Raising our children to like themselves

Recently, together with my friend Dr Vanessa Lapointe and a team of helpers, I ran two one-day retreats for mothers. One of the activities invited attendees to write the voices of their inner critic onto post-it notes. They were then asked to put those post-its up on the wall.

We all have an inner critic linked to our ego mind, which tends to tell us messages of unworthiness, how we are failing in some way, and that we are not enough – not smart enough, beautiful enough, thin enough or buff enough.

The messages that we saw displayed on the walls at those events were hard to read:

• I’m a terrible mother
• My kids would be better off with a different mother
• I hate myself when I shout at my kids.
• I am hopeless and useless at being a mother.

These critical thoughts that flood our minds trigger emotions – often  frustration, guilt, shame, disgust and even self-hatred. We can all be prone to this but the female brain has a stronger tendency for rumination which mean these thoughts go around and around and around, continually pulling the emotional state into one that is dysregulated and that feels lousy.

Being a mother today is more difficult in many ways and I have explored this previously. The pressure to be a perfect woman and a perfect mother permeates, especially online where women often need to be in order to help organise their family lives. Women are wired for compare-despair from an early age, and this comparing just feeds the ego mind more negativity.

Sadly, in our over sexualised world, where girls and women are objectified especially in advertising, on billboards, on buses, in shopfronts and even on clothing – our girls are being conditioned earlier and earlier to believe that their appearance is most important and defines them. In the survey I conducted for my book GIRLHOOD, several educators mentioned that fat-shaming was happening in early childhood with girls aged four.

As mothers, we need to be able to make peace with our bodies and show our girls that all body types are acceptable. It is not what our body looks like, it’s what it can do that really matters. Modelling is incredibly powerful for our girls in order for them to grow up to like themselves one day.

An excellent book exploring this is Kasey Edwards and Dr Christopher Scanlon’s Raising Girls Who Like Themselves. I respect these two authors a lot and the title of this blog is in fact a nod to their work. They also wrote another book that is well worth reading called Bringing Up Boys Who Like Themselves. You can find them both here.

So where do these negative voices of the inner critic come from?

In the excellent Seen documentary, four brave parents explore their journey from being the parent they didn’t want to be, to becoming the parent they really wanted to be. One of the key takeaways from this film is that in our childhood, we are being imprinted with messages that we create from the experiences we have. One of the brave mothers in the documentary was continually telling herself there was something wrong with her children for not behaving the way they were supposed to, according to the parenting books. Once she received some professional support, she realised she was the problem and not her children.

So much of this negative critic voice in our adult head has been formed in our childhood. Of course the voices we take on are not all negative – many of us have been positively imprinted by our parents and carers. I have shared the story many times of how my wonderful wise dad helped me when he saw that I couldn’t run fast and was coming last (or close to last) in races. In a very loving way, he acknowledged how it can feel yucky to come last. He suggested that I could wave at the crowd as I ran down the back straight as it might help me feel better. And it did! Not only that, he offered me a wonderful message that has been imprinted deeply ever since I was eight: that despite the chances of not winning, no matter what I attempted, he always wanted me to have a go – to turn up and participate with an optimistic outlook. That imprint has shaped my whole life.

Carol Dweck in her excellent book Mindset, wrote about a large study of around 2000 four-year-olds.

She discovered that over 60% of these children had already worked out that they were either smart or dumb, or good or bad, by the age of four. This belief or mindset can shape every other experience as we go forward.

I have been a champion for boys ever since I stepped into a classroom because I met so many boys who thought they were dumb – simply because they had different learning needs, and often were cognitively behind our girls when they transitioned into school, as well as into middle school and into upper high school. Many of those boys had been punished and shamed for struggling to do things they were developmentally unable to do at the time.

Changing a negative mindset

It takes time to change a child’s negative mindset: You can’t just tell a child to change their beliefs. Sometimes with lots of gentle coaching and encouragement, a child may gradually grow in competence and confidence.

In my counselling work, I used creation visualisation often to help children create a different ‘inner video’ that was being fed by that voice of the critic.( I have turned many of these visualisations into downloadable audios and would say that Accepting Myself was the one I found most effective for working with the inner critic, and it can be adapted for any age).

Our brain can struggle to tell the difference between what’s real and what’s vividly imagined, so when we vividly imagine ourselves being confident, and achieving a goal that we think is beyond us, magic can happen.

If it’s okay for elite athletes at the Australian Institute of Sport to use visualisation to see themselves winning, it sure is okay for our children to do the same to overcome negative self-talk.

One of the key negative beliefs that many of us have as humans is that we are not enough. If you had a parent who was highly critical, especially one who used shaming world like – “you are useless”, or “you are stupid”, this mindset will be anchored deeply inside you.

There is a saying:

When you criticise your child, they don’t stop loving you, they stop loving themselves.

I have also worked with children who felt they were not enough even though their parents never used shaming language or were highly critical. Their parents focused on pressuring them to achieve results, or to look a certain way, or to follow a passion that the parent was unable to fully pursue in their own childhood. This creates a perception for a child that they are only loved when they perform to a preferred outcome. This can create a deep sense of unworthiness and can make it hard for a child to like themselves, even when they are succeeding.

So how do I raise my child to likes themselves?

The absolute first step to raising a child who likes themselves is for that child  to be securely attached to at least one safe adult who is responsive to their needs.

Remember, secure attachment is not broken when we hold boundaries for our children, nor when we have a day when we are dysregulated and shout. It’s about consistency not perfection.

My next suggestion is not going to be something you were hoping to hear. If you want to raise a child with a positive self view, who is safe to be their own authentic self – then you need to be an adult who likes themselves, and is comfortable being their own authentic self. Easier said than done sometimes!

This does not mean you need to be a perfect human – of course at times, you’ll get frustrated with yourself. Heck, I can still lose the car in a car park, I’m a messy cook and sometimes I wear shoes that don’t match. Thanks to hours of therapy where I explored the negative imprints from my childhood, and discovered the stories I was telling myself weren’t true – I’ve come to a place of incredible acceptance, self-love and authenticity.

When I stepped into the classroom as a graduate teacher, something magical happened to me: I knew I was where I was supposed to be. I absolutely loved being a high school teacher. My sense of self blossomed and I felt worthy and really happy to be me. At that point I had done no therapy at all. Despite finding a sense of purpose, my negative critic was still strong though reminding me I was flawed. To compensate I became a people pleaser – trying to do too many things to help others. It has been helpful to explore this.

An excellent person who is doing wonderful work in this place is Lael Stone. She has been helping grown-ups for many years to discover the unhelpful and hurtful imprints from childhood, which create tension in our homes especially with our partners and our children. You can hear Lael’s beautiful voice on many podcasts and on TV (she’s also in Seen, which I mentioned earlier) as she gently explains the importance of owning the wounds from our childhood and how we can heal them.

Sometimes the unhelpful imprints come from social conditioning rather than from our parenting. I have been working hard over the last 25 years to change the belief that boys are tough, and that girls aren’t. Many girls have been conditioned to believe that being angry is not appropriate for girls.

Sometimes, too, the negative imprints can come from other adults in our lives. Toxic teachers and grandparents can definitely embed negative messages despite your loving parenting.

When I became a mother I realised I needed more help to allow me to be the loving mother I really wanted to be.

I’ve had to do a lot of therapy to undo some of my imprints that I was not enough, and I didn’t deserve to be loved. As a little girl, I struggled with my relationship with my mum and I grew up with a crushing low sense of self, especially in my teen years. I have explored this in a number of my books and interviews, but I created a story that said the only good thing about me was that I was academically capable. When I failed my first essay in my entire life at university, I saw no hope for staying in this world. Feeling hopeless and helpless is a place no one ever wants their child to be.

One of the keys to raising children who like themselves is to ask do we allow them to be really seen and heard, especially when they are struggling? So often we feel our job is to come in with advice and ways to fix things – without really listening.

When we feel really heard as children, we can feel we have authentic value, we matter and we are loved. Listen. Listen. Listen.

My dad never told me he loved me. However, once after a big day at school we were going around checking the sheep before we headed back for dinner and I was telling my dad everything that had happened throughout the day. If you have a child who wants to update you on every single thing that happened in a day, you’ll know it can be really time-consuming when you have things to do. Luckily for me, my dad could listen while he drove. And then he stopped the car, turned it off and turned to me and he listened to me for another few minutes with his full attention. That was the moment I knew my dad loved me unconditionally. His 100% presence spoke more loudly than any words!

That moment imprinted in a really positive way that probably shaped my whole life and allowed me to eventually come to a place of total self-love.

Working out the puzzle of your child

Giving birth to a new little human is miraculous in so many ways. When we first hold that precious baby in our arms, we often don’t realise we are holding a mystery. We may know what sex they have been born, but we have no idea of how the intricacies of genetics and epigenetics have played out in the formation of that precious child.

It takes time to watch as they evolve into their own unique temperament, and even more time to see whether they have inherited other predispositions, especially psychological ones. I believe that every child is born with some unique strengths and gifts, as well as some unique challenges. Neurodivergence can be inherited. Anxiety and some other mental health conditions can be inherited. Trauma can also be passed on genetically and we are only just coming to understand this.

Every single child is a one-off unique miracle. Never been here before, never will be here again.

Your challenge as a parent is to work out the puzzle of your child, and then to create the relationship and the environment that allows your child to become who they are meant to be. This can be  a really significant suggestion on how to raise a child who likes themselves. There is no one-size-fits-all and, sadly, much of our schooling system has changed over the years to focus on that rather than respecting our professionals to meet the learning needs of each child in the classroom.

Authenticity can be tricky in a world where there is so much judgement on parents and children. All humans make mistakes, have moments of failure, and moments of complete embarrassment and when we model in our homes that this is okay, we are allowing our children to be humans with authenticity. Focus on nurturing their strength rather than just focusing on their deficits – even though that can be difficult in our current education system.

Keys to self-determination

The three keys to self-determination that make us feel good as humans are:

• connection
• competence and
• control or autonomy.

Nurturing these three things throughout childhood and giving kids opportunities to stretch and grow can really help them grow to like themselves.

The final piece that can really help is nurturing your child’s capacity for empathy and, again, that starts with the modelling from their parents. Do we show our concern for others who are struggling, especially when things like natural disasters or illness can arrive unexpectedly? If there was one thing I wished we could have kept from those early days of the pandemic, it was the sense of neighbourhood empathy that flowed. Remember those teddy bears in the window and the chalk drawings on pavements?

Empathy doesn’t have to be about big gestures. Often it just takes one look, one word, one touch…

When we have empathy for others, we tend to have empathy for ourselves and we are kinder to ourselves. Instead of running that inner critic who tells us everything we are doing wrong, the voice of empathy comes from the heart and it says we are okay. You’re a good human and you deserve to be loved exactly as you are.

One last thing I want to share with you about quieting that critic… at those women’s events I mentioned at the beginning of this article, we finished those retreats with loud singing and dancing to lift our hearts and souls. Collective effervescence definitely helps us all to like ourselves more, as does laughter and lightness, so that’s something well worth remembering in your family.

 

Article main image: © by travelview/ Adobe Stock

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