How To Inspire Hope In Children

Referring to the phrase of the famous psychologist Jean Piaget, who states that “knowledge is a system of transformations that become progressively adequate” , we can deduce the importance of inspiring hope in children, since this is one of the values ​​that is developed earlier, but which can also disappear faster as it develops.

A child can expect a gift day after day and year after year. The child never loses hope when he really wants something. However, over the years, if the young person gets used to not achieving anything, he will also end up harming himself and this will bring disastrous consequences for his mind and for its proper development.

Therefore, it is important to inspire hope in our children. Furthermore, it is also necessary to enhance it because it is a value that should never be lost. This is a mission that falls to parents, teachers and guardians.

However, it is also necessary to remember that it is not good to allow the child to have excessive naive attitudes. That is, the child’s hope of achieving an unrealizable dream or an impossible act should not be encouraged. It is necessary that the encouragement of values ​​is always linked to reality if we want to improve their quality of life and their thoughtful and adequate development.

How to create a suitable space to inspire hope in children

To learn how to inspire and empower our children’s hope, let’s draw on the theories of one of the most important child psychologists of the 20th century. We are talking about Paulo Freire, who bases his thinking on a series of simple and very useful premises:

• : an important detail that will allow the child to always maintain and enhance values ​​such as hope is the stimulus. We need to encourage the young person to ask questions, be curious to learn and be interested in discovering. Teaching how to experiment and going further to explore your limits is truly useful and appropriate.

• : it is complex to try to inspire values ​​such as hope in a child if we do not serve as a mirror and example. We must transmit to the child everything that we really want him to learn through gestures, words, behaviors, etc.

• : autonomy is always important in children’s lives. Overprotection can make a young person overestimate hope, clinging to it in an unhealthy way. However, if he has the freedom to experiment, prove and even get frustrated when leaving his comfort zone, his development will be more adequate.

• : the best way to inspire any value in a child is to listen actively. In this case, hope plays a central role, and it is necessary for her to feel understood and respected. This way you can establish a dialogue in which you can clearly explain everything you want to say to your child, and he will understand, absorb and form his own opinions.

• : generosity is a wonderful value that will inspire notions of nobility and empathy in your child. What is the best way to understand hope? Giving without expecting to get something in return, because it is the ideal way to get rewards. Don’t do to others what you wouldn’t want them to do to you. With this attitude, hope will rarely be turned to naivety.

• : finally, if you want to transmit values ​​such as hope to the child, the best thing is to form a creative space where the information received and transmitted is useful, with freedom to interpret, with a good willingness to acquire knowledge and responsibilities, and willing to do always the best possible.

How to practically inspire hope

Once we have created the right space of understanding for our child to internalize values ​​such as hope, it is time to put into practice everything that has been learned. For this, you can carry out activities such as:

• Use positive reinforcement when the child does the right thing.

• Frameworks to establish standards to be respected.

• Inspire a love of reading, short stories or fables.

• Combine the experimentation with the visual, so that the child can manipulate but also observe.

• Using the example without differentiating responsibilities between equals, using the appropriate language and always respecting the idiosyncrasies of each personality.

Inspiring hope in children and allowing them to never lose it as they grow older is an exercise in positive responsibility for the development of little ones. Although it is necessary to keep your feet on the ground, expectations and achievable dreams must never be lost sight of.