We all want our children to have the best in life and that includes having a positive mental attitude and a sense of empowerment, yet children are rarely given the opportunity to learn how to acquire these skills. Knowing how to release negative thinking patterns and make use of mind skills such as visualization techniques, affirmations and positive self-talk are all skills that can be easily learnt but they do need to be taught.
If you would like to help your child develop a more positive mental attitude, then helping them to improve their self talk is one of the most valuable things you can do, and is an important step along the way to maintaining a positive and healthy self-image.
Using positive statements such as affirmations is one of the simplest and easiest ways to help your child make these changes and there are lots of ways of making this fun for all the family to do.
Yet research has shown that just repeating an affirmation again and again will only be about 10% effective overall, better than nothing but not really good enough. The trick to making affirmations really effective is to add very vivid and colourful imagery to your affirmation whilst holding an image of success in your mind. Then with repetition, over time, it is known to become at least 70% effective. This is because the right side of our brain tends to process information in the form of pictures rather than in a linear way and of course we need to use both side of our brain equally to be really effective.
The best news of all though, is that if you encourage your child to repeat their affirmation regularly (over a period of a couple of weeks is ideal) with lots of vivid imagery, making sure that what is being affirmed is also specific, measurable, and entirely positive and then add the feeling of success to that, it becomes 100% effective. In other words the mind assumes that what it is experiencing is real. Think about it for a moment, there are lots of examples of how this works in our everyday life. Advertisers use this knowledge all the time and it's also one of the most common ways that our fears and phobias are created too.
One of the best things about affirmations is that they simple to create and can be used in all sorts of fun and imaginative ways. For example, if your child is struggling with their spelling you could help them come up with a simple affirmation such as "I'm improving my spelling every day"
Affirmations can be adapted to any age group and can be used in many creative ways to give your child's self esteem a gentle boost throughout the day.
Here are some ideas to get you going:
• Help your child to write or draw their affirmation on brightly coloured card and display it somewhere obvious.
• Write out a new affirmation each day and hide it somewhere where they will find it later such as in their lunch box or under their pillow.
• Leave a message on your child's mobile phone (if they are old enough to have one) reminding them to think positive thoughts.
• Make up a song or rhyme with your favourite affirmation.
There are endless ways you can make these techniques fun. So let yourself be creative and make up your own list of simple ways to remind your child of their natural brilliance. They are bound to delight in your encouragement and support.
This article is based on Anne's e-book 'Positive Thinking for Kids. Private consultation are available by telephone for parents who would like to learn more about how to use NLP and EFT techniques to help improve their child self esteem and confidence. Go to http://www.enhancingvitality.com/call-back.html to request a call back or get in touch via email at http://www.enhancingvitality.com/contact.html if you would like to know more.
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