Let’s be real, all of us want to come out of this motherhood journey in one piece and hopefully with kind and loving tiny adults by our sides. Parenting doesn’t come with a manual and a lot of the time we default to ideals, beliefs, and practices that were shown to us when we were being raised. Through my years of parenting, I have done a lot of inner work on what I liked and valued about my childhood and what I hated and wish never happened. Since we can’t change the past, the best thing we can do is to change our future by doing things differently.
That is why in this blog post I am going to share with you what I think is one of the most powerful practices we can teach our kids NOW so that they can become incredible adults.
A few years ago, I was introduced to affirmations. If you aren’t aware of affirmations, they are powerful statements or phrases that help re-wire our subconscious mind and fill our minds with an alternate way of thinking.
For example, I was raised in the midst of diet culture. My grandma and mom would constantly talk about starting a diet, being on a diet, quitting a diet, needing to lose weight and so on. Because of this constant conditioning and narrative that was said in front of me, I developed fears and phobias around food and weight gain. While I never developed an eating disorder, I thought about it plenty. I have worked HARD on my body mindset after having four babies in five years and it takes conscious effort and changing your thoughts to get there. Using affirmations can be a really powerful tool to get you from where you are to where you want to be. Affirmations I have used for this are “I love my body, I am grateful for my body and all it does for me. Food is fuel and I honor my body with good foods. I am grateful for my healthy, lean, and strong body.”
So how does this work for kids?!? Let me tell you. Since I introduced affirmations to my kids a few years ago when my oldest was 4 and my second was 3, it has been a game changer as a parent. I used 10 simple phrases with my kids that The Holistic Psychologist had recommended and at breakfast we would say them together. They started to use these simple phrases in their every day life and when playing with friends! I would catch them saying things to each other like “You choose your attitude Emmett!” or “You can do hard things Attley.” Recently my two year old has started saying “I believe in you!” when he sees others struggling with something. Melt. My, Heart.
Now, while I would like to say I have been consistent and for the last two years our affirmation practice has happened every day, I assure you, it has not. However, this summer I noticed my daughter become obsessed with looking at herself in the mirror and making sure her hair and appearance was just so. After witnessing this a few times, I encouraged her to start saying her affirmations while she brushes her hair or fiddles with her appearance. She was coy about it but she slowly started whispering the affirmations to herself in the mirror. You guys-I know how powerful it is to speak these things to yourself in the mirror and I can barely do it! For her to start doing it at a young age before she learns and picks up crappy social norms is incredible!! She will already be SO far ahead when it comes to her mindset and attitude towards life.
While I know this may seem silly or weird, can you imagine saying things to yourself in the mirror like “I believe in myself. I am unique. I can do things that are hard. I choose my attitude” and how your mindset and inner dialogue would shift and change day after day?!? Later in life, when someone makes a mean comment about an outfit, she can say, “Yes I am unique.” Or when she is struggling with a new skill, I will remind her “We can do things that are hard.” And when she is grumpy about something or whining about something that we have already discussed, she can remind herself that “I choose our attitude.”
How powerful for her to know that she has SO much more power than she knows. She gets to choose her vibration and energy and while that terminology is a little big for her 5 year old brain, I LOVE that she will have these tools in her pocket for the years to come.
With life events, we have made the decision to homeschool this year and as I was thinking about what I want my two oldest to learn this year and what I want them to get out of the year. I got really excited about expanding our affirmation practice and teaching them a. powerful morning routine. So I developed a 13 week Affirmation and Gratitude Journal for kids! You guys I am obsessed with this and I have tried it out with my kids and they love it!
The Affirmation and Gratitude Journal gives you 13 affirmations that they can say to themselves each day and then each week you focus on one affirmation where you practice writing it and drawing/writing your gratitudes. The journal also gives you extra ideas and activities to embody and practice the affirmation in real life. This is so powerful!
The Affirmation and Gratitude journal can be done any time of day which makes it the perfect activity for breakfast, after dinner or before bed. I know you might be wary of starting a practice that involves writing or adding more “work” to your child’s plate but hear me out- this is powerful work. This isn’t busy work or random homework that they will memorize and forget. This is re-wiring and programming their little minds to think differently. To go for the positive, uplifting thought rather than the negative. With daily practice and encouragement, your child can speak to themselves and others in a powerful and encouraging way! If you are still wary but want a place to start an affirmation practice, I designed these simple affirmation sheets that you can download, print and hang up around your house! Even if your kids just hear you say them they are still hearing and internalizing these uplifting and powerful phrases!
If you have been in my world for a while, you know that one of my missions in life is to support moms so that we can raise conscious kids who change the world. I truly believe this journal is the start of that and together we can uplift the future generation to shine brighter than we ever imagined.
