Words of Wonder Tee - Let's Start a Conversation
Next week is Eating Disorder Awareness week (26 Feb-4 March).
I’m aiming to help raise awareness of how, we as parents, can work to encourage self-belief. It is well understood that an eating disorder goes so much deeper than feelings about food and parents often wonder what they can do to avoid their children’s food phobias escalating out of control.
What is undoubtedly worthwhile investing time in is working out what worries your kids and communicating with them on this. We can’t always say the right thing as parents but what we can do is listen with empathy and praise with enthusiam. It’s tough, sometimes, growing up. Kids have so many doubts and worries about themselves and their surroundings. So what can we do? Well, how more amazing is your day if it starts with a compliment, ‘you look great in that’. Or how do we feel, as adults, when at the end of the day, a workmate tell us ‘that presentation was incredible’, ‘today, you rocked’.
Encourage our little ones to be proud of their achievements, praise character and effort and take the focus off perfection.
Can you help me make dinner, you are so good at stirring the pasta? (Making dinner is such a great time to talk through the day)
I loved the way you helped your friend today. You are such a lovely person. (Reinforce compassion)
Your painting is amazing, look at all that colour and the brush strokes are so well thought out. (It might be a splodge of paint but who needs perfection)
And for older ones …….You look so good without make up. It’s great you decided not to wear any today. (It was their choice, hurrah!)
Consistent tiny moments of praise help to establish self-belief.
To help communication along the way, I’m using these Words of Wonder Tees to take photos of kids who are embracing self-belief. The inspired idea behind this brand is based on the fact that (to quote Words of Wonder) ‘1 in 10 children age 5-16 years has a mental health problem and many continue to have these problems into adulthood. That’s 3 in every classroom’.
We believe talking with children and letting them express their thoughts and feelings helps their emotional wellbeing. That’s why we donate 10% of the sale price to Place2Be – one of the UK’s leading children’s mental health charities.’
Fabulous for starting conversation based on key words such as BELIEVE, PROUD, HAPPY, LOVE, STRONG.
Take a look https://wow-online.co.uk/
More tips to follow next week on helping kids to feel fine around food