A great article by Jane Nelsen on encouragement as seen on Positive Discipline
– we simply had to share!
Rudolf Dreikurs taught, “A child needs encouragement as a plant needs water.” In other words, encouragement is essential. Children may not die without encouragement, but they certainly wither.
Encouragement is helping your children develop courage—courage to grow and develop into the people they want to be—to feel capable, to be resilient, to enjoy life, to be happy, contributing members of society, and, as Dreikurs said, “To have the courage to be imperfect,” to feel free to make mistakes and to learn from them.