we explain why you should help us clean it and we hope that together with us, as far as you can, clean what you have made dirty.

Consequences are part of life and it is the way we learn and take responsibility for our actions.

Act by example

Children's learning happens, to a large extent, through observation. Parents are the main role models of our children and what we do will say much more about us than what we say.

Our words must be consistent with what we do. Children will learn through our example. If you tell the child to be respectful, to be orderly, not to yell or to be calm and we are showing him otherwise, our words will lose all meaning.

Children need security. They need to find a coherence between all this in order to consider our teachings as valid and thus generate and internalize their own.

Encourage communication and dialogue with him

The importance of communication and dialogue stands out in terms of parenting guidelines. Dialogue must be the basis of the relationship between parents and children throughout their development.

Some studies suggest that communication problems are one of the risk factors in the psychological adjustment of adolescents.

Families with assertive styles promote adequate socio-emotional development in their children. Faced with depression or loneliness, they promote adaptive coping, while the more authoritarian ones generate greater insecurity, problems are avoided and coping is more maladaptive.

Let him experiment, he has to learn

Childhood is the period of experimentation par excellence. Everything is new for them, so the experiences they live in these very early stages will be very important for the construction of their learning.

A fundamental way by which children discover the world is through play, which includes the manipulation of objects and materials in the environment, the representation of everyday situations and the relationship with their peers and other adults in their environment.

It is very important to let children play freely and to provide them with appropriate stimuli for it (for example, toys appropriate for their age, poorly structured to encourage their imagination).

Our role in the game must be secondary. This means that we must be present, but without taking control of the activity, letting the child explore their tastes, their limits, their goals.

Do not make comparisons

They always say that comparisons are hateful and in the case of children we are not going to make an exception.

When we try to get our sons and daughters to change a behavior that we do not like, we sometimes tend to compare them with other children whose behavior seems more acceptable, with the intention of giving them a frame of reference.

However, this resource, in addition to being of little use to improve their behavior, has undesirable effects on the child's self-esteem and self-concept.

It makes them feel little accepted and understood, and indirectly teaches them a development model based on competitiveness, to "be like…" or "better than…", instead of accepting their individuality. In addition, in the case of siblings, it encourages rivalry between them and the appearance of jealousy.

We must take into account that each child has their own characteristics and strengths, which can be used to correct negative behavior. When you are tempted to compare your child to another child, stop for a moment and just look at him.

Consistency is the most important

Consistency is the most important key in raising a child. The child needs stable, solid and coherent environments.

The limits and rules that we establish with our children must be firm, because that is important so as not to create inconsistency in parenting. Sometimes, with our behavior and without being aware, we are generating behavior problems in our children due to this lack of coherence.

If we set contradictory rules, we can negatively affect a child's behavior and his development and self-esteem.

If you set guidelines and contradict yourself, children do not know what will happen next, they cannot foresee the consequences of the actions and they feel that they are not in control of what may happen.

References

1. Cuervo, A. (2009). Guidelines for upbringing and socio-affective development in childhood. Divers.: Perspect. Psicol., 6 (1), 111-121.
2. Faber, A., Mazlish, E. (1997). How to speak so that your children will listen to you and how to listen so that your children will speak to you. Medici.
3. Mestre, MV, Tur, AM, Samper, P., Nácher, MJ, Cortéz, MT (2007). Parenting styles in adolescence and their relationship with prosocial behavior. Latin American Journal of Psychology, 39, 2, 211-225.
4. Morillas, V. Manipulation and experimentation in Early Childhood Education. Cadiz University.