Q: How to help my kid to do to build a good characters? Praise or encourage or be straight?

We all wish for our children to be compassionate, kind, loving and respectful. Hopefully these traits will exist innately within our children but as parents we are also responsible for helping to develop positive character traits.

To answer your question, praise and encouragement are fundamentally important in helping your child build good characteristics.

Children are more likely to repeat a behaviour if attention is given to it – these applies to positive and negative behaviours as well as positive and negative attention. When you see your child being kind or respectful, make sure you are giving them praise for behaving that way. Eventually they will repeat positive actions until they become natural.

Encouragement is also important and the best way to do so is to model the characteristics you wish to see your children portray. Treat your children with the respect you wish to be treated with. Show your child how to be compassionate and kind to people in your community. Children learn through imitation and you, as a parent, are their most important role model.