How To Help Your Children Build Self-Worth and Start Believing In Themselves

I was initially going to talk to you about creative ways of teaching your kids about animals but based on a tragedy that occurred to a friend and her request, I’ve changed today’s topic. For her privacy, I won’t mention names or any details. However, I want to talk to you about teaching your children about developing an understanding of their self-worth.

What is Self-Worth?

Why? Because no matter where your children are at in their lives, they will go through difficult times that will really test them, and you, their parent or teacher, won’t be able to protect them. So, we need to give them one incredibly important tool to help them make good choices and to help them overcome any poor choice they may make, especially when they’re afraid to take action. This will help them.

We need to teach them about their self-worth.

Essentially, self-worth is an internal state of being – a place where we understand, love and accept ourselves for who we are.

Actionable Steps:

When should you start? Right away! It doesn’t matter how young your child is, get started now. I’ve created a free resource for you. I’ve created a sheet for your primary children and for your intermediate or high school kids. The sheet for the high school children can also be used by you, the adult. In fact, I highly recommend you do this alongside your children to motivate them.

For younger ones, have them draw this out and write down a word, sentence or a couple of sentences, depending on where they’re at with their learning. For older ones, give them some Freewrite time. Don’t check for grammar and let them decorate this page after.

On this page, I’d like you to note EVERYTHING awesome about you. Start with your physical attributes and then move on into your inner attributes.

I’m encouraging both because there will be times when someone bullies your child about their physical looks but they’ll know better and can refer back to this sheet, so please don’t skip this step. If you’re struggling with this, take a few moments to yourself or ask close friends or family for help.

After you’ve completed this part of the exercise, I’d like you and your older children to make connections between these two segments.

Here’s an example. For me, I have big eyes that are very telling. While people joke that I can’t tell a lie for the life of me, it also means that what you see is what you get, therefore, you know that I’m authentic and honest. Do you see how I turned what could be a negative into a positive?

So, dig deep, my friends.

The deeper you go, the more powerful this will be for you and your children.

Once you’ve completed this, post this up somewhere so that you can refer back to this when you need it.

In fact, don’t just post it and leave it. I want to you to review this with your kids every day or every couple of days. Make sure it’s drilled into their brains. I’m stressing this point right now, because when they are faced with a difficult circumstance and you aren’t there to save them, they’ll remember this sheet and hear your voice in their head. My hope is that between this imagery and your voice, it will overpower and overshadow anyone who is trying to hurt them.

Want a final bonus step? Continuously add to your sheets. Let it evolve with your children.

For teachers, have your kids create a portfolio with this in it to be sent home or include this in your Student Led Conference folders.

Recap:

Grab your freebie journal
Write or draw out all of your fabulous physical attributes
Write or draw out all of your beautiful inner attributes
Make connections between your physical and inner attributes
Decorate it and put it up so that you can refer to it
Talk to your children about this on a continuous basis
BONUS STEP: make changes to this over time

Next Steps:

This is a pretty sensitive topic. If you need support, please send me a private message.

I’m choosing to make a fundamental change to The Creative Child Community when we open up again to encompass topics like this. You’ll learn more about it in the upcoming weeks, so stay tuned. Join the waitlist by clicking the image below to be the first to be notified of our next opening.