We want to make sure that every dad has earned his Fathers Day gift this year. So here are five essential tips to being a brilliant dad!

Our five essential tips to becoming the ultimate dad!

Share:

1. Activities for life

As well as being interesting and fun, doing activities with your children will also help them develop valuable life skills. Sports will help build your child’s confidence (and keep both of you fit!), making things will develop talking, interpretive skills and dexterity.

PRO Tip: You play a vital male role model for your kids, but that doesn’t mean you have to always do ‘masculine’ things. You may have a budding chef in the family after-all!

2. Be Patient

No father is perfect and you don’t have to be. But try to allow extra time for things, for your kids to catch up if they make a mistake, or need a bit longer to get the knack of it. They’re less likely to persevere if their Dad is always in a hurry and gets annoyed when things go wrong.

PRO Tip: Slow & fiddly jobs can mean comfortable conversations and time talking with your child is never time wasted, even if there are things you want to get on with.

3. Don’t Try To Do Too Much

Some fathers go into their sheds and come out with the perfect Go-Kart two weeks later. But time spent making something for your child is not the same as making it with them. A wobbly version made with your son or daughter will be better, because it helps them learn what they are capable of.>

PRO Tip: From the age of eight or nine children need encouragement to see what they can do on their own. Let them make mistakes, but step in if the mistakes start getting too drastic.

4. Positive Criticism

We’re all used to criticising in a negative way, so this skill takes a bit oflearning. The trick is to talk about things without putting your child down in any way. So instead of criticising faults, pick out the good points and offer some constructive advice on how they might be able to address the bad points.

PRO Tip: Instead of pointing out that something is being done wrong, try phrasing it "If you do it this way it might be easier". Then allow your child to amicably disagree if they want to!

5. Praise AND Encouragement

There’s nothing wrong with a bit of praise, but praise alone may make them reliant on your judgement, rather than building self-confidence. Encourage them by offering messages of support that help them understand the reasons why they are doing well, rather than just telling them they are doing well.

PRO Tip: Use ‘I’ statements to show it’s your opinion and keep things specific. e.g. Don’t say "That’s a lovely picture", instead say "I like the way you coloured that so neatly!"