Marilyn Foreman BCS – Bachelor of Child Study and Life Coach

Have you told yourself today how wonderful you are?

How do you feel when someone tells you that you are wonderful? Isn’t it a great feeling? It puffs you up a little and that feeling can carry you through your day with a smile on your face.

What if you were told that every day or even multiple times a day? What if you were told that just for being the person that you are, not for what you have done? Wouldn’t that give you all the confidence you would need to accomplish anything you wanted to no matter how big or daunting your dream is. Then once you accomplished that wouldn’t that make you feel great about yourself also and then accomplish something even bigger etc… All it takes is someone telling you that you are wonderful.

Imagine how the world would be and what great inventions and innovations would happen if the world was full of people who knew how wonderful they are. We could start quite a trend.

In the absence of someone telling you how wonderful you are why not do it for yourself? You could tell yourself how wonderful you are every day and also at the times you need it most. Be your own cheering section!! What a great example that would be for your child and their self esteem. It’s a win (for you) win (for your child) win (for the world) situation. Let’s start something…..

Have you told your child today how wonderful they are?

This KidBit sounds obvious doesn’t it but you would be surprised at how many parents forget to tell their child that they are wonderful or that they love them. Parents are quick to notice when their child does something wrong, they also pick on the little things that their kids could do differently. They even pick on things their child does that bothers them as parents but may be completely harmless. This usually comes from the parents own upbringing. In some previous generations if you told your child how great they were they would “get conceited”, it would “go to their heads” etc… so parents would do the opposite and not compliment them but to pick on the little things.

It’s quite ironic because we sometimes parent from a place that repeats what was done to us because we want to spare our children the pain we had. Here’s an example, when my kids were younger and they would be making a lot of noise I found myself stopping them for no good reason. I realized that when I was growing up and being too loud my father would get angry and then he would give us a chore to do to make us stop. He probably did this because of how he grew up and so on up the generations. So I was “saving” my children from getting in trouble from someone else by getting mad at them myself, like my anger wouldn’t be as bad as getting it from someone else. Once I realized what I was doing I had to laugh at my behaviour and then change it right away. What a difference in our house after that.

Weigh the consequences of your actions. What do you, the awesome parent that you are, want to get out of this situation? How can you achieve your goal?

If we as a society thought about the outcome of our actions before we acted, things would be very different. Using the example above when your child comes to you with a “bad” report card (bad is really a relative measurement) then the outcome is to help your child to improve their report card or make sure that this does not affect their self esteem, etc… Think about what you want, if you ground them or punish them for the report card do you think that will help them to improve their marks or elevate their self esteem?

What do you want to achieve? How can you get there while also feeling good about how you get there and have your child feel empowered and supported. They say you get a lot more from honey than from vinegar, well that is really true especially in parenting. If you feel good about how you parent and your child grows up to be a self assured, empowered happy and successful person then reaching that  goal with love and support will work so much better than with grounding and punishment.

In everything you do, feel empowered and empower your child. You will build a great relationship with your child that will last a lifetime and in the end isn’t that all that matters.

Turn every situation around to be positive. If your child has presented you with a challenge, find a way to turn it into a learning opportunity.

Have fun with it! Make it a bonding moment.

This relates to another KidBit, rather than making your child “wrong” for what they’ve done, recognize it has already been done so why not make it into a positive experience for both of you. For example, if your child did badly on a test instead of grounding them or punishing them remember they are probably not feeling great about it either and they don’t need you adding to the pain. They may have had trouble with it, they may not have understood what was being taught or maybe they just didn’t study. Chances are they already know what happened so why not help them learn from it. How about trying

‘Oh that’s unfortunate you didn’t do well on the test honey, how do you feel about that? Do you know why? Is there something I can do to help? How can we make it better for next time?”

You will be surprised at how much more empowering that is for both of you. It may feel strange at the beginning and it will surprise your child who may be used to the old way of parenting which is telling them what to do rather than being a partner in both of your growth but in that moment things will start to change. Your child will start to realize you are on their side and there to support them not make them wrong and you will feel like the “good guy” and not the “bad guy” and that is empowering for you.

Is Being Right Worth The Cost of Your Self Esteem, Your Child’s Self Esteem and the quality of Your Relationship With Your Child?

When we were growing up we would relish in the knowledge that we did something right, it was more common to be told what we did wrong rather than what we did right. If we were wrong then that meant we might not be loved but if we were right then we were loved. Children strive for their parent’s love more than anything else. It gives us a sense of value and self worth. It can mean we have value in society.

As we grow up and become parents and we still need to be right we are back in our childhood and looking for our value in society. Only now that we are adults, when we need to be right that usually means we are making our child wrong. It extremely impacts our child’s self-esteem just as it affected our self-esteem and because deep down we know it’s not helping the situation it also lowers our self-esteem. Watch yourself during your day, when you have to get attention for being right it is usually at a cost of someone else. Take a good look. Is whether you’re right or wrong really that important anymore, if so why and at what cost?

Being right or wrong is a matter of opinion; don’t let a label affect your self-esteem, your child’s self esteem or the relationship you are building with your child.

This is like preprogramming your day, then as you go through your day you will find all the reasons that this statement is correct. You will notice things your children do that you may not have done anything about before but now that you are looking for proof of this you will acknowledge your child more and that will make everyone feel good about themselves. How often do we go through the day and say good things to our children about what they’ve done. We’re quick to notice what they’ve done wrong but not as often do we acknowledge how wonderful they are. This makes us more present to what’s going on in the moment. When we preprogram our day with a statement like “every member is absolutely wonderful exactly as they are” then you start to notice the individuality of all the members of your family in a whole new way. You also start to acknowledge your own individuality and the little things that you do that make a difference. It brings a whole new feeling of appreciation into your whole day.

Enjoy your day and watch for all the signs of how wonderful you all are and how everyone in your family brings different gifts to the group to make for a wonderful experience. Honour who they are and honour who you are.

Choice is a powerful word. No one can take away your ability to choose unless you let them. Yet so many parents choose to parent from someone else’s experience. Most of us parent according to how we were parented, or from our own past experience, or according to something we have seen or read about. All of these come from the past and have nothing to do with right now and who YOU are. Your child doesn’t want you to parent them from your past experience but who you are right now in the current relationship you have with your child.

You can be your very best right now or you can resort to a past experience, you can choose to act like someone else or you can be yourself.

The key word in this KidBit is “NOW”. We can easily be caught in the past and the future, but it’s the present moment where everything important really happens. Reading this KidBit right now pulls you into the present moment, what are you getting right now from this, you are tuning to who you are as a parent and that’s who your child deserves to be parented by, not your parents and not some parenting expert but by you the real you with all your foibles and questions. Make the choice right now to be the best YOU can be and Be YOU!!

Check out these beautiful girls, they’re called the Cactus Cuties. See if they inspire you like they’ve inspired me.  I would love to thank their families for guiding them to reach their infinite possibilities and stepping back and letting them sour, I really appreciate what they have brought to me. They have certainly touched my heart.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKCVS57j284
and here they are a little older
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbufA_WgIvE

Girls thank you for your gift and inspiration.

I was driving today and passed a girl with bleach blond hair with a layer of black hair underneath and it reminded my of how artistic our teens can be these days. Both of my daughters are very artistic but one uses her body as a canvas more than the other. She went through many different hair colours over her early teen years. To her it was painting herself into something new anytime she wanted and she has tried out a lot of versions of herself over the years. I have learned a lot from her.

When she was in her teens she wanted tattoos. Now in my experience growing up tattoos were not the thing to do, bikers had tattoos not young girls. My daughter and I had many discussions on this topic. To her it was a form of art, being creative, telling people who she was by putting those words and symbols on her body. I had great difficulty with it at the beginning but she was very patient with me while I caught up to where she was. We worked together toward an agreement on what she would have, where and when. This was was something that was really important to her, so my choice was to fight it or help her with it.

I’m a lover not a fighter as the saying goes and I chose to love my daughter rather than fight with her and so we started to discuss her options. She had ideas and because she knew I was on her side she was able to listen to my feedback. We talked about that fact that she would have them on her body forever so what would she like to have on her body when she was 50, 60 and 70 years old. Once she decided on that, she did the research on the safest place and processes to get it done while also taking that time to really know that’s what she wanted and she chose beautifully. Mostly she chose symbols and words that related to her different stages in life, what she was passionate about and what I like about them is that they all relate to some form of loving herself including the “I am heaven sent” written in Latin on her back. It is 10 years later and she still loves all of her very tasteful tattoos, has no regrets and continues to think of how else to be creative in the world.

I grew up with strict ideas about myself but I have learned so much from my daughters and I hope you too take the time to really learn while they teach and teach while they learn. You and your child are a team, work together to both feel good about who you are in the world and how you both chose to express it.