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The big bang economic reforms in the 1990s unleashed the hidden entrepreneurial spark among a sizeable section of Indians. The trend became more common thanks to the IT revolution, opened the gates to many new businesses. Thus, today, we find freshly graduates opting out of college placements to do their own stuff. Though many such new generation ventures like Byju, Swiggy and Flipkart turned raging successes, a good enough number fell by the wayside. Do you recall that in the later 90s, there was one letsbuyelectronics.com, which was bought over by Flipkart? Many like these either sank or had to be rescued by others.

Ample research shows that a significant percentage of all start-ups fail within the first three years and it’s not difficult to understand why. The fact is- doing business is getting more intricate due to the constantly changing business environment, role of technology, globalization and fickle consumer mindsets. The environment now is much more complex, the technology more pervasive and the consumers more demanding. That’s when corporate counselling enters the picture to help a business identify the problem it faces, get down to its roots and evolve suitable solutions.

Getting to do one’s own thing is indeed an exciting idea. Having no manager to report to, freedom of work, leading co-workers and the monetary rewards appeal to many with dreamy eyes. Alas! It’s easier said than done.

In the course of my work as a life coach and doing corporate counselling in India, I often face questions on how such entrepreneurial dreams can be fulfilled. In my opinion, entrepreneurship is similar to pregnancy, requiring motherly patience and the fortitude to defeat odds to emerge successful. One needs to cultivate the essential skills to improve the chances of entrepreneurial success – technical, financial, communication and leadership skills, all of which play a critical role.

Corporate Counselling

Running a corporate is no cakewalk, filled as it is with immense pressure and one tends to stress over the short-term deadlines as well. That is where counselling steps in. Professional counsellors helps the employees to improve productivity and motivate them to give their best.

Those working in corporate environments face stress as they have deadlines, responsibilities, and targets to meet. Frequent and long travel skews the work-life balance and only a handful of people can find the right balance between work and personal care. A great many people fail to achieve the balance and end up missing out on one or the other front. Obviously, it is inevitable for the employees to feel stressed, de-motivated and discouraged, which can affect their performance and overall productivity. There is nothing unprofessional or abnormal about it; we need to find a solution to it.

The purpose of corporate counselling is to encourage employees to make healthy lifestyle choices. It provides the company with the resources, knowledge, and tools necessary for creating a healthy work environment. Workplace counselling in India is  becoming popular in supporting and maintaining a motivated and effective workforce. Workplace counselling in India is a way to improve employee mental health and emotional well-being. By providing employees with the resources, knowledge, and tools to make healthy lifestyle choices, a corporate counsellor can help them engage their employees.

The issues in Corporate Counselling cover technical skills, leadership, business management skills and creative thinking. As these skills can be applied in many different roles and domains, developing them means cultivating several skill sets of wide-ranging importance.

What is Corporate Counselling?

Corporate counselling helps improve the employees’ performance at every level through four focus areas:

Strategic consulting

Learning and development

Coaching

Personal emotional and mental health

Reasons behind stress

Some common causes behind mental stress are:

A strict management style

High workloads

Unrealistic targets

Challenging roles

Lack of support

Blame culture

Bullying and Harassment

New team or management

Challenging role

Stress in personal relationships

Fatigue

Long office hours

Competition

It can lead to other serious issues such as insufficient concentration, anxiety, self-doubts, depression, performance decline, careless errors and health problems.

Corporate counselling seeks to help workers strike a balance between their professional and personal life while improving their productivity. Some employees can also face anxiety. A professional counsellor helps them build self-confidence, develop multitasking abilities and improve their cognitive skills.

Types of Corporate Counselling

There are two main types of corporate counselling programmes.

Employee Assistance Programme

A professional counselling arrangement between the counsellor and the employee. The confidentiality helps the employees share their feelings and emotions with the counsellor without any sense of hesitation.

Besides, if an employee would like to provide EAP services to their immediate family, they can do so. In many cases, counselling the family members can also help reduce the stress in personal relations and lives that happens due to the workplace stress.

Conflict Resolution

In conflict resolution, a counsellor helps resolve a conflict between/ among the employees or between the management and the workers. A conflict is often borne of different professional opinions between the parties and in such cases, conflict resolution can help you find a mid-way to end the conflict on a good note.

Workplace counselling is important as life is too hectic and people tend to get lost many times while juggling between their family and workplace issues.

In Nutshell

Counselling is helpful in creating and maintaining a conducive work environment to the benefit of all those concerned. Corporate counselling helps not juts improve productivity for organizational growth, but also employees reignite interest and dedication towards work and grow individually.

Corporate counselling empowers you to make healthy life changes, which promote dynamic professional and personal growth. Counselling services help them through unique workplace and home life challenges resulting in a higher performing staff and a more positive organizational culture.

 For Whom?

Corporate counselling in India isn’t only for long-term employees but is also equally helpful to  those who have lost motivation for work. It can be used in many areas and situations to help the employees achieve their fullest potential.

Some of the areas, where corporate counselling services in India may be especially useful, are:

Recruitment

Selecting the right candidate for the right job from the employer’s viewpoint isn’t that easy task.  In recruitment, only technical or hard skills do not matter; otherwise, machines would be able to do all the jobs. Many assessment tools like psychometric profiling, behavioural assessments and projective tests are used to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the candidates to select the best one/s.

Orientation and induction

Corporate employee training is another domain where counselling can be greatly helpful. The candidates have to be conscious of their own expectations, their work roles, work responsibilities, and the benefits that they can expect from the employer. Induction and orientation programmes are the best occasions to familiarize them with these things and clear their doubts, if any.

Today, companies conduct ice-breaking, trust games, and psychological team-building exercises and other events as part of their induction programmes. All these things serve to make employees feel more at ease with themselves and the company and relaxed in the new work environment. A corporate counsellor conducts a thorough post-recruitment psychological assessment before the workers are assigned new positions, locations and targets.

Personal Training and Skill Development

Frequently, many employees get too comfortable with their work and resist any kind of change that is brought in. By encouraging employees to participate in training and development, corporate counselling can help them become stakeholders in organizational transformation.

Equally, it would be beneficial for managers to identify worker training needs and shortlist the potential candidates for it. Thereafter, they can then work out a feasible training plan, get feedback and assess the results in terms of  corporate goals. A corporate counsellor can help an organization with team building, conflict resolution, negotiation skills, and anger management.

Promotions and performance appraisals

Some employees may use the semi-annual or annual appraisal to get back at their managers for not toeing the line or being outspoken and honest. Admitted, managers are humans and may not be objective at times as emotions drive human behaviour. Although there are methods and tools available to ensure an accurate and fair performance assessment, managers still need to rely on their own subjective judgements to arrive at a conclusion.

Corporate counselling has developed the methods to conduct an objective appraisal of an individual’s performance. A corporate counsellor also plays a crucial role in inducting a new person for a senior role and making recommendations for transfers.

Developing Leadership

By definition, the leaders must inspire their team. Besides, they also need to have excellent interpersonal skills and their attitude towards employees at the bottom of the ladder determines how they are perceived by others. Corporate counselling can enable the managers to realize their potentials and become leaders in their own right.

Change Management

Many of us find any kind of change challenging to handle. It can have a significant impact on employees if the change in question is a merger, acquisition or a new management team. Besides, there can be economic cycles, layoffs and liquidations.

 As any life coach  would attest to it, sometimes, the intensity and the speed of  a change can be simply dizzying. Only a life coach can really appreciate what it means to face and cope with such tumultuous changes in a professional environment. In such cases, corporate counselling can prove to be a big boon for an organization as no corporate would ever like to lose its employees to such changes. Corporate counselling offers the psychological tools and techniques necessary to keep the employees calm, focused, and balanced so that they can excel even in the most difficult times.

 Improved Work Environment

Happy, productive employees are cheerful and energetic. To give their personal best, the employees need to have a conducive, supportive, innovative, and intelligent work environment. But avoiding bickering, politicking, and back-stabbing may not be possible, always.

Corporate counselling can help create a great work environment (which includes the physical environment too- temperature, lighting, ventilation, work hours and humidity) with effective solutions to reduce friction and improve coordination.

Work-life balance

Today’s Human Resources managers need to ensure the employees have the best work-life balance possible. They have to admit that stress is part and parcel of life and it can affect our work-life balance. Corporate counselling can help managers understand its importance and encourage the employees to be more relaxed in life.

Employee Counselling

Today, the latest trend in the corporate HR circles is Employee Counselling at Workplace. Employee Counselling can help the employees come out of their problems and gives them a new hope and a way to deal with the problems they face. On the employers’ part, it also shows how much the employer cares for the employees.

The Why? Behind Employee Counselling

Employees face many problems in day to day life – problems with subordinates, colleagues, bosses, work systems and personal life. These problems soon start affecting their work, career and job performance. That’s when employee counselling steps in to provide them guidance and advice, sort out the problems and help them solve the problems they face in office or personal life.

Typically, the organizations seek a professional counsellor to deal with

1. Traumatic Events
2. Relationship Issues
3. Physical Health
4. Personal Stress
5. Emotional Health
6. Bereavement
7. Work Relationships
8. Phobias
9. Family Issues
10. Financial Problems
11. Work Stress

A Corporate Counsellor is supposed to make sure that he counselee is healed mentally, emotionally and psychologically. Besides, the counsellor is expected to maintain the privacy of their counsellee, which is a very important feature of such counselling.

 Benefits of Employee Counselling

We all experience various life crises at different stages in our lives.  Experiences like  bereavement and loss, relationship and family difficulties, substance abuse, alcohol issues, and stress at home can preoccupy one’s thinking too much so much so that they distract them from work.  And in certain safety-sensitive industries and settings, it can pose a major operational and safety risk, which has to be guarded against.

Such Employee Counselling can help

1. Employees tackle the problems effectively
2. Have better decision making
3. Evolve new and healthier ways to look at a problem and change one’s  perspective of viewing it
4. Prevent termination/ resignation
5. Reduces the hiring, training and re-training costs
6. Create smoother and better employer-employee coordination

Do you also think that you could have accomplished much more in a day if you had some more hours? If 24 hours in a day are not sufficient for your daily errands, that indicates you are failing with time management. 

I always say one thing to people who visit me for time management issues, which I realized many years back. Everybody has 24 hours whether that is the Prime Minister of India or the President of America. It depends on you how wisely you are managing your time.

I agree that time is a limited resource that never stops for anyone but that doesn’t mean you need some more hours in your day. However, you need to learn the importance of time management at the workplace. You need to understand the value of time to become efficacious in all facets of your life because if you do not value time and waste it on unnecessary activities, you may fail to create your individuality. 

Many years back when I was a housewife, at that time I also used to feel that 24 hours are not sufficient, I should have a few more hours to perform all tasks because I was not managing my time properly. Later I learned about time management and its value in life from various life experiences. Today, Life coach Ritu Singal is a recognizable name. I am managing multiple businesses successfully, getting awards, and helping other people to learn time management. Today also I have 24 hours in a day.

I will not say that it’s easy to manage your time appropriately, of course, it is challenging but once you learn and implement, it makes an immense difference. Time management skills and time-saving hacks can significantly help enhance the way you accomplish your work, guard you against interruption, secure your concentration and maintain a work-life balance. 

In this blog, I am going to talk about all you should know about time management techniques and how they balance your work life and productivity. 

Highlights

• Time management means allocating the right time to the right activity to manage your time effectively.
• Proper time management allows you to allocate particular time slots for various activities depending on their importance. 
• Always remember time is limited, so make sure you are utilizing it in the best possible way. 
• Everybody knows that time is flying at its speed but only a few people know that we can become pilots if we want. 

What Does Time Management Mean?

Does it mean retaining yourself busy to ensure that you are executing at the highest productivity levels? Does it mean your boss telling you how you should manage your time?

In simple words, time management is mastering your time intelligently to get everything done as required without putting a huge burden on yourself. Time management is all about scheduling and arranging the time you spend on various activities. The major purpose of managing your time is to boost productivity and efficiency. 

For example, You enter the office, open your computer, and come to know that you have 10 tasks for today. Now, what will you do? How will you manage your time effectively so that you can complete all 10 tasks before you leave the office? If you have time-handling skills, you will create a list, prioritize the tasks as per their importance and assign a particular time for each task. Then begin with the most important task and try to complete each task within the assigned time. 

I always tell a beautiful story and I could not stop myself from sharing it here as well. Some years back, I was attending a spiritual event and there I heard this story. There are 3 rabbits in the ground and you have to catch them. How will you do it? If you go to catch one, the other one will run so how will you bring all three rabbits together? If you are not smart enough you will keep going behind one and then another. However, if you are wise enough, you will bring carrots and put them in a place, eventually, all three rabbits will come to the carrots and you can catch them all at once. 

The day I heard this story, it touched my heart so deeply. You need to be smart to perform more in less time. Don’t run behind multiple things at one time, prioritize what needs to be done first and then strategize how to achieve more in less time. Make sure you are spending time where it matters the most.

Do you know, if you are failing to manage your time accurately, you may have to face several negative consequences which can noticeably upset your professional and personal life? 

Outcomes of poor time management skills and attitudes:

• Procrastination and difficult focus
• Missed deadlines and meetings
• Lack of professionalism
• Missed opportunities
• Undesired stress and anxiety
• Deprived performance and incompetent workflow
• Hassled relationships at the workplace
• Financial disadvantages
• Work-life imbalance

Effective Time Management

Organizing several things that enhance efficiency and discover an improved work-life balance. Upskilling time management at the workplace allows you to augment your performance and accomplish your goals with fewer efforts and more efficient approaches. 

Efficient time management necessitates:

• Craving to comprehend the worth of time. When you acknowledge it, it allows you to manage your time better and it gives a boost to your confidence.
• Determination to sidestep distractions because distractions waste your valuable time which you should spend on vital tasks. 
• Fortitude to practice good time handling practices until they become habits. It will help you become successful.
• Discipline is a crucial element for excellent time management. Discipline helps you stick to your productive habits without indulging in useless activities. 

Effective time management comprises:

Managing your time means making sensible and the best possible use of your time for reaching your goals. You should understand the worth of time and allot suitable time to the suitable activity.

For instance, nowadays many people are spending most of their time on their smartphones, watching videos or scrolling their social media, etc. People are so indulged in their mobile phones that they are not realizing the value of time and as a result, they are not able to accomplish their jobs well.

Read: How You Can Accomplish Your Dream With Effective Time Management Coaching

• Efficient planning:

Plan your day, and prepare a to-do list in advance. Just write down the essential activities and allot time for each activity. Top priority work should be accomplished first then jump to the pending tasks one by one. make sure you do not begin with a fresh task unless you complete the previous ones. Tick the finished activities where you have written. 

• Establish purposes and goals:

Working without goals is exactly similar to the captain who is heading the ship without knowing the way into the sea. Apparently, he will be lost somewhere in the sea. That is why it’s highly important to set achievable and realistic objectives for yourself, only then you can walk in the right direction. 

• Set deadlines for yourself:

Just like having purposes, it’s essential to consider deadlines for yourself. Sticking to the deadline makes you attempt to accomplish it early. Don’t wait for your bosses to give you a finish line, set it for yourself because you know better the time required to complete a particular task. 

• Use the right time for the right activities:

If you are using social media during working hours in the office, it is not a suitable use of that time for a suitable activity. If you are doing something after the deadline passed, that is not of much use because you have already created your impression. Keep some separate time for your mobile phone or gossip but use your office hours for the correct activities. 

Value Of Time Management at The Workplace

Managing your time properly brings numerous benefits to your professional life. There was a time when I was like, 24 hours are not sufficient and today I am managing various businesses, my personal life, my social life, and many more things in these 24 hours. Once you learn the value of time and how you can make the most of it, success is a few steps away.

Let’s go through the remarkable benefits of time management in the workspace

• You are more disciplined and punctual
• You are more organized in the workspace
• Boost your morale and make you more confident
• You are more likely to meet your goals in less time
• Helps you attain the pinnacle of accomplishment rapidly
• You can plan things better
• You become less prone to stress and anxiety
• Enhanced capability to prioritize tasks and doings at the workplace. 
• You implement a deliberate approach in life
• You have a good reputation in the office
• You are less prone to procrastination
• Rationalized decision-making skills
• Better relationships at the workplace
• Accomplish your tasks before the deadlines
• Deliver improved work quality
• More productivity and proficiency at work
• Excellent opportunities and professional growth
• More time for relaxation and rejuvenation
• Outstanding work-life balance

Effective Time Management Techniques Recommendations by Life Coach Ritu Singal

Plan your day:

Some people ask me why I should plan my day, because plans may change. But it doesn’t mean that you should not plan your days. I suggest that you should plan your every day. There are many ways to make your plans successful, you just need to recognize what works great for you. 

I recommend people plan their next day every night before they go to sleep and strategize their activities for the next day. Most people told me that it worked best for them. It prepares your mind to take the workload every day and move you towards better accomplishments. 

Focus on one task at a time:

I always do that and also suggest the same to people who visit me for life coaching or counseling. It’s extremely essential to accomplish the errand you are holding in your hand. When you are in the office, put 100% effort into your work to make sure there is no chance of error.  If you are doing something in a rush, there are more chances of mistakes and then you have to spend more time working on those mistakes. 

Concentrating on one task at a time improves efficiency. Also do not go for multitasking that may hinder your work quality. I am not saying that multitasking is a bad practice but if it is affecting the quality of the task in your hand then it’s definitely not good. Multitask smartly. 

Off-put email checks:

Do you realize that when you check your emails in the morning, how much time does it consume and is it worth that time?

Checking pertinent emails is important but checking unnecessary spam messages eats more time. Even sometimes it’s struggling to decide on the essential ones. To avoid that wastage of time you can limit yourself from checking emails to only which require an instant response. Rest you can manage during your free time. Try applying filters that junk spam emails and mark important ones. 

Break up big projects into small chunks:

So you have got a large project and the deadline is approaching and the complete picture is intimidating you. Now, what to do? Let me help you make it easier.

I always suggest to people that you can not eat the whole elephant at once because it’s so huge. So you need to break it up into small pieces. Well, don’t misunderstand it’s just an example, you don’t have to eat the elephant. I suggest not eating any animal. Similarly, you need to divide your big tasks into smaller ones. 

This is a great time-saving hack to manage your time efficiently, chunk out your large, difficult projects into smaller pieces, prioritize, set deadlines for those tasks, and start doing them. This way the bigger picture doesn’t look daunting anymore and the impending deadline appears more attainable. 

Avert possible distractions:

If you ask me, today the most common distraction is social media notifications that pull people away from their essential duties. However, you need to prevent such distractions to be more involved in your job. Otherwise, these will eat up your valuable time and you will have loads of work piled up. 

I reduced the most prominent distraction these days, the mobile phone. I only check my social media pages when it is necessary. Well, I was never so indulged in social media but I was spending quite more time on whatsapp. But I realized that it eats up a lot of time. Now I only use whatsapp when it’s important to my team or it’s related to work. 

Turn off phone notifications and stay focused on your task because you have to finish it before the deadline. Try to indulge in your work during office hours to boost your productivity and the day hangs around you so you will have enough time to spend on social media or other activities. 

Line up your tasks daily, weekly, and monthly:

Along with planning each day, you should recognize your priorities for approaching days, weeks, and months. Now again some people may think that weekly or monthly plans may not work because anything can change at any time due to several situations. But let me tell you one thing, you can not control situations, or what will happen tomorrow but you should have a plan ready with your priority errands. 

Prioritizing your tasks for upcoming days allows you to scatter your workload and avoid stress and an overly busy schedule. It improves your time management at the workplace and you will be capable enough to establish a structured daily routine for your goals and productivity throughout the month. 

Get the help of a timer:

It may sound crazy to some people but trust me, it can be the best technique to manage your time suitably. Using a timer can remind you about the necessary breaks, establish time limits and boost your productivity. Taking small breaks and getting refreshed between your tasks is essential to clear your head because you are a human being, not a robot.

Getting help from a timer and setting a certain time limit to accomplish an objective, pushes you to achieve more before the deadlines. You can also try using other time management tools as there are numerous options available. 

Refresh, revive and revitalize your batteries:

It’s highly important to revitalize yourself only then you can significantly stick to these time management techniques. If you are not taking refreshing breaks from work you may get exhausted over time. When you are taking sufficient time to revive your batteries, you can implement these techniques much more efficiently. 

Quick Tips By Life Coach Ritu Singal To Enhance Your Time Management Capabilities

• Prioritize and schedule your tasks
• Set boundaries and learn to say no 
• Start your day early
• Be realistic don’t put up unnecessary work stress
• Put off time-killing activities
• Learn and implement time-saving hacks

Wrapping up

Time management is not that tough, you just need to be consistent because consistency is the key. Don’t let your poor time management habits ruin your career and work-life balance. Once you learn the skill to become in charge of your time, you will get the tasty fruits it bears. You just have to make sure to be consistent with your time management practices. 

All these recommendations are personally tried and tested by me as well as by people whom I helped manage their time appropriately. When you implement these techniques you will see a positive influence in your life. As you learn time management you have complete control of your precious time with a better ability to get things done well, make better decisions and prioritize things. I hope this blog helped you recognize the priceless worth of time management in the workplace.

A parent-child relationship is the foundation of all humanity. Right from the stone ages to the modern Internet age, this is one relationship institution that has stood the test of time and is so vitally important that, in fact, one cannot even imagine our civilization progressing without it. Though all animals (we too, are!) practice varying degrees of parenting skills to bring up their progeny, nowhere is the bond as intense and long-lasting as in case of humans, who often spend a lifetime of nurturing, care and concern bringing up children.

Bringing up a little, helpless soul into a walking, talking, sensitive and productive human has never been a cakewalk, even in the best of times. Therefore, we can easily visualize the additional liabilities and risks it creates in not-so-good times. Though parenting everywhere is marked by similarities in the ways of nurturing, socializing, educating and training, there are major cultural differences in parenting techniques. And that’s not without sound logic. The fact is, every culture practices parenting styles to raise children, who would turn into what the culture needs, respects and values. Consider, for instance, primitive farm-based cultures (which are still there in some parts), in which kids hold more economic rather than emotional value. Obviously, in such cultures, kids are, treated like that only i.e. economically productive tools. Similarly, all tribes put great value on individual independence as opposed to other, non-tribal cultures.

In fact, the history and culture of an area impacts the prevailing parenting styles – the Chinese culture, for instance, is shaped by the Confucian philosophy of deference authority, devotion to parents, emotional restraint, and education. Thus, it’s not surprising that Chinese parenting put great emphasis on training, governance and love. Ditto for the ancient Indian gurukul system, premised on great respect for authority, which puts great stock in devotion towards one’s parents and elders, learning and education.

However, it cannot dilute the importance of changing times, cultural diffusion and lateral mobility, which have brought about perceptible changes in parenting styles worldwide. Of late, Chinese parents are becoming more attuned to children’s emotional needs and now give them independence and autonomy in a greater measure than before. Similarly, the parents in Western nations have developed higher expectations of their children in terms of academic achievement and keep a closer watch on their activities now.

Parenting Techniques- Types

Most psychologists and life coaches recognize three major categories of parenting techniques:

1. Authoritarian – disciplinarian
2. Permissive – indulgent and
3. Authoritative

Authoritarian parents, strict disciplinarians that they are, wield the proverbial stick quite often. So, punishment is quite common and communication mostly happens one-way from parents to children. This technique involves dictatorial decision-making, with the kids having no say in matters concerning them and the household. Quite expectedly, such parenting techniques create rebellious or submissive and docile adults, who often encounter problems with authority figures later.

As a life coach, my experience with parent counselling services so far reveals that the authoritarian parenting style is popular with the Indian middle class, especially with those living in semi-urban and rural areas. This parenting style creates a lot of performance pressure on kids, with the parents demanding blood, sweat and tears from their children, especially in pursuit of academic excellence. Kota’s private Rs.75,000 crore coaching industry, is ample proof of the Indian parents’ aggression in this regard. Contrarily, this micro-managing of children’s lives is rarely seen in Western cultures, where the kids are free from the crushing burden of parental expectations. Instead, their delicate sensitivities are a matter of debate in the national discourse, media and on TV channels.

Authoritarian parenting doesn’t always work. This is amply clear from the rising number of cases of depression and suicides among such adolescents. Every child has the gift of some unique talents; therefore, a one-size-fits-all, plain vanilla approach isn’t quite the done thing as a parent’s job is providing a conducive environment to let the kids inculcate academic, social and emotional skills. Therefore, the parenting style needs to be adapted to suit a child’s unique personality so as to let it reach its full potential.  However, keeping the “right” and the “wrong” aside, we have to appreciate that every culture is a product of its unique history and that while parenting, parents always the good of their children at heart.

Directly opposed to this extreme on the Parent-Child Relation spectrum are permissive parenting techniques, which treat kids more like friends in a liberal parenting atmosphere. Such a parenting style often results in adults marked by little respect for discipline and rules, with the result that such adults face frequent problems with law.

Lying in the middle between these two parenting extremes is the authoritative parenting style, wherein the parents create reasonable boundaries and alongside, give the kids the guidance and freedom to decide on their own and learn from their mistakes. This style has been proven to be the most beneficial in creating a well-adjusted personality in later life.

12 Steps to More Effective Parenting

The challenges thrown by parenting may not have a personal precedent to guide you. But they have been with us since ages; it’s just that they have gotten more diverse and difficult over time. Then, how do you walk the tight rope so that you can survive it and better still, begin liking each other? Well, here’re my Top Tips, rooted in my personal experience of bringing up two (fairly successful) daughters, which may make your parenting a little more peaceful and manageable.

With fewer children, busier, double-income couples and a hyper-connected world, the parenting challenges posed by this generation are slightly different but the basic ideas stay  the same. Every parent you meet has their unique stories about how they managed to bring up their kids in the face of tough challenges. But from a different perspective, “bringing up children” is old hat now as it’s time for “bringing up parents” as the focus needs to be shifted to making parents more competent in terms of upbringing. There is sufficient research on child growth and development to indicate that parents have been in the wrong about many parenting practices.

Quite often, first-time parents don’t have any clue to their future journey as  nurturers and providers. But thankfully, plenty of help is always available from parents, friends and the media. A word of caution, though- their pearls of wisdom may work but you shouldn’t expect a X-creates-Y type of scenario as children come in all shapes, sizes and colours and may behave quite disparately and unpredictably. So, I am firmly convinced that a parent must “know” the child before trying out any of the well-intentioned ideas. It’s a hit-and-trial thing until you find just the right thing for yourself and your child. So, constant experimentation here is the key.

Here is on to the best-ever words of parenting wisdom I have learnt bringing up two daughters of mine and by watching others:

1. Walk the Talk

In a parent-child scenario, the kids almost never do what they are told to; rather, they tend to copy what they see around them. Kids are quick learners and absorb much from watching their parents and other adults in day to day living. So before you yell at any one with your kids around, think of it: Would you like your kid to behave like that? NO. Therefore, you need to model the traits you would like them to cultivate – be it honesty, truth, mercy, patience or tolerance. My now-grown up daughters tell me that as kids, they always tried to copy every single thing that I used to do then– habits, manners, activities and hobbies. The idea is clear: Treat your kids the way you expect others to do to you.

Children learn not only unconsciously always; learning happens consciously, too.  In this regard, reading them stories and sharing their major points with them paid me rich dividends. The story of Henna Chaplin, Charlie Chaplin’ mother, was  particularly telling in this regard. Though my daughters Ishani and Inayat would sometimes resent that I was trying to teach them something but the values I tried inculcating did seep through their impressionable minds. And I can see that in their personas today.

Another valuable thing I learnt from her example was treating kids like mature adults. As a conscious practice, I never pressurized them into following my line, but I did guide and counsel them whenever needed, especially because there was this  constant fear of their being misled. There was a general belief about our “decent” financial standing but no one knew about the sixty crore rupee debt I owed!

Though I counselled them about the pros and cons of various career alternatives, the final choice rested on them. It’s satisfying to see them make successful strides in their careers.   

2. Giving an earful

Talk to a life coach and they will tell you that the cat of listening may take more labour but it is more important than talking. Listening to your kids attentively shows them that you respect them and prepares a positive ground for a conversation. While talking,

1. Maintain eye contact
2. Interpose your kid’s conversation with a “Hmm” and “Yeah” to show that you are really listening to them.
3. Avoid interrupting them while they speak.
4. Try to clarify if you don’t get what they say with a “Can you explain that again?

Watch This Video to Learn Advanced Parenting Skills

Take a pause to check whether you are really getting what they say. There is no harm apologizing if you really need to as it melts the ice and creates a good example for them to follow.

Know their friends and your own kid through them. Keep the names, addresses and phone numbers of their friends handy. Treat their friends respectfully and don’t use them as “spies” to track your kid’s activities as it will create mistrust between them.

3. Spare the rod but……

Spare the rod and spoil the child.

Though we need not take this proverb literally, the kids have to learn early in life that discipline holds the key to success. Of course, there is a near-consensus among psychologists dealing with parent counselling services that using physical force to discipline kids is a strict no-no. Rather, they need to learn acceptable behaviour and self-control by staying within certain limits. Appropriate rules help them understand your expectations and develop self-control. Such rules must be made in a participative manner and should be clearly communicated – the no-TV-until-homework-is-done, no hitting or abusing, no teasing rules etc..

I can say with confidence that giving one warning, followed by consequences like “time out” or losing a preferred activity always works. But be careful as it works only if

1. you apply it always, not occasionally or arbitrarily,. You can’t use it one day and forget it the next time. Consistency in your behavior tells them about you expect of them.
2. the “consequence” is strong enough to prevent the unwanted behavior. But it should not be so intimidating that it creates a fear of the parent. “Time out” for a default is okay but locking up a kid or depriving them of meals is a NO-NO.
3. you pair it with just the opposite – reward them for meeting the targets

4. Love You, always

This gem of wisdom has been drilled into our heads for eternity, but very few practice it. Undoubtedly, the parents are expected to correct and guide their kids but the manner in which they do so makes a big difference.

The idea is fairly simple – Your kid is inherently, intrinsically valuable and deserving of your love. Love your kid, regardless of how they look or perform or achieve and avoid blaming or criticizing them, which can weaken their self-esteem. Instead, encourage them, even while disciplining them. For instance, if your kid scores a C on a test instead of the expected A, do not fret or yell or blame their friends. Just convey the idea that you are fine with it but they ought to try harder  the next time. And ensure that they know despite your expectations, you will always love them. Period.

5. Reframing Questions

As a life coach, I often advise my clients to reframe their questions so that they can  see their problems in a new light. Ditto here. Framing your queries in the right way can help you avoid unnecessary trouble and yield better results. So you need to be very clear about it instead of leaving it to your teenager’s interpretation. For example, instead of saying, “You didn’t you respond to my call. You really should have picked it!” try, “I was getting really worried that you didn’t answer my call. Can we devise a way to talk after school to know if you are okay.”

An important takeaway I have learnt is that a focus on your kids’ behavior is much better than passing judgments or putting labels on them. So instead of “You are so lazy,” try “I am so disappointed you didn’t give the garbage to the trash man though it’s your responsibility.”

Avoid making any generalizations, as far as possible. The moment one hears any such blanket statement, they will try to refute them with examples. So instead of “You never clean up your room,” say “You didn’t clean up your room this morning.”

Stick to one topic at a time. Avoid sentences like “I want to talk about your school performance today. By the way, I hated the way that you were speaking to your little sister yesterday.” Instead, say “I wanna really talk about your school performance. Would the evening be good time for that?”

6. Boosting Self-Esteem

Kids begin to cultivate a sense of self as babies by absorbing your tone, body language, and facial expressions. Your words and actions affect their self-esteem much more than all else. So try to appreciate their achievements, howsoever small, to make them feel competent, confident and proud. Let them do things independently to let them feel capable and strong.

Remember to not use the 3 C’s: Comparison, Criticism and Control.

Comparisons are always bad and comparing a child unfavorably with others makes them feel incompetent and worthless. Comments like “What a stupid thing!” or “Your actions are like a little baby’s!” leave lasting psychological scars. So, choose your words carefully and show compassion. Let it sink that everyone commits  mistakes and that you still love them, though you dislike what they do.

Adolescents need more attention from parents than younger children. Therefore, try to do your best to become available for your teenager. Going to movies and events with your teenager indicates a friendly attitude and enables you to know more about your kid and their friends.

If you are a working parent, it need not make you indulge in self-pitying or self-blaming. After my husband’s untimely death, I had to take charge of his business and since then, I have been managing the plant successfully. Since it is located at a place distant from where I live, I always had a time pressure for my kids. But careful planning and slick execution did help me a lot. Looking back, I can say that they cherish much more the gift of time spent together and the little things we did together — playing cards, window shopping, taking strolls — than the “bigger” and costlier gifts they get.

7. Tweaking Parenting Style

If your kid’s behaviour “lets you down”, you may need to check your expectations, which may be unrealistic. Since the environment affects our behavior, we can change the situation by changing the environment. If you have always been saying “no” to your 2-year-old child and have been failing in your efforts, you may need to change your surroundings so that fewer things are off-limits to create lesser frustration for yourself.

You may have to make changes in your parenting style as what works now may not work a year hence. The kids’ mental faculties grow exponentially with time and they begin to think, reason, argue and hypothesize much more efficiently. Many parents call it rebellion, which is just not true. Instead, you need to respect their developmental process and the accompanying changes in their opinions and change yourself accordingly. For example, over time, teenagers look less to their parents and more to their peers but play your part, keep giving guidance and encouragement and at the same time, allowing them to become more independent.

8. Consistency

You need to be consistent in discipline, rules and curfews, rewards and punishments to have the desired behavioral changes. Let your kids know that everything comes with consequences. Dithering or making an exception in some cases may get you a temporary reprieve but things are going to be difficult in the future. So don’t budge and know for sure that if you cede an inch, a smart teen will take away a metre.

9. Staying off time stealers

Make them turn off the biggest time stealers of all – mobiles and tablets and ask them to put them away in your bedroom. You may have to agree on the modalities in writing as the things in black and white carry a certain value. I can recall that despite multiple engagements and the limited time available, sometimes just ten minutes, may be while waiting for a flight, I devoured every single word of Henna Chaplin’s life-changing story. Charlie had learnt from her mother only the sterling human qualities of sifting the good from the bad and handling failures in life. How Charlie Chaplin’s poor and sick mother could raise such exceptionally capable kids in trying circumstances is beyond our imagination.

10. Eat Together, Stay Together, Pray Together

This one carries a big grain of truth. There is ample research to prove the worth of this dictum – a family that eats and prays together, always stays together. But avoid  making meal times an after-dinner debate show. Instead, try to make them great opportunities for bonding as you can feed their bodies and their souls at the same time.

11. Earning Pocket Money

Trust me, they’ll just love it. Let your teenagers “earn” their weekly pocket money. Assign them some household tasks like pruning the garden, dusting off the racks, tidying up the house etc. They will learn some valuable skills, besides getting the satisfaction of making some pocket money. In addition, they get to learn the importance of hard work and savings.  

12. Keep “Bright” but “Fight” NOT

Unless and until they leave for school/college, you cannot have a neat and clean room. Just admit it, grudgingly maybe, and live with it to save yourself heartburn and maintain your sanity. At best, you can have some hygiene rules about bathroom cleanliness and dirty clothes. Period! Remember, some battles are not worth fighting.

“Time and tide waits for none”- Proverb

Time just flies! For the corporates, the work time lost equals rupees lost but for people, it refers to irreparable and irreplaceable loss of opportunities, left out experiences and potential achievements. Time isn’t money, as a famous tagline of an airline says, in fact, time is ALL that you have and EVERYTHING! Just talk to someone who realizes they have missed many opportunities in life and now regrets it. Or ask a failed student about the importance of the time he wasted away or a patient who has just been told by the doctor that they don’t have much time to live. Or ask a youngster, who has just now been jailed for a life term for committing a really serious crime.

Time is an invaluable and unique resource which isn’t expendable in advance, isn’t lendable, isn’t gifteable and isn’t re-claimable like money or materials. Besides, time is perfectly democratic in the sense of having been given  to all in the same amount in a day, not a second more or less.

But so many times, you may have seen people cribbing about the utter scarcity of time for the many vital things in life they would like to do. In fact, I have also been a culprit in this regard as I, too, used to complain of the lack of time and longed I could have a longer day until …….

I have talked of this incident in my A Story Can Change Your Life, too. Today, I see many clients with nearly-identical complaints of a feeling of being swamped in life, of running short of time, or feeling tense due to a shortage of time. Sounds quite commonplace? It must be ringing many a bell out there as we all too often wish for a longer day to pack all our tasks but….

Everyone has 24 hours a day only but in spite of its being so, many of us waste it thoughtlessly on meaningless activities. Wasting it equals wasting chances and once time slips off our hands, we can’t do anything but regret as we can’t be regain it. The tomorrow, the next week, the next month or the next year you have been thinking of to start a particular activity at the “auspicious time” will never come. The only RIGHT time is RIGHT NOW!  So it’s unwise to procrastinate your work what you really and truly own is just “today”, which means brisk action, hard work, sweat, and effort. Obviously, it’s no use striking the iron when it’s cold; the opportune time for doing this thing is while it’s hot.

By practicing time management, I am convinced that our days are long enough to pack all our activities, leisure and other needs.  The trick lies in optimum time management, an important skill, which we all have to ace to optimize our productivity and design  a better, happier, healthier life for ourselves and others, too.

What’s Time Management?

Time management essentially says that you

•       Are organized   
•       Prioritize your work
•       Set your goals clearly
•       Have good communication skills
•       Plan your time properly
•       Delegate your tasks properly
•       Control your stress levels well

Benefits of Time Management

Time Management

If you don’t manage your time effectively, you are going to have  missed deadlines, poor quality work, more stress, work-life imbalance and burnouts. But with proper time management, you can find a dramatic

•       Improvement in personal and professional productivity   
•       A reduction in stress
•       Improvement in work-life balance

Why Time Management?

More out of less

You can realize more work productivity by getting to manage how you spend time. That way, you can focus on more important tasks to achieve better work efficiency.

To get the idea, imagine a vehicle driven slowly by someone busy on the phone alongside. Now compare it with another vehicle driven by someone (without any distraction) at an optimal speed to reach the destination in time. You can comprehend the difference that proper time management can bring to your performance.

Decision making

As a time management coach, I can assert confidently that time management skills help you take better decisions as you can better realize the impact of your decisions.

A bad time manager is hard pressed for time and has to hasten to choose the easier option. That way, he suffers the risk of losing out in the long run. On the other hand, a good time manager assesses the scenario coolly and calmly and then chooses the best possible option.

Success

Good time management means meeting your deadlines and having time for all the things in life including your family and friends and yourself. Greater success, better performance, effective decision-making and a focus on important tasks are its corollaries.

Better Quality of Life

In a rushed, competitive and stressful life, we often miss out on  socialization, bonding, relaxation, and health and pay the price of having material accomplishments. By making time management a part of lifestyle, you can get much more by freeing up time for the things that make us truly happy. That way, we can minimize stress and get more fulfillment in life.

Reduced stress

Effective time management can help minimize stress and anxiety and improve confidence as you can now meet your deadlines easily. With higher productivity, you feel on top of your game. Reduced stress improves productivity, sleep and work-life balance.

More time

You have all the time for the things that matter to you and achieve your biggest goals. You can spend more time with family and friends, strengthen your social bonds and follow your hobbies.  

 Improved energy

The extra bonus is more energy and motivation, with which you can focus on the most important work. More energy gives you a better focus and productivity for a longer time. Personally speaking, I have seen it keep my energy levels high for more productivity.

 Time Management Coaching

Many people struggle with time management, whereas others are pros in this regard. Of course, in order to master it, you need to know how to do it the right way. Time can be tricky. And so, it’s vital to know how to fit your work and daily activities into it. So, how do we go about it? Join me here for some tried-and-tested time management coaching tips:

The key lies in allotting the right time to the right activity for optimum time utilization by prioritizing tasks according to their importance and the estimated time for their completion.

Plan early

In time management coaching, planning is the first and the most readily proven time management technique. First, it helps you properly organize your day. Second, it provides a detailed insight into all the things you need to work on. So, if you plan your daily, weekly, or monthly tasks, the rest gets easier.

Many tools are there to plan and organize your work:

•       Calendars, personal organizers (digital or paper)
•       Time management apps and tools
•       To-do-lists
•       Post-it-notes, notepads, and other time managers

You may mix and match these options to evolve your own time management formula.

Prioritize

Any time management coach can tell you that good time management basically means spending more time on your priorities, along with avoiding a wastage of time on non-priority tasks. Ask yourself:

What’re your goals?

What’re the consequences of doing a particular activity? Are you getting ahead in that direction or away from it?

Plan in advance for the week or the day to feel organized and focused. You can break your tasks over days to see how much time you need for a specific project. Even a few minutes of planning can transform the way you work.

Group together your tasks in terms of their importance by placing them in terms of their relative importance. For example, the tasks labelled “urgent” must be done today while those named “important, but not urgent” are important, but can wait for some time. And “low-priority” tasks can be put off, if you need to.

Now put the tasks under each category. If you need to make a report, it’s an urgent task. But if you have to begin another project with a 2-week deadline for completion, it is an “important, but not urgent” task. Chatting with friends is vital, but certainly not urgent, therefore, you can put it in the “low-priority” group.

To-do lists

At a personal plane, I find them very easy, useful and motivating as I can get a clear idea of what’s supposed to be done on a day. I have found with experience and time that the ideal time to make a to-do list is the end of the day when you clearly know from where to start work the next morning. You may also use some software to do the job for you. 

Time management coaching recommends having S.M.A.R.T. — Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-bound goals to bring a solid structure to work and ready yourself for the day’s work. Take a short break for a coffee, a walk or just stretch your limbs after an hour or so to boost your productivity. It really works!

Decision-making

You cannot sit down and begin working unless you have made a prior decision about how you are going to do it i.e.

•       Which task demands high priority?
•       When is a task to be finished?
•       What resources are available for the task?
•       Which task/s ought to be taken up later?

All these decisions need to be made before you begin to work. This strategy can let you decide clearly about your tasks to improve your quality of work.

Putting together same tasks can save you time. Instead of jumping from one task to another, it would be smart to group them together. For instance, you can fix a time for emails and phone calls rather than doing it anytime in the day. I can certify its efficacy as this is exactly what I do all the time.

Mornings for MITs

Time management coaches advise taking out the most important tasks (MITs) from your to-do list to finish them first. We have the most amount of energy and enthusiasm in the mornings, so why not solve the biggest and the most challenging tasks then? Besides, by accomplishing the most important tasks early in the day, you can keep yourself motivated for the rest of the day.

Log In, Log Out

Try to be aware of how you’re spending your day on various things. List down all your day-to-day, routine activities and the time they take. Now, by having a clear idea of how you are spending your time, you will be better positioned to focus where time is leaking off the tap and how you can plug the hole. 

Make a diary of your daily routine to know which activities are time-wasters e.g. phone calls, social media, TV, gossiping etc. Time tracking and productivity apps are great tools for this one. By recording your daily routine for about a week, you will be able to spot all the time-wasters and then cut them out.

Limit e-mailing time

Several time management examples focus on the apparently innocuous tasks like e-mailing, which, takes a lot of time. Checking and replying to e-mails is a burdensome task. An average worker spends around 20 hours a week checking emails. Think of all the tasks you could do in this time. Reduce the time you spend on e-mails to the minimum to keep those 20 hours for work. If you check e-mail in the morning, reply only to important ones, which need an immediate reply and leave the rest for breaks or read them at the end of the day. Make sure that you mark those unimportant messages as “spam” so that they don’t tend to crowd your inbox.

Get breaks

While giving time management examples, many time management coaches recommend that working without breaks can be more harmful than good to your performance. These breaks help us freshen up our brain and refocus on work. Take a short walk, read some pages from a favorite book, have a coffee or watch a documentary or play an instrument to spend your breaks.

Do use these intermediary breaks to improve time management and feel refreshed for a significant productivity boost.

Discover your time zone

An important part of time management coaching is finding out which particular time works best for you. Each of us is focused and highly productive at certain specific times in a day i.e. we are in our ‘zone’. Find your zone for the best time utilization to bring out the best in you.

Should you feel more energetic at some times in the day, amend your schedule to accommodate this fact to make the most of your time. Some people feel more energetic early in the morning, while others happen to be night owls. Find out your personal best time schedule to reap the benefits of doing more and achieving more.

Avoid Perfection and multi-tasking

Time management examples often show that the perfect is very often the enemy of the good. Avoid over-thinking and do not try to do everything. Of course, it doesn’t mean that you should be careless in your work. Do your best but a longing for perfection can drag you down. Once you’ve done a task by giving it your best, move on.

Let’s accept this hard fact: Most of us aren’t really good at multi-tasking. Therefore, it’s better to focus on one thing at a time and excel at it. Try time boxing i.e. allot a time-frame for every task which increases the likelihood of its completion.

Know time stealers

In time management, we often talk upon finding time stealers to do something about them. You may be spending an hour on emails instead of completing your projects. Knowing where your time goes can let you decide about delegating tasks or using a software to accelerate the lower-level processes.

Similarly, you can’t do everything by yourself. So train someone to undertake simple processes to free yourself up to work on bigger things or more complicated tasks. It’s always a smart thing to allot some tasks to others and let them share the load and if done correctly, it can save you time and effort, besides making others more responsible and confident. You may even outsource some secondary tasks to a freelancer.

Time blocking

The Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s secret to good time management is time blocking i.e. giving a certain fixed number of hours to only one task, while blocking off other tasks. In his 15 Secrets Successful People Know About Time Management, Kevin Kruse says that top performers plan their day by way of time blocks. It seems to be commonsensical as you are more likely to succeed with a well-defined action plan and see your task through to the end. Avoid doing half work, i.e. procrastinating over the current task to do something else e.g. writing a report and then suddenly checking email for no reason and writing back replies. It is not only bad time management but is also bad for your concentration and momentum.

Distractions

Being focused on a task in hand when you have hundreds of them isn’t really easy. So, getting distracted is perfectly normal. Notifications, pop-up messages, e-mails, colleagues constantly disturb you and divert your attention away from work. While working, put your phone on the silent mode and block the phone notifications to save time and improve your efficiency.

Time Management

There are many ways to become focused – keep your phone away, turn off social media notifications or block distracting websites. But the best way is to concentrate and do what is to be done. Reduce your presence on social media to the minimum possible as it takes a lot of time and doesn’t bring much value into life. Be on track with your goals by focusing on one part of your work at a given time and say no to messages, emails or social media notifications. Hard? You may need some practice and a short wait. It will work out ultimately!

Group similar tasks

Various tasks require team members to spend different amounts of time and effort but because most team tasks are quite similar,  putting them together is a good, smart idea. It can allow the teams to save the time spent on reorienting themselves for a new task, thereby ensuring faster project delivery.

Reward yourself

Having done the task at hand, have a break to do something else- a cup of coffee, listen to a song or call a friend. These little gifts are a great way to motivate yourself – the same thing to a rabbit chasing the carrot tied to its ears. It may look a little odd but when you think about the satisfaction you feel after completing the work, you will find it to be worth the effort you spend on it.

So go on, take that nap, have a walk, or read a chapter from your favourite book!

Kids acquire several important emotional, social, academic and spiritual skills during early childhood that equip them for later success in life. Fruitful learning in early childhood covers the ability to focus one’s attention, follow rules, appropriate response to authority figures and peaceful interaction with peers. All of them are foundational for their later achievement in language, literacy, and maths. But paramount to a thriving early childhood experience is the development of self-control, which is often inhibited by impulsivity, aggression, and hyperactivity. Children having these negative traits struggle emotionally, socially, and academically throughout life. One researcher goes to the extent of calling it a “treasured ability”.

The importance of developing self-control can be illustrated with a classic longitudinal study conducted at Stanford University in the 1960s. Some hungry four year-olds were given two options – one marshmallow right away or get two marshmallows fifteen minutes later. About one-thirds of them opted for one marshmallow. A follow-up study years later found the children who waited (for the second marshmallow) to be more successful people, positive, self-motivated, and persistent in pursuit of their goals. These habits are predictors of successful marriages, higher incomes and better health. Alongside, the study also showed that those kids who did not wait, had lower scores in achievement tests, were indecisive, less confident, and stubborn. Even a more recent longitudinal study confirms that kids with high levels of delay-of-gratification have more cognitive control than those with lower levels of delayed gratification.

A child passes through so many developmental phases on its journey from infancy to adulthood. Each such stage in a child’s life is marked by clearly defined, observable and distinct changes in terms of physical, psychological, emotional, inter-personal, social and moral arenas. Among these changes, developing the capability of self-control is a crucial step on the way to maturity and responsible adulthood.

Self-control is variously defined as willpower, self-discipline or conscientiousness. Despite the differences in the way it is defined, self-control is all about one’s ability to self-regulate behavior and actions -resisting distractions, inhibiting impulses, bouncing back from difficult emotions,  delaying gratification and planning ahead.

Obviously, we cannot expect an infant (0-18 months) to exercise self-control as it is yet to develop many capabilities necessary for achieving self-control. Toddlers, too, lack the self-control found among older kids. The ability to self-control develops slowly over the years, with some remarkable, big changes happening between the ages of 3 and 7. Just like with other facets of development, there is a lot of individual variation here, too. Some kids find it difficult to self-control and they face its consequences.

A raft of relevant psychological studies confirm that young kids with poor self-regulation make less academic progress and are more likely to be anxious, depressed and aggressive. Besides, child counseling experts say that such poor self-control kids have a higher risk of obesity, drug addiction, committing crimes and being poor.

Overview of Self-Control

During the early years, kids acquire emotional, social, spiritual, and academic skills that equip them for later success. Paramount to a thriving early childhood experience is the development of self-control, expressed by the ability to trust adults, internalize rules, delay gratification, control angry impulses, find internal ways to be more patient, empathize with others’ feelings, take turns, and find ways to cheer up amidst sadness. Self-control expects them to “delay, defer, and accept substitutions without being aggressive/ disorganized and to cope with arousal, due to environmental challenges or fatigue. These constructs make the idea of self-control a multifaceted concept. Self-control is therefore interchangeably used with self-regulation, emotional regulation, delay-of-gratification, and self-discipline.

Examine the following scenarios to understand the emergence of self-control among kids:

Four-something Swarn went mad over Jaggu hogging the big building blocks. He stood disgruntled nearby. Only a week ago, his teacher had had a group discussion about hitting and hurting….. No one was to hit anyone else…but Swarn was so frustrated that impulsively, he clenched his fist and raised his arm above his head. The class teacher looked straight at him with a reminding look. ‘I wasn’t going to hit him. I was only raising my arm, Ma’m,’ Swarn explained. The teacher smiled encouragingly and helped Swarn take up another activity.

Dingy, a nursery student, was in a crowded shopping mall with her parents. The trip was getting very tiring for her. Father said, ‘Dingy, we didn’t realize we would have to buy so many extra things, and that our trip would be this long. We’re sorry. Thanks for being so patient.’ Dingy sighed, ‘Well, I guess it was necessary’.

Parents’ role in kids’ self-control

Those involved with child counseling services soften report that a strong parent-child attachment increases a child’s ability to control impulses and develop self-control. Young children need plentiful practice and patience from their parents as they work on achieving self-control. Authoritative parents, those who are firm yet nurturing and do not accept any defiant behavior, teach self-regulation with warmth and consistency and expect the kids to show control in a variety of situations. Such parents try to become role models of self-control for their kids and do not resort to punitive or controlling methods of parenting. Their discipline style is more effective because they explain to the kids the reasons behind what they do.

Of course, young children need clear and consistent rules to learn self-regulation. To teach social skills effectively, parents and teachers would need to communicate their expectations clearly to the kids.

Development of Self-Control

Experts dealing with parent counseling services believe that self-control develops with the kids beginning to differentiate between short-term and long-term outcomes. When they realize that a long-term outcome is greater, they delay gratification in their best interests. This capacity to choose a future reward is a function of the prefrontal lobes in the brain. This capacity requires a special memory, which stores information about the past and the future, while carrying out the responses needed to accomplish the goal.

Can we really teach it?

From a life coach’s perspective, this one is a very vital question in the child counseling arena. While tackling the billion dollar question of fostering self-control among young children, some people will tell you that we can’t do so since it’s “all in the genes.” But science says otherwise, offering us some hope. Repeated studies confirm that our genes DO play a significant role in shaping the development of self-regulation but so do parents and teachers, too. Besides, many studies also confirm that it’s really possible to teach self-control to kids. Kids certainly benefit when we remove temptations and distractions, and create such environments as reward self-control. Besides, kids also need to be given timely reminders to stay on track, practical advice for being motivated, overcoming roadblocks and sticking to a plan.

Top 10 Tips To Develop self-control

Here are Top 10 Tips for developing self-control among kids, coming from experts in parent counseling services:

1. Out of sight, out of mind

It’s rather commonsensical! We all have seen self-controlled, high-functioning adults trying to diet lose their will power at the sight of a tempting ice-cream. So the most important tool to facilitate self-control among kids is to change the environment by keeping such temptations hidden from their view!

Now, for young kids, it may imply putting away a toy that is likely to create conflict during a game or avoiding the ice-cream side of the supermarket, while  shopping together. For older children, it might mean keeping electronics gadgets away from their study table. But we can go even further with older kids by teaching them to identify temptations on their own, and then take the necessary steps to eliminate them.

Remember, the kids who remain trouble-free and are better achievers aren’t always blessed with a greater strength of character. Rather, they can better anticipate and avoid situations that can trigger impulsive behaviors.

2. Consistent rewards for self-control

Refer back to the “marshmallow test” wherein pre-schoolers were given a choice between eating one treat now or two treats later. Remember, the kids who demonstrated a better capacity to wait ended up later with better outcomes – better school achievement and less likelihood of drug abuse.

Later research also showed that only a couple of disappointments were enough to erode the kids’ willingness to delay gratification and exercise self-control. Our willingness to wait depends on how we weigh the risks and benefits of a particular action.

As any life coach would confirm, humans select immediate gratification if they distrust the person promising a future prize. And even two-year-old kids can resist the temptation of eating a cookie if the rewards of a wait are sufficiently high.

3. Timely reminders

If you don’t remember the rules, it’s difficult to stick to a programme. Young kids face more trouble keeping directions in mind as they can be easily distracted. So to tide over the problem, it’s useful to remind young kids of our expectations.

In a recent experiment, three-year-old kids were asked to perform a simple task involving  impulse control. They were to open a box to get a prize, but only after getting the correct signal from the experimenter. If they saw a blue square, they could go ahead while getting a red triangle meant leaving the box alone.

The researchers tested two different approaches in this experiment. When an adult reminded the kids of the rules before each trial, they were more likely to have self-control. In contrast, giving the kids a few seconds to stop and think, without any reminder, failed to have any such effect.

The lesson? Remind yourself to remind them.

4. Play self-control games

Whenever we ask kids to play by rules, we’re, in effect, asking them to develop self-control. But some games can be more challenging than others. For example, in the traditional “Red light, Green light” game, when a child hears “Green light!”, they are supposed to move forward and upon hearing “Red light!”, they are expected to freeze.

In this classic shape, this game is all about following directions but it can become slightly trickier. Once the kids have adjusted themselves to the rules, simply reverse them i.e. make “Red light!” the signal to go and “Green light!” the cue to stop. This one challenges a kid’s ability to go against habit. The kid must control impulses i.e. show “self-regulation.”

Do such games help? Researchers say yes. The experiment involved a modified form of the  “Red Light, Green Light” and other games designed to give kids practice in self-regulation. In the Freeze game, kids dance when the music plays and freeze whenever it stops. They dance fast for fast-tempo songs, slowly for slow-tempo songs. And then the cues are reversed i.e. Fast music = slow dancing. Slow music = fast dancing.

The kids played these games twice weekly and after two months, their self-regulation abilities were assessed. Though the kids with above-average self-control had no improvement, the story was different for those who had been struggling. Those with low self-regulation scores (below the 50th percentile) had got a better degree of self-control now.

5. Give kids a break

Kids benefit from breaks after following directions and working hard. Studies confirm that people don’t maintain the same self-control over time. If they are given two demanding tasks one after the other, they tend to show lesser self-control during the second task.

One reason could be that our “quota” of self-control gets exhausted and we literally lack the energy to keep going. Another account says that our brains are designed to seek a balance between bearing drudgery and getting easy rewards. One, who sticks to the same old work routine, sans a break, is going to miss important environmental changes. Therefore, by taking time out to play and explore, we improve our chances of finding profitable new opportunities.

The upshot: If you ask your kid to go from one unpleasant duty to the next, they are going to have lower self-control. Give your kid a break to help them recharge, and that’s a good way to learn, too. Many studies on kids’ learning confirm the oft-believed idea that kids learn faster with shorter lessons separated by breaks.

6. “Must do” vs. “Want to”

A certain kid, who doesn’t cooperate in the class, may be the poster child for poor self-regulation but just give him his favorite toy or a video game to turn him into a picture of complete focus, persistence, and drive. The thing is – the kid doesn’t lack self-control. Actually, he lacks motivation and needs to find enjoyment in the things he’s asked to do. This is what we need to address.

The savvier among us adults know how to brace up for an upcoming assignment, how to become interested and how to mix work with a bit of pleasure. We also know that approaching a task as a nasty chore makes things even worse. But in contrast, kids face a hard time figuring it out, especially if adults themselves display the wrong attitude.

Making a chore a game takes time and energy. Finding the right things to get kids interested may need great patience, observation, and flexibility but as many successful teachers would vouch, it’s an investment that has great pay offs. It may be the key to beating “self-control fatigue” as it’s much easier to tackle a pile of homework if you’ve learned to find at least some of it to be enjoyable.

7. Tackling challenges, learning from failure

Many people often think of intelligence and talent as “gifts” that we inherit and which can’t be improved upon. Therefore, when these people fail in doing something, they feel helpless and give up easily. In contrast, those who believe that efforts can shape intelligence and talent, are more resilient in nature. Life coaches would confirm that such people, in general, are more likely to face challenges and learn from their mistakes.

We, too, can help kids develop this kind of resilience and determination by being careful about the feedback we give them. Several experiments show that praising a kid for their general traits (“You’re so sharp!”) makes them adopt a wrong mindset as does general criticism (“I’m unhappy with you”). Instead, what works far better is praise for effort and feedback, which  encourages kids to try out different strategies (“Can you think of some other way of doing it?”).

Remember, pinpointed, consistent and proportionate praise and criticism always deliver the desired outcomes with most kids.

8. Develop their attention and working memory

Many distracted, impulsive kids have low working memory. Our working memory is the “mental notepad” which we use to keep information “in mind.” While solving a maths problem or trying to remember those directions to a bank, we use our working memory.

Young children don’t perform as well as adults on working memory tasks, which is perfectly okay. But some kids face more difficulty than others, and while there is no cure-all for working memory problems, seeking professional help can improve the kid’s working memory capacity.

9. Emotion coaching

Adults often  react differently to a kid’s negative emotions. Some of these reactions are dismissive in nature (“There isn’t any reason to be so sad.”), while others are disapproving (“Stop that crying!”). Such approaches aren’t exactly helpful as they fail to teach them how to regulate themselves.

In contrast, kids benefit more if parents talk to them about their feelings, exhibit empathy and discuss with them some constructive ways to cope with their feelings i.e. “emotion coaching,” which generates better outcomes. Adolescents “emotion coached” by their mothers show reduced  behavior problems over time.

10. Practice planning

Planning is a very important component of the process of developing self-discipline. People are likelier to succeed if they can think about the obstacles and think of specific steps about when, where, and how they are going to take action. Everyday experience and research indicates that practice in this regard can be helpful.

In an experiment on kids, they didn’t always plan ahead while tackling a problem. But when they were asked to change their approach, they had more success solving the puzzles given to them. There are some games that reward the players for planning ahead, which might teach lessons that kids can apply to other situations.