Are you looking for a powerful tool to help your child combat negative self-talk and start having a more positive outlook on life, themselves, and the situations around them?
Look no further! This blog will walk you through five easy ways to implement positive affirmations into your child's daily routine!
Proven Tips I have seen work!
These are tips I have seen work for my clients firsthand as a life coach for kids. You read that right; even young children can benefit from life coaching. Think of it as confidence coaching for kids to help them gain emotional intelligence and self-confidence, build higher self-esteem, avoid peer pressure, learn how to deal with stressful situations, get outside their comfort zone, and set themselves up for healthy development through tricky situations. Life coaching helps kids navigate the challenges they encounter growing up and other essential life skills to become the best version of themselves.
Think about how magnificent the world would be if children learned these skills at a young age, had positive feelings about themselves, and understood the power of positive thinking. The world today is full of busy adults with many negative thoughts, limiting beliefs, and harmful habits so ingrained into them that they spend thousands of dollars on mental health care yearly, according to Med City News. The average adult spends over 2,000 dollars a year annually, and it's increasing by 3% each year!
I know this is true because I am one of them! I became a life coach for kids because I have struggled with anxiety most of my life and battled with perfectionism. Being extremely hard on myself and being afraid to make mistakes has only led to negative self-talk, beating myself up, and more and more anxiety. I have tried everything under the sun to beat anxiety and live a happier, healthier life. However, I believe that one of the best ways to combat mental health is to start talking about these topics with our children early! And I am set out on a mission to do so! My two-year-old daughter Jada's birth led me to become a life coach for kids through the Adventures in Wisdom certification program. I will do everything in my power to help her to learn to own her own magnificence and reach her fullest potential. My experiences help me to be more understanding and compassionate with my clients.
Additionally, I have been a reading specialist/tutor for the past eight years. I already felt like I was coaching my students through challenges, and getting certified in this program expanded my tool belt! I now take a unique approach to helping children learn to read with powerful mindset skills. Many students who come to me for help struggle with reading and, in turn, with their self-confidence and self-esteem. I can help children become confident, skilled readers with this powerful work!
Adventures in Wisdom/Life Coaching for Kids
The Adventures in Wisdom program is all about empowering kids through mindset development. Through stories, children will learn how to use the power of their thoughts to create happiness, confidence, and success in their lives.
Through this program, children can participate in reading exciting stories, engaging activities, and discussions that will help them shift their mindset. These mindset skills help children navigate the ups and downs of growing up! Through the Mindset program, they will learn how to:
Have the courage to set goals
Learn to think for themselves
Overcome challenges and fears
Make good decisions
Create happiness regardless of their circumstance
And go after whatever they want to in life!
Changing Mindset Through The Use of Affirmations
Positive Affirmations can be a great way to start seeing a change in your child's belief systems. Positive affirmations are statements or phrases they repeat to themselves throughout the day to keep a positive mindset and high self-confidence. Building affirmations into their daily routine and leaving reminders to keep them on track throughout the day is essential.
The Evidence Behind Using Affirmations
The self-affirmation theory (Steele 1988) is a popular psychological theory that shows how people adapt to information or experiences that threaten the way they think of themselves (from the influence of their own thoughts and beliefs and the influences of others). According to Wikipedia, "Self-affirmation theory contends that if individuals reflect on values that are personally relevant to them, they are less likely to experience distress and react defensively when confronted with information that contradicts or threatens their sense of self. Experimental investigations of self-affirmation theory suggest that self-affirmation can help individuals cope with threat or stress and might improve academic performance, health and reduce defensiveness."
Therefore, if we can tell ourselves positive, self-affirming thoughts through affirmations, it will be easier to maintain positive self-esteem and integrity. Additionally, neuroscience research shows, through MRI, specific neural pathways grow in the brain's prefrontal cortex when affirmations are used.
Affirmations have a positive effect on one's feelings and mood. They can help us move through difficult situations, help us self-regulate, and boost self-confidence, self-worth, and self-awareness. It's a simple daily tool that can retrain your brain to have positive thoughts and get people out of the habit of the negative, limiting beliefs that hold them back or hinder them.
Five Easy Positive Affirmations Activities for Kids to Practice Daily
1. One easy way to do this is to have your child develop a positive "mirror mantra" that will help set the stage for their day and write it on their mirror where they go each morning and night to brush their teeth or in the child's bedroom somewhere obvious where they will see it each day. These positive words or morning affirmations will help them carry out their day with a positive attitude, more positive self-talk, and a growth mindset rather than a fixed one. (Meaning that they believe there is room for growth and improvement rather than thinking they are not good at something. Therefore they will never be able to be good at it.)
2. Another fun way to remind your child of their positive daily affirmations is to have them create a positive affirmations poster. Come up with simple statements that positively lift them up. Put the poster up in your child's bedroom so they can look at it as a daily reminder! If your child has difficulty thinking of their own, download my FREE Daily Affirmation Cards For Kids list below for inspiration!
3. Lunch box notes are a great way to remind your child to keep a positive mindset and boost their confidence. You can adapt them to whatever challenges they are currently encountering in their life, give them positive encouragement on test days, and remind them that they are loved and appreciated! It's a super easy way to keep their spirits up and model positive thinking habits!
4. Another positive way to use affirmations is to practice different challenging scenarios that you think your child might be confronted with throughout the day, come up with a positive affirmation to support them, and practice how the scene will unfold and say the affirmation to themself.
For example, one of my 7-year-old coaching clients came to me because she would often spiral out of control in her thoughts and get upset. Letting it ruin the rest of her day. If kids on the playground did not want to play the game she was playing; it quickly became nobody likes me; I don't have any friends, I'm a bad kid, and I wouldn't want to play with me either. Until Finally, she was emotionally spent and crying uncontrollably. Or she would do something wrong at home, her mom would correct her, and she would fester in all the reasons why she was a bad kid, doing everything wrong, and it would spill into the rest of her day. Affecting the outcomes of her family's day as well. Therefore, we took scenarios like this and began to plan and role-play. She came up with positive affirmations to create positive messages that would help her rather than limit her, such as:
-Asking herself, is this thought even true?
-I am in charge of my own happiness.
-Am I telling myself positive things?
-How can I turn these limiting beliefs into more positive ones?
-It's okay to make mistakes. They help us learn and grow.
Thinking these more positive thoughts had a powerful impact on her mental health and her low self-esteem began morphing into a more positive belief system for herself and those around her! We worked through our Adventures in Wisdom stories that touched on topics such as positive self-talk, self-confidence, self-esteem, and more. She could relate with the characters in the stories and build a new neural pathway around these situations in her brain to create positive change in her life.
She began to feel she had control over her negative thinking and knew she was in charge. She started saying things like, "I have control of my emotions now. I don't get as mad or the grungies as much because maybe the kids don't want to do what I am doing on the playground. It's not because they don't like me. It's like my brain feels better."
She also said, "If kids don't want to play with me on the playground, I will sometimes get sad for a minute. Then I ask myself, is that true? NO! So I even tried a new game, and you know what? I loved it! I even made new friends!"
Want to know the best part? She recently had a parent-teacher conference. Her teacher told her mother she was doing really well in school academically, but she had to dock her slightly on behavior. She explained that she wasn't always honest at school, often made the other kids feel bad (through bullying), and often played the victim and had a hard time emotionally. But her teacher went on to explain that she only docked her one point because she had noticed a huge shift in her attitude, positive thinking, the way she treats others, and lives a life of integrity within the last month. She had no idea I had been working with her through life coaching (for about a month!). Her mom called me to tell me the news. I knew the program was working for her and positively impacting her daily life. But others were noticing too?! It gave me goosebumps, and through teary eyes, I told her mother how proud I was of her. I hung up the phone and wasn't sure if I wanted to do a happy dance or cry an ugly cry. This work is impactful and makes a difference on many levels!
Stories are powerful. They allow my clients to relate to the characters, make their own connections to their own experiences, and come to see the things in their own thinking. I'm not telling them they are doing something wrong. We are reading stories, and they are coming to conclusions about things they need to work on themselves!
My wish is that she can continue this positive self-talk and implement it into her daily life so that she can confidently take on any situation that comes her way for years and years to come!
5. Positive Affirmation Cards are a great way for children to learn positive self-talk and the power of positivity. You can place the cards around the house or hide them in places where your child will find them.
One example would be inside a challenging book they are reading (when they find it, they will get a positive word of encouragement to keep trying and move through it!). Or you can build them into your daily routine by shuffling them up and picking one each morning to discuss with your child and to set the mood for the day. Additionally, they can be a positive part of your child's nightly routine. Have them pick a card and repeat the positive phrase to themself as they fall asleep.
It's beneficial to talk to your child about the cards' benefits. Something like, "These positive affirmations and statements will help you stay happy and positive. If we practice them a lot, they will come in handy when we need them. At times we feel grungy or sad. Thinking positive helps us choose happiness, believe in ourselves, and have a good day!"
Modeling the use of the cards and implementing them into your own day can be a powerful way to model positive affirmations and get your child interested in using them each day as well. Doing them together, discussing the positive effects, and the hard situations they were faced with can be powerful!
To download your free set of affirmation cards, click the button below!
If you would like to give your child this gift of confidence and self-worth at a young age to create positive habits that lead to a prosperous and happy life, please fill out my coaching registration form to sign up for a FREE 30-minute Discovery call today!
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