Let me introduce you to this week’s guest blogger Peter K. Affectionately known as Mr. Pete, he has been teaching and entertaining children for over 10 years. Mr. Pete currently resides in Mint Hill, NC and along with his family, owns The Little Gyms of Huntersville/Lake Norman and Charlotte on Providence. When Mr. Pete’s not at the gyms you can find him spending time with his wife Kim and two children, Jonah and Penelope. When he does get a spare moment, Mr. Pete enjoys cooking, home brewing, movies, pumpkin patches and college football. Feel free to contact Mr. Pete on facebook at Peter J Kusiak.
Like many men out there, I often get asked by my wife, “Does this make me look fat?” Or my favorite, hidden in its other form, “are my legs as big as hers?” Being secure in my marriage and believing in honesty, I answer truthfully. Luckily for me, the lord has blessed me with a beautiful wife, so it’s easy being honest. Self-image is something I’ve never been overly concerned about. I’m a big guy! Some say a Teddy Bear or a Santa in training and I’ve accepted that. In fact, I’m proud of it. I have found a partner in life, generally healthy, have children, a career and I’m not worried about having to impress anyone.
It wasn’t until I became a Daddy that I started worrying about self-image. Not for myself, but for my children. I’m worried that my children won’t accept themselves for who they, lack confidence to try new things, or struggle to fit in when it comes to social situations. Sound familiar? Like you, I just want to ensure I am giving my children every opportunity to be successful in life. With the roots of success hinging upon interactions and situations our children face from birth it’s enough to make any parent stress out.
Luckily enough there some techniques out there that can help. Over the past ten years being involved in The Little Gym franchise I have had the pleasure of teaching and coaching parents not just in building gymnastics skills but building life skills. It has been so rewarding for me to have an impact on not only the children’s self-image but for parent’s as well. After all as parents we want to be reassured that we are doing a “good job.” Listed below are a few tricks of the trade that I have used not only at The Little Gyms but in my home with my own children.
1) Hug your child – Not just once or twice, but as many times as you can in a day. Hugging tells your child that they are wanted. It says “I love you” and I want to embrace you. This is huge when it comes to self-image. What you are telling your child through physical expression is that they are worthy of physical touch, they are beautiful and most importantly accepted for who they are. Never stop hugging. Hug when they do something great, when they are hurt, or even when they are in trouble. You may have heard of a technique used with infants called Kangaroo Care. There is a whole science devoted to why babies need physical contact. My point is, don’t stop. Personally I don’t think I would use the Kangaroo technique as my child starts to age, as that may be a little weird, but certainly a hug or a snuggle is something I plan to do with my kids for the rest of their lives.
2) Be Specific – Omit the phrase “good job” from your vocabulary. Simply put, it’s just not good enough. What was good? A phrase like that just isn’t specific enough when it comes to building confidence or reaffirming a situation or behavior. Now no fault of yours, you are just doing what was probably done to you and certainly there are worse things you could be telling your child. Try it. See if you can get specific with your child. Try something like this, “Jonah, thanks so much for cleaning up your toys. You are so fast at doing that!” or maybe something like this “Penelope, I can’t believe you ate all your veggies, that was incredible!”
3) Accept Failures – This one is conceptually pretty difficult, or at least for me it was. I never want to see my children fail. I want them to try new things and be successful. However I’ve come to accept the honest truth, there are going to be times when my children fail, and that’s ok. Think about it. How often do you do things exactly perfect the first time? Probable not many, so allow your child the opportunity to try something and fail. When they do succeed at that same task just imagine how their confidence will flourish.
So now that you can accept that your child may fail at times, it’s just as equally important that your child can accept that too. Many times when my children try something new and don’t succeed it ends in frustration or tears. Maybe you can relate. I’ve found using a dialogue that both supports them in their efforts and provides them reassurance of being accepted, they tend to be more willing to try again. Try saying something like this “Penny, it’s ok to make mistakes, I love you just the way you are, now let’s try that again!” Wow what a great message. How cool would it be if your boss said that to you! Ok, maybe a little weird, unless you work at The Little Gym.
4) Celebrate all the victories – No matter how big or small, be sure to celebrate. Sometimes you have to get creative when looking for a victory. Try finding something good in the situation even if the outcome was less desirable.
For my, “glass half empty friends” just give it a try. I’ll give you an example: in our home we allow our kids to get out as many toys as they want. It keeps them entertained and honestly I don’t like to limit their creativity. However putting our toys away has been a challenge. My son starting saying “No, daddy do it.” Of course this wasn’t going to happen, right? So I started asking him nicely to clean up and to my surprise he was making attempts to do it. At first my expectations were pretty high. I wanted everything cleaned up all at once, toy after toy until the task was complete. Pretty lofty wasn’t it?
What I found was a lot of disappointment. Mainly because it was too much to ask and the way I was presenting the task, wasn’t setting him up for success. Instead, I started finding small victories in his attempts, I started saying things like, “Wow I can’t believe you picked up all your trucks, give me a hug.” How you choose to celebrate is up to you. I obviously am a huge fan of hugs. Jonah had a sense of accomplishment and it made me very proud. I then starting asking for more, “Now how about all the books”, followed of course by a celebration. This was working great and I could really tell that Jonah was feeling successful and for me, there was no better feeling than seeing him victorious. Flashes of touchdowns and graduations began forming in my mind.
So there you have it, just a few techniques that I have learned along the way and have used in my own home with my own family. The trick is to start slow. Find a technique that you are initially comfortable with, then try another one. I’m certain you’ll start finding the joys of watching your children become confident and successful, which will lead to a healthy and positive self-image. Thanks for reading and remember to make time for fun and laughter.
What’s one thing you do to build your child’s self-image?
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