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More encouragement, less criticism

We know grasses needs sunshine and water, but if you keep pulling it, it will just die. Grasses seems like children, sunshine seem like encouragement, and water seem like criticism. Every parent is hoping that their child is growing up well, so some parents would like to give children more knowledge over than children can be accepted. When children do not do it well, they will get criticism more than encouragement from parents, and the consequence is that usually give children more pressure and produce disgust. This is not a good way to help child grow up. Therefore, giving more encouragement and less criticism is a good way to help children to grow up.

Not only parents need to encourage children, but also teachers need to encourage children. When children study at school, the only person who can teach students is that teacher. Teacher as important as parents to children. Teacher not only have to teach academic skill to children, they also have to teach them moral, bring up children’s hobby. According to an article “Be an Artist, Right Now” by Young-ha Kim who is a famous Novelist, and he think every person is artists. People give up to be an artists because some reasons, such as they have to go to school, or get a job. When he was young, he wanted to be an artists, but his teacher stopped his dream. In his TED.com talk, “Be an Artist Right Now!” Kim said a story about him joining a drawing match. He is only using black drawing because he want to draw a crowd is perching on a branch at a dark night. But his teacher does know understand him and teacher said，“Well, Young-ha, you may not be good at drawing but you have a talent for storytelling.” That is a reason to explain why Kim become a Novelist not an Artist. Undeniably, teacher stopped Kim’s dream, the only important thing Kim lost is that confidence or the interest in drawing. Kim also said, “There were a lot of girls there as well, so I was utterly mortified.” That probably making Kim did not want to draw anyway. If the teacher could encourage Kim to drawing what he like, gave him more encouragement not just criticism, that would gave Kim more energy and helping Kim to be an artist.

Encouragement refers to the act of giving support or help to someone in an effort to stimulate development. Therefore it helps the person feel better about themselves. Criticism on the other hand refers to the act of expressing persons or things mistakes of faults. These two different approaches in parenting have different effects in the growth and development of children. However, encouragement is better that criticism for children growth for various reasons. According to book “Worldwide Variation in Human Growth” by Phyllis B. Eveleth, and he wrote, “Encouragement also provides a good chance for the child to learn from their mistake on what they did wrong and how they could have done it right while criticism only makes a child feel bad and awful about themselves thereby not helping them to change in any way.” (Eveleth, P. B., & Tanner, J. M., 1976). One of the reasons is that while encouragement is a positive approach towards blaming children’s mistakes, it helps a child learn from their faults in a positive way as opposed to criticism, which makes them feel bad about themselves. Therefore, encouragement keeps a child’s enthusiasm while criticism kills a child’s enthusiasm. Therefore, parents should adopt the practice of encouraging their children when they make mistakes as opposed to criticizing them.

The other reason why criticism is a bad approach towards parenting is that if affects children emotion state and may subject them to stress and depression depending on the extent and the situation. On the other hand, encouragement creates a better emotion state for children to learn and with their parents.

Encouragement usually influence communication between parents and children. In generally, people would like be praise by others. I have read an article in my Eng 102 class named “Follow what you love”. The article told about the author who told to her best friend Alice that she like to reading manga(comic books with no color) and she want to become a mangake, a manga writer. But her mother did not agree because her mother thought manga writer wasn’t a good job for her daughter, who had to found another job. Because her mother did not understand what manga write is, so her mother gave her more criticism than encouragement, she had even been encourage her author to be a manga writer. But mange writer was daughter’s dream, and she did not want to give up. As time passes, daughter blame mother would not care her ideas, and mother thought the daughter was still a child. The big problem was happening in mother and daughter. Whatever, if the parents could gave daughter more encouragement, not just criticism. Maybe daughter would told her mother why she like to be a manga writer. What was manga brought to her. Maybe could exchange their ideas, and understood each other and found the best decision to help daughter. So encouragement not only influence children interest or dream, it also influence relationship in family.

Conclusively, Also, I think encouragement is a better parenting practice towards child development since it ensures that children are safety, that they are teach in the right way, and that they learn to learn from their own experiences and faults. Also, more encouragement will make stronger relationship in family.

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