How to Encourage Your Children to Be Themselves:

While it’s definitely not a bad thing to share your own thoughts, beliefs, and values with your children, problems can arise when you attempt to turn your kids into mini versions of yourself. Imposing yourself upon them too heavily will just create more problems for your children later on down the line, the main one being the fact that they won’t have their own sense of identity in adulthood. This could then hold them back when it comes to the relationships that they forge and the careers that they embark on.

Instead of trying to get your children to turn out like you, you should encourage them to be themselves. Here are two ways you can do just that:
 

Ensure they are in an environment that encourages individuality

If your children are allowed to coast through their childhood without having to think too much about who they are, how they work, or what they like, they will grow into adults that have no sense of identity. As a result, they could suffer from identity crises during their time as young adults, and subsequently be held back from pursuing their interests in both a personal and professional sense going forward. Encouraging individuality as early on as possible in your kids’ lives is, then, an incredibly important task.

To do this, first and foremost, you have to ensure that your children are spending their time playing, working, and growing in an environment that encourages individuality. As they spend a lot of their time at school, this means you should enrol them at an educational institution that takes the matter of identity seriously. Ellenbrook Primary School is one such institution that fits the bill in this instance. This school, located in northeastern Perth, aspires to ensure that its students commit to the act of taking ownership of both their achievements and failures. If your kids were to go here, then, as well as learning about maths and science, they would also be sure to learn about themselves and what makes them different to everybody else.

Take their extra-curricular interests to another level

The task of encouraging your kids’ sense of identity doesn’t start and end in the classroom. It extends itself into their after-school hours, too.

In this instance, you have to pinpoint all of the extra-curricular things your children have taken an interest in in the past, and you have to resolve to take their involvement in these activities to another level by enroling them in courses and clubs going forward. Regardless of what they love — whether it’s singing, dancing, drawing, painting, or baking — you have to get your kids involved with their hobby, as this will allow them to get great at what it is that love. You never know, they might even hone their skills to such a high level that they can make a living out of their interest when they older.

Encouraging your kids’ sense of identity is an all-important task. Make sure, then, that you put the above advice into practice as early on in your children’s lives as early as possible.