"I'm useless!"
Hearing your children say this is alarming and upsetting and can be difficult to know exactly what to say and do when your child says this.
Here are 6 top tips on how to support your children at this challenging time.
1. Teach them how to self-nurture!
Children love to look after animals and plants and through these activities, they learn the importance of what other living things need to thrive. Together talk about how they need nurturing too just like their pets and plants and what that looks like for them.
When we include a planting activity we always include questions to encourage kids to reflect on what they need to thrive.
2. Encourage them to talk nicely to themselves!
"Talk to yourself like you would to someone you love." Brene Brown.
Words are powerful and children quickly learn that if they say something horrible to a friend it hurts them. Teach children that this applies to themselves as well.
Model positive self-talk. For example "Isabell you can do this." "Isabell this is difficult now but it will get easier!"
3. Support them to think kindly about their body!
Focus on what their body can do - run, jump, hug, kiss, sing, see... rather than what it looks like.
Encourage them to see that their body deserves appreciation for everything it can do and how to care for it.
Avoid using negative language about your own body and model the positive ways you appreciate how incredible your body is and what it can do!
4. Affirmations!
There is a huge amount of research that shows that affirmations work! They can reduce stress and anxiety and make our minds more positive. In my opinion, affirmations that a child has written themselves are so powerful.
In our Healthy Minds box, one of the activities is for the child to draw/write their own affirmations. My son uses his daily and I have started putting them into his school bag to look at when he needs them!
5. Model looking after yourself!
We must look after ourselves because you can't pour from an empty love cup.
So show them you looking after yourself and make it obvious because you are your children's first and most important teacher.
So take a long bath, buy new clothes, go to the gym, lay in the sun with a good book, and go out with friends and then shout about it!
6. Fill a Kind To Themselves Jar!
Together draw/write some ideas of what they can do to be kind to themselves and put them in the jar. When you notice their love cup is draining, encourage them to pick an idea out of their jar. Over time acts of self-kindness will become their default to challenging times.
