3 Essential Beliefs Kids Need For Emotional Health

It’s a big question (especially when your kids are little) - What would I be doing to set my child up for success in adulthood? We all want our kids to thrive and be well. Today, I’m sharing the 3 essential beliefs kids need for emotional health.You’ll Learn:The 3 essential beliefs that help ensure your child grows up to have good self esteem, take risks, think for themselves, be responsible, and have good relationshipsWhat you can do to support these beliefs in your kidPractical examples of how to reinforce these beliefs, even when your child is misbehavingHow to coach your kid through negative thoughtsThis episode breaks down the key ingredients to helping your kid become emotionally healthy and resilient - now and as an adult.----------------------------------------The three essential beliefs are:I am safe.I’m lovable.I am capable.These are the beliefs that help ensure your child grows up to have good self esteem, take risks, think for themselves, be responsible, and have good relationships with others and with their own body.Each person comes into the world preset to believe these things. They want them to be proven true. The problem happens when they start to get different messages or they have experiences in childhood happen to them and that are never explained.Your child's earliest years (between 0-5) set the groundwork for their subconscious beliefs about themselves and the world. And those beliefs are reinforced up until around age 12. They are absorbing messages all the time about themselves and the world based on their environment and their interactions with you.You have a lot of influence over your child's beliefs about themselves. When you can reinforce these essential beliefs in them - showing them that they’re safe, lovable, and capable - they get the message and carry those beliefs with them into adulthood.Belief #1: I am safe.This is the belief that I am safe, and the world is safe. I don't need to worry so much about my needs. I can relax in my environment, and from that relaxed state I can go and try and do hard things and take big swings in the world and live my life.Why it mattersBabies cannot meet any of their own physical needs, so they trust and rely on us to care for them. This is the beginning of building safety. “The grownups in my world are safe.”As they get a little older, safety becomes not only physical but also emotional. They want to know that you can handle their big feelings. You are the person who will protect, not harm, them. They don’t need to be scared of you.The idea of safety also shifts as we see more behaviors. They might start to see safety as conditional. That they are safe and cared for as long as they act a certain way. It can also be based on the adult’s emotional capacity, patience, etc. When their safety is in question, the child becomes hypervigilant and aware. They’re always looking around trying to figure out, “Am I safe?”.Without a core belief that the world is safe, we start to see things like anxiety, dissociating, seeking safety in relationships (or rejecting relationships), and other unhealthy behaviors.What to doThe goal, then, is to be a physically and emotionally reliable caregiver for your child. This means regulating your nervous system, so that you can be calm and reinforce these core beliefs.Boundaries and rules are also important to creating a sense of safety. We don’t want to be too harsh or rigid, but predictable routines and limits help kids know what to expect and show them that their adult is going to do what they say they will do. I like to think of these rhythms as a metronome in the background of life.Belief #2: I am lovable.You can also think of this belief as “I'm good enough”. We want our kids to walk through the world believing that they're good enough exactly as they are. That they're worthy of love, and you accept them unconditionally.Why it mattersKids have a really hard time separating themselves from their behavior. So when you communicate that you don’t like how they’re acting, it can be confusing. They can take it to mean that you don’t like them. Or that you only love them when they’re behaving a certain way.This means that you have to actively communicate to them that they're lovable no matter how they act, that they are good enough, and that you accept them exactly as they are. They don't have to do anything or be anything different in order to receive your unconditional acceptance. They can't earn your love, and it can't be taken away.When a child goes through life thinking that they're not good enough or they're not lovable, they show up with a lot of people pleasing behavior. They may be perfectionistic. They may deny their own needs or their own ideas. They might squash down their creativity or intuition because they think they need to show up in a certain way in order to be accepted by the adults in their life.What to doOne of the really difficult thoughts for us to work ...