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How to Teach Your Kids to Love Themselves

18th Jul 2018

We live in scary times. Every day, more and more young people succumb to an awful fate thanks to low-self esteem and lack of self-love.

It’s a society where girls are constantly taught they aren’t good enough and encouraged to live up to an impossible beautystandard that leads to self-doubt and dangerously low self esteem. In fact, more women than ever are opting for cosmetic surgery, as Dr. Farbod Esmailian says, his clinic is busier than ever! Not that this is a bad thing, as long as the surgery is done with the best intentions.

So how can we fix this? To be perfectly honest, it’s not a case of ‘fixing it’ more preventing it from ever happening in the first place. A good defence is a good offence and here are some ways you can encourage your kids to grow up confident, full of self-love and well on their way to becoming a successful and emotionally stable adult.

Love Yourself First

Set a good example by being the person you want your child to be. No matter their gender, their mother or father should be a person that they look up to, admire and aspire to be. Exuding self confidence is a sure fire way to set them up to do the same.

Not the most confident person? Fake it until you make it! A great game to play with them during quiet time is the task of listing all the things you love about yourselves – it’s a great confidence and esteem booster!

Encourage Risks and Daring

Taking risks and doing daring tasks has been shown to create confident people who find success in their future, thanks to numerous studies. Encourage them to try something new -whether that be a new sport, new hobby, or even becoming the next young entrepreneur in the neighbourhood.

Being her confidence anchor when they’re doing things like these will set them up to challenge themselves throughout life and if you’re there when they fall or fail, they’ll know that it’s not the end of the world when they do so.

Educate Them on Nutrition

A big factor in low self-esteem is feeling bad about physical appearance, which can lead to eating disorders and unhealthy relationships with food. These unhealthy relationships with food stem from not knowing enough about what it is we’re supposed to eat, what is healthy and how to cook food that is good and nutritious for you.

Cook together as a family and explain to your children what each ingredient is, why it is going in the dish and what good it can do for the body.

Be Honest, Open and Loving

Being confident isn’t just about your appearance. Feeling content and settled with who you are as a person and the relationships you form is just as important as how you look on the outside and it’s really important to emphasise this fact to your children as you bring them up.

Things will get hard as they reach their teenage years, with hormones flying and things changing, but hopefully, if you’ve raised them to love themselves before they love anyone else, it will make the transition into adulthood that little bit easier.

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