I recently heard an acquaintance of mine saying that she wished that her eldest daughter knew how talented she was. She went on to say that she felt her daughter was extremely kind and generous, but always played down her skills to a point where they were almost seen as a bad thing, and it drove Mom mad!
The thing I had noticed, was that Mom often did the same thing.
Mom herself is an amazing woman, who has achieved a lot in life, but often spends time saying how she feels she isn’t “good enough”, or her achievements are nothing compared to others around her. Could it be that her daughter is hearing this, and feels the need to do the same?
At college, there was a teacher there who one day said that she was getting concerned that her daughter (aged 11 at the time) was developing problems with food, as she kept saying she was “fat” and wanted to “go on a diet”. She couldn’t work out where this had come from! The thing was, whether she realised it or not, she herself was always talking about trying the latest diet, or “needing to lose a few pounds”.
I recently had an experience where I realised that a child was copying what I said and did, as it was the best way for him to experience feeling the words on his tongue and the movement in his body, so that he could learn these new things for himself. I was his reference point! (Scary!)
It made me realise that children are absorbing information all the time – even when we think that they are looking at (or doing) something else. They are taking on our negative thoughts about ourselves (even if we don’t intend for them to hear them) and thinking that this is how it should be for them too. They are copying (at any age) the examples being set for them by their nearest adults, the people that they look up to. We too have probably learned our behaviour from someone that we looked up to as we were growing up, and some habits can be hard to break. We are setting examples without always being aware of the type of example that we are setting.
So, if we want the children around us to be the amazing beings that we know they can be, then we have to start doing the same for us, yes?
Let’s start with being kind to ourselves.
Have a great day!
Vixx 😀
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