Excerpt: Shaping Excellent Character; a manual for parents
Eastern Culture
- In our eastern culture, specifically Malay culture, we seldom give acknowledgement when our child has done something good.
- Usually we keep quiet, giving no praise, and this sometimes causes our children to feel unappreciated.
- We always assume (wrongly) that our children will understand – that when we keep quiet it means that we are pleased, and are satisfied with their behavior.
- On the other hand, when we find our children doing something wrong, it is so easy for us to scold then, raising our voices at them and punishing them.
- Indirectly, our children are concluding that many things that they do are not right and that they might incur our anger no matter what they do.
- In the Malay culture (and probably other cultures too), parents seldom or never praise their children, especially after they have started schooling, and this lack of praise gets even worse when our children become teenagers.
- Sometimes we feel awkward and embarrassed to tell our children that we appreciate them, and how much we love them.
- This problem is compounded by the fact that the vocabulary for expressing praise in the Malay Language (and perhaps other languages) is poorer compared to that of the English language.
- To overcome this problem, we need to be creative and invent our own phrases to express appreciation and give praise to our children’s good behavior or positive traits.
These words of appreciation and praise, after frequent expression, will come to flow out naturally in due time. - We need to remind ourselves to constantly praise our children, but praise them only at the right time and only for the right reasons.
heh...imagining AbuAmiir cakap "saya cintakan awak" *wink*
