Expressing appreciation to our children

Often, we express our appreciation to our kids with euphoric praises: You are the best! You are awesome!  Our intention behind the praise is usually to show the child how pleased we are for something that they are doing and that is in some way helpful or kind to us. Generally, even when our children didn´t do anything extraordinary, we feel the urge to make them feel good about themselves, omitting the specifics about what exactly they did to make us feel pleased and why. If we want our children to be able to fully receive our appreciation, let’s try to practice being more specific about it: “I see that you are almost done with the food prep, I feel pleased because it is important for me to see collaboration in our family.” This way, we are celebrating a desirable behavior without the need to praise.  This way of expressing appreciation in a more objective and specific way allows the child to fully receive our gratitude while feeling accomplished and connected to us. They are also learning how to fully express appreciation themselves. Pepa