Helping your child feel good about themselves

One of my sons often says he's rubbish at things and he used to say he hated his life which was so hard to hear. We've been on a big journey this year, well more of a rollercoaster actually, and it got me thinking about some little tips I could share to help support your child's self esteem and confidence.

Affirmations

Affirmations are a fantastic way to build confidence and self esteem for all ages. Check out this video where I introduce affirmations. These card decks are brilliant and can be used as part of your daily routine or when your child just needs a little lift. The cards I show in my video are by Summersdale Publishers, but you can search for other similar ones. 

Write it all down

A great tool to support emotional expression is to encourage children to write down thoughts from their day. Supporting children to reflect and 'get it all out' can mean that they can then enjoy their evening and sleep better. For older children, journaling is a good practice to encourage. For younger children, you could try using a worry monster.

In this video, I mention writing down thoughts and then forgetting about them. This is for little niggles from the school day. I'm not suggesting that you tell a child to forget about a bigger issue such as bullying! But the worry monster can be a good way to open up the conversation between the child and parent about bigger issues and then you can speak to school and seek support.

Shake it off

Sometimes writing it all down isn't enough and a child needs to physically shake off the day...quite literally! Have a look at my video on therapeutic shaking and as well as encouraging your child to do this, you might like to do it yourself...it's such a good technique to shift your energy and shake off any anxiety or stress.

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I hope you have found this information helpful and if you have any suggestions for future topics you'd like me to cover then please free to email me and I will do my best to accommodate. 

Hanna