How Can Parents Support Their Kids In Taking The First Step?

Parents can support their children in stage three by providing opportunities for free play, emotional space, encouragement, and avoiding criticism or control. To teach children to take initiative, parents can be role models and let them try things. An example of an activity that helps establish initiative vs. guilt is a child initiating a game.

Creating interest and motivation with an expectant pause is essential, as parents use body language to “look” like they know a child is about to initiate. Instilling responsibility in children helps them be successful in school and life. Parents can participate at school by helping with functions and activities, communicating with teachers, and guiding their children at home.

Initiation is crucial for a child’s ability to command their environment, express themselves, and initiate social interactions without prompts. Self-initiation can help children become more independent, initiate social interactions without prompts, and promote cooperation and sharing. Coping skills that can help include routine, task lists, reading to them every night, providing books they are interested in, and teaching empathy.

To teach empathy, parents should discuss different situations and scenarios with their child, ask how others might feel when each situation occurs, and include visuals with oral instructions and presentations. Break tasks into manageable chunks, check in regularly, place age-appropriate toys within reach, model appropriate play with toys, encourage engagement in playing, and reinforce positive behavior.

In summary, parents can play a significant role in supporting their children in stage three by providing opportunities for free play, emotional space, encouragement, and modeling appropriate play. By doing so, parents can help their children develop the necessary skills and attitudes to take initiative and succeed in their lives.


📹 Unlocking the Power of Toddler Communication: The Magic of Initiation!

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How to get a child to initiate?

To teach self-initiation skills, encourage your child to ask more questions and engage them in conversation. Both adults and young peers can teach self-initiations, with teachers, behavioral therapists, and family members playing a role. It’s essential to identify the initiations your child needs to learn before starting, as this helps choose the ideal adult. Family members and close family friends are great for early stages, as they can help learn greetings, attention-focused actions, and more.

What are initiation skills?
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What are initiation skills?

Task initiation is a crucial executive functioning skill that involves efficiently and timely starting a project without procrastination. It is particularly challenging for students with ADHD, Learning Disabilities, or perfectionist tendencies who often struggle with task initiation. In the classroom, they often require multiple prompts and reminders to get started, and during group activities, they wait for another group member to initiate the task.

Understanding the underlying issues that make task initiation difficult for students can help them overcome these challenges. These include feeling “it’s too hard”, “it’ll take too long”, “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do”, “I’m scared to try”, “It has to be perfect”, and “I don’t care”. These issues can lead to a lack of confidence in their ability to handle difficult tasks, a lack of knowledge about the task, fear of stepping outside their comfort zone, perfectionism, or a lack of motivation.

In summary, task initiation is a crucial skill for students, and it requires a combination of executive functioning skills such as planning, prioritizing, time management, organization, impulse control, attention, and working memory. Addressing these issues can help students overcome the stress and difficulties associated with task initiation, ultimately leading to better academic performance and overall success.

How do you teach children to initiate play?
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How do you teach children to initiate play?

To engage your child in solitary play activities, you can mirror their actions or copy their sounds, such as making engine noises or making animals run and jump. Initiate play yourself by playing with one of your child’s favorite toys and encouraging them to join you. Introduce the idea of play as a social activity by using prompting phrases like “Let’s play” or “We can play together”. Use reinforcement and encouragement through phrases like “Good playing”.

Parallel play is when your child plays alongside other children with the same or similar toy, allowing them to learn different ways of playing with a toy, develop turn-taking skills, and respond to simple demands and requests. Strategies for encouraging social interaction during parallel play include:

  1. Providing a safe and comfortable environment for children to play with their toys.
  2. Providing a safe and comfortable environment for children to explore and learn from each other.

How do I encourage my child to take initiative?

To encourage children to take initiative, ask questions about their activities and curiosity, and encourage them to solve problems independently. Offer small tasks and rewards for completing them daily, such as schoolwork completion without reminders or snacking on favorite snacks. This helps children take initiative and take small responsibilities as achievements. However, it’s important to remember that children can learn in a day, and comparisons between children can hinder this. Instead, focus on calm functioning until the child catches up. Initiative learning is not a one-time habit, and parents should be patient and patient with their children.

How to help a child with task initiation?
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How to help a child with task initiation?

Starting tasks in adolescents requires a predetermined schedule with start times, using a prompting system like checklists or post-it notes, and reinforcing the use of a task list. Many children with executive functioning deficits struggle with initiating actions, leading to difficulties in task completion. Research on effective interventions for initiation emphasizes cueing the “how” and “when” aspects of tasks.

Strategies for initiation include placing age-appropriate toys within reach, modeling appropriate play, prompting the child to engage in playing, reinforcing self-play attempts, developing a task list, establishing a system of verbal and nonverbal cues, and reinforcing self-initiation on tasks.

How can initiation be encouraged in the classroom?
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How can initiation be encouraged in the classroom?

Task initiation is a crucial aspect of student success. To help students start their work effectively, a multi-step strategy is recommended. The first step is to provide clear instructions and expectations for tasks, outlining objectives, expectations, and desired outcomes. Breaking down tasks into manageable steps helps students understand what needs to be done. Visual aids or verbal cues can also be used to reinforce these instructions.

The second step is to set a prioritized action plan, helping students prioritize tasks based on urgency or importance. Using tools like planners or task lists can help organize and structure their workflow. This methodical approach helps students feel less overwhelmed and approach their work more effectively.

How do you support children to initiate play?

Outdoor exploration is an excellent environment for encouraging child initiated play. Create a space for children to explore their surroundings, experiencing new textures, smells, sounds, and wildlife. Encourage them to use materials to construct forts or create artwork, and share their experiences with each other and educators. The sensory environment of nature is a fantastic playground for children. To encourage child initiated play, it is essential to leave them to their own devices and focus on their activities. This will help them develop a love for nature and engage in meaningful activities.

Why does my child lack initiative?
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Why does my child lack initiative?

Children who feel they cannot do anything right on their own may not want to initiate their tasks. To encourage them to take initiative, give them the freedom to figure it out and praise their hard work, even if it isn’t perfect. Teach them to be problem solvers and be patient with them. This will help them develop the skills and confidence needed to succeed in their future endeavors.

In conclusion, children should be encouraged to take initiative in their tasks and be patient with them. By fostering a positive environment and allowing them to work independently, they will develop the skills and confidence needed to succeed in their future endeavors.

How do you support play experience initiated by children?
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How do you support play experience initiated by children?

Child-initiated play is a crucial aspect of children’s learning and development, allowing them to explore and learn from their own thoughts and ideas. It provides a space for creativity and exploration, as children often have a natural urge to play without any incentives. The benefits of child-led play in early years and beyond are numerous, relevant to various stages of development and can be applied to the EYFS Areas of Learning framework.

Adults can participate in child-initiated play by following the lead of the child, allowing them to choose activities and toys that interest them. By offering a variety of provisions, children can choose the play that most interests them and contribute to their overall development.

What can you do for initiation?

Team initiation activities include attending events, going on trips, practicing sports, serving as mentors, and maintaining a specific grade point average. These activities are acceptable for new team members, as they involve attending banquets, picnics, lunch tables, and other events, as well as participating in sports tests, maintaining a specific grade point average, dressing up for team functions, volunteering, and signing a contract of standards. However, there are also questions about acceptable and questionable activities for new team members.

How do you encourage students to take initiative?
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How do you encourage students to take initiative?

This post provides five effective ways to teach initiative to high school students: tie lessons to the end goal, incorporate group work, allow independent work, help students stay productive and proactive, and encourage them to discover connections. Teaching initiative is challenging, but employers often find it the biggest issue with new employees coming from work-based learning programs. It’s essential to identify students who are comfortable with initiative and help those who need it.


📹 Parental Alienation: Tips for Initiating Contact with Your Alienated Teen| Dr. Sue Cornbluth

Dr. Sue Cornbluth, Nationally Recognized Parenting Expert in Childhood Trauma, provides you with her 3 top tips for initiating …


How Can Parents Support Their Kids In Taking The First Step?
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Rae Fairbanks Mosher

I’m a mother, teacher, and writer who has found immense joy in the journey of motherhood. Through my blog, I share my experiences, lessons, and reflections on balancing life as a parent and a professional. My passion for teaching extends beyond the classroom as I write about the challenges and blessings of raising children. Join me as I explore the beautiful chaos of motherhood and share insights that inspire and uplift.

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16 comments

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  • My daughter is her mothers’ source of narcissistic supply. As a result, she is 30 yo, lives with her mother and will die an Elanor Rigsby. All I want is for her to have a healthy, happy, and fulfilled life, find her burdens light and die surrounded by her great great great great grandchildren, who lament her passing, then she goes to heaven… Even if I never see her again. Wants are like dreams though, they carry the same weight in the real world. The alienation was abetted by the courts and so took very well. Kudos to them.

  • I am going through Parental alienation and it’s harrowing !, me and my daughter were so close amazing bond, me and her Mother split when she was an infant she left and moved bank in with her wealthy upper class parents, her mother tried to erase me out of my daughters life back then but I went to court, 2 years of in and out of court I got decent access. Fast forward 12 years and my now teen daughter 14 has rejected me out the blue there has been no reason for this whatsoever, it’s killing me slowly and its a daily struggle i guess she feels she has to reject me to keep her mum happy. She won’t even acknowledge me ! I have been Rock bottom through this . I have been studying this for a while and all points to parental alienation. Iv spoken to solicitor and they advice that because of her age it’s very hard because the judge will simply ask her if she wants to see me or not and they won’t go digging into the fact her mother has brain washed her against me and family. my situation it’s crippling me with anxiety I guess I can describe it as grief even though my child is alive. I need to somehow process this and come to terms because it’s making me very unwell.

  • What worries me about doing something like this is that the child may draw the conclusion that they are justified in their thinking and that the parent alienator is right and may have been justified in their thinking. I get it, this isn’t about winning or losing but rather opening the lines of communication but hopefully it doesn’t backfire.

  • It’s so hard trying to figure out how to reinitiate contact with a now older child. I still see them as my baby. It is really helpful to hear this. It has to at least be tried. That alone may bring you closer to being able to cope with the indecision, the limbo of confusion on what to do, what not to do. I have done this in cards, in emails. So far no success. The temptation is to spill your heart out to your now older child, to try to make them understand how destroyed you are with them in your life. It seems all the expert and experienced advice I get is to NOT do that, but instead go the route of this article. Thanks for posting this! If you have any more points on trying to contact again with young adult children, please keep us lost parents in mind.

  • THANK YOU DR. SUE!!! I am so grateful to have found your wonderful articles on parental alienation. Very valuable for any parent and child being victimized by this type of psychological warfare. I hope to some day in the near future have this be considered to be a crime of abuse that is punishable by law.

  • I wish I would have seen this article 3 years ago. It is exactly what I was looking for. I had a stepdaughter whom I raised as my own for 12 of her 15 years. We appeared to have had a model relationship right up to the point where her mother met some guy on line, filed for divorce, and boarded a plane across the country to “Live happily ever after”. She instantly took her mothers side telling me she her mother was a hero for finding the courage to “Upgrade”. Unfortunately, I have accepted my fate and successfully purged her from my heart. My only message to her today would be “Your renunciation has been acknowledged and accepted”. I have shed all the tears one can shed and have run out of sorrow.

  • A child is experiencing emotional manipulation by one parent (the Alienator – often narcissistic, even B.P.D.) and your solution is to validate the emotions? Does that not also validate the experience of manipulation? Assuming responsibility for a child’s feelings due to the intrusive and illegitimate narrative of an alienating parent? I recommend that people search out Dr. Craig Childress online as a knowledgeable source of information.

  • Hello Family. I think Dr. Cornbluth has a point. My oldest child repeatedly told me those words in few occasions I saw him: ” you need to think about that…, you should apologize…”. Thèy do not care about my love and caring words: I love you, I miss you…”. We still can apologize without losing ourselves in the process; by saying the following: 👉🏼 ” I have been thinking a lot of the way things happened. I apologize to have contributed to anything that made you to be mad at me. I understand your point of view now and what you feel. However, I am open to talk about this if you wish. I also would like you to know that I love and miss you. ” I am definitely going to use the same advice. We need to put ourselves in their shoes, in their current “reality” WITHOUT taking the blame on being the cause of the family breakdown or alienation. Any human being when hurt first needs to have hus/her views validated and to be given an apology. Let apologize for anything that made us being the parent their wish they had not. Let’s tell them that we are ready for a new start… Usually anger is diffused when apology is made and responsibility taken. Our children will have then no more munitions to feed their anger. We just have to find wisely our choice wording. Stay comforted and blessed in Christ Jesus. 🙏🏼

  • okay my Ex- spouse lied used my older child to win custody . after he got Custody my visits stopped. judge granted a move away order to Oregon and I was in California. for 3 long years I was searching for my kids. the abduction unit was removed from case. law codes were ignored my -ex spouse went unpunished. last I saw my youngest she was 4 years old. last Dec she turned 14 I still haven’t seen her to this day! my older child found me we have very little communication on facebook. the courts are for the child abusers in my eyes! Parental Alienation is a crime why wasn’t my ex-spouse punished for kidnapping ?? if it were me and i took off with the kids I would of been in jail!!

  • I too have done absolutely nothing wrong. I love my son and I have not spoken to him in almost a year. He is so angry that the councilor can’t speak to him. He can’t substantiate why he hates me. Genetic, ridiculous accusations, like “you were never there for me”, I can prove I was, Google map timeline. I was engaged with his sports, gave him advice and encouragement, yada yada yada. I don’t want to legitimize his crazy, how do I apologize for something I didn’t do? I don’t understand. I can apologize that he was unfairly put in the middle of a divorce, though I did not want him to be apart of it. She filled in the void of info with her crap, be bought it. This is ugly, I was naive, trusting and innocent to the evil in people.

  • I’ve been divorced for over 10 years, he has had my sons in his house for over 12, I had visitations every other weekend, now my youngest son is alienating me, loyal to his rich father, turning his back on me for over a year now. I’m trying to reunite with him, maybe it’s his age, 14-15,he refuses to acknowledge me. It’s so hard.

  • I don’t disagree at all necessarily. Makes total sense. But I also can’t help but feel that it could backfire. Because in a way you’re manipulating them by acting in a way to control them and not how you really feel. Trust me there isn’t anything I wouldn’t do probably just to be able to hug my daughter again . My heart and soul have been utterly destroyed. But a small part of me thinks this could end up tragically bad if the child were to ever come the the thought that ‘ i know you dont feel this way. You’re just trying to trick me.’ Anyway, just a small thought

  • This is how a good doctor lost touch with reality. In order to get to the teen you must throw all good common sense and do whatever it takes to get their attention and “forgiveness”. What would be her advice for non-divorced parents whose teenager is angry at one of them? Would she still say just do whatever it takes to get your child not angry or would she advocate proper parenting and objective assessment of the situation. A parent cannot allow to be held hostage by a child. This feeds into child’s sense of entitlement and skewed sense of reality which is waiting for him or her in the adulthood. Emotionally abused children are not yet psychologically developed human beings and they must be guided towards the proper path. The message should be a message of love and understanding, but also a message that gives sense of strength and belief in justice and equality. They must have enough elements to conclude that they are entrapped by a pathogenic parent that consumes anything on its path.

  • No. No person including your own child is worth saying you are sorry for abuse you never committed. That’s asking to cover up lies with an apology that makes the lies the truth. I love my daughter but I will go to my grave first. My first allegiance is to my God. Acceptance of reality comes before forgiving evil.

  • I thought I might have been an alienated child… so, I took a leap of faith, and it went horrible (late 20’s) I thought letting him back into my life with a clean slate would afford him the opportunity to prove my mother wrong about everything she’s said. I wouldn’t hold it against my mother (I was literally afraid of my dad for years, until I outgrew him). This article misses the BIGGEST TIP: You have to show alignment to your childs moral framework. DON’T BE THE GUY THE ALIENATOR SAYS YOU ARE They’ve grown to value family: actively demonstrate how your family means to you. (Do you help your sick mother?) They’ve grown to value trust: Don’t use their words as evidence in court! They’ve grown to value responsibility: Do you really still owe child support??? My dad just turned out to be a scumbag. in the short while I had him back he lied to me, tried to scam my mom, tried to bait me with money, bickered about his deceased mother, and had no respect for my boundaries. So… now I realize, my mom (pre-18) has been protecting me from a bad person this whole time.

  • How about when they are 41 years old and pull the rug out from under you when they were never alienated before or said squat about the subject?? I find a 41 year old man confronting me out of the blue about his childhood feelings kind of stupid. His mother is a self absorbed person, a cheater and always was, that’s why she is my ex of 38 years. I don’t have the time or patience to rehabilitate my only son. Go to therapy!

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