No one knows a child better than his own parents. They watch their child speak, move, spit, squat. They can read his gestures like no one. They know their child in and out. And they are the ones who have the license to analyze and give him labels like 'happy', 'aggressive', 'creative', 'stubborn', ' fearful', 'irritable', 'shy', 'intelligent', and so on.
This label is what the world begins to believe your child is. Most important, your child will identify himself by not what he feels he is, but by what label his parents have given him. Tell your child is an achiever, and he'll be. Tell him he is a loser, and he'll lose all the battles of his life.
Your labels keep changing as your child grows up. What once you thought is a meek, fearful girl now doesn't let you enter the mall till you let her do bungee jumping! Now you have discovered that your child is not a 'lamb' after all. So when these labels cannot stand the test of time, why not give your child a label you want your child to be? Believe your child is loving, caring, happy go lucky, witty, gutsy, and see your child will become so. All this doesn't mean that you expect your child to be perfect, no human being is. He will always have his limitations. But if you as parents look at his positive traits, he is bound to give less importance to his weaknesses and more importance to his strengths. That again doesn't mean that your child can overlook the negative shades of his personality and never improve upon them. But to motivate him for improvement, you don't have to demean and belittle your child. Your positive label will empower him with the motivation and the confidence to be present to his weaknesses and not let them overpower his personality.
The label you give to your child is the ultimate truth of his life. When he grows up and tries to assert his identity as contrary to what you have labeled him, he might become successful but will never be able to shed the label you have given him. It becomes his shadow. Even if he becomes the CEO of a multinational, your label of being 'good for nothing' will always be on the back of his mind.
I have always seen my elder son as a shy and quiet boy. After 19 years, he hasn't changed. He will not. But I have never fought his shyness but always looked at the maturity with which he handled every situation in his life. Today my son is not conscious of his shyness, but of the perseverance and tolerance that has built up in him. He is proud of himself because somewhere all our life, we have always been proud of who he is.
