(i) Celebrating your child’s efforts and successes

Research has shown that celebrating and praising positive behaviours are generally more helpful in creating lasting changes in children’s behaviours than punishment. As such, acknowledging your child’s efforts and achievements is as important as setting family rules and enforcing consequences.

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How can you better support your child’s efforts?

Some ways you can show your child that you notice and appreciate their efforts include:

Celebrate your child’s efforts, successes, and experiences, no matter how small, instead of focusing on the final result
Avoid only praising good results as this may cause your child to feel that being themselves and doing their best are not good enough
Ensure you do not compare your child to others as this may lower your child’s morale or self-worth, underappreciate their efforts or even make them less eager to try their best
Encourage your child to press on and try again whenever they encounter setbacks

Notice when your child demonstrates positive behaviours (e.g. follows family rules, tries their best, tries to calm down after shouting) and praise them for it, making an effort to do so even in situations when you may feel upset, frustrated or stressed with them
Point out how they display good character (e.g. perseverance) instead of only noticing their bad behaviours to scold them

Tell them how you appreciate the ways they have tried to overcome obstacles to get closer to their goals
For example, you can say, “Thank you for trying your best even though it was hard for you. I can see how hard you’ve tried and I’m really proud of you! Good job!”

Intrinsic rewards can be:
- Having them share their sense of meaning or accomplishment
Extrinsic rewards can be:
- Being able to engage in activities they find meaningful
- Being given more autonomy to structure their schedule
- Awarding points for positive behaviours, which in turn could be exchanged for an outing to a place they want to go to or other gifts