Why Inculcating Hope In Children Is Important

Instilling hope in children is important, because even a child can become disillusioned later in life if he or she faces too many disappointments.

A child is able to wait for a present day after day, year after year. The little one never loses hope when he really wants something. But as the child gets older, he or she gets used to never getting anything, and he or she too will lose hope. This can have detrimental effects on his or her personality and development.

Instilling hope in our children is therefore important. We must encourage it because it is a value that must never be lost. This is a mission that falls on the shoulders of parents, teachers and instructors.

However, it is also good to remember that it is not good for the child to grow up with too naive an attitude. That is, you should not encourage false hopes. We should encourage realistic optimism if we want to improve the quality of life of the children.

How can you instill hope in children?

To encourage hope in our children, we draw inspiration from the theories of one of the most important child psychologists of the twentieth century. We are talking about Paulo Freire, who bases his thinking on a series of simple and very useful propositions:

Stimulation

We must encourage young people to ask, to be curious, to learn and to take an interest in discovering. Learning to experiment and always go further to explore the limits is really helpful and meaningful.

Preview function

It is complicated to try to inculcate small values, such as hope, when we are not serving as a mirror and example. We have to pass on to the child everything that we really want to teach him through gestures, words, behavior and so on.

Autonomy

This is always important in the lives of the children. Excessive protection can cause the young person to overestimate hope and cling to it in an unhealthy way. However, if he is free to experiment, control and even be frustrated when he leaves his comfort zone, his development will be much better.

Active listening

The best way to instill a value in a child is through active listening. We must understand and respect the child well. This way you can have a dialogue in which you can clearly explain everything you want to say and he or she understands, internalizes and expresses his or her own critical statements.

generosity

Generosity is a great value of empathy that you can instill in your child. What better way to understand hope? Give without expecting anything in return as it is the ideal way to get rewards. Don’t do things to others that you don’t want done to you. With this attitude, hope will rarely turn into naivety.

Creation

Finally, if you want to instill in the child values ​​such as hope, it is best to create a creative space in which the information received and passed on is useful, open to interpretation and full of knowledge.

How can you inculcate hope in a practical way?

Once we’ve created a space suitable for our little one to understand and internalize values ​​like hope, it’s time to put it into practice.

For this you can do activities such as:

• Using positive reinforcement when the child behaves appropriately.
• Conversations to clarify the right norms and values.
• Teach the child to love reading.
• Combining experiments with the visual, so that the child can manipulate it but also observe it.
• Using examples without distinguishing the responsibilities of equals, using the correct language and always respecting the child’s personality.

Instilling hope in children is our responsibility. While we should hold on to reality, we should never let go of our dreams.