Negative self-talk is something your children will hear coming from friends, family, and shows. They see this behavior and no matter what you do and how much you encourage self-love. You may find your child still calling themselves “stupid” or “mean”. Keep doing what you doing with the compliments, showing your children your own mistakes, and complimenting whenever you see them going through something. And, do the famous words of affirmation each day. But, you still may see that struggle. Kids get bullied, they may struggle with perfectionism and even anxiety. You can try having your children write down their negative feelings on a piece of paper, crumbling it up, and throwing it away to help them let it go.
Even if your child struggles with self-love and you’re doing all of the right things, don’t give up! It’s still so important to teach your children self-love. Happiness comes from within. And knowing how wonderful you are, is one of the most important things in the world. It provides confidence to help children accomplish difficult tasks. It allows them to build secure, healthy relationships, and handle bullying or insensitive people easier.
When you’re struggling with teaching your child self-love, we recommend reading “Terry Tyrannosaurus Gets An Instrument” to them.
As children read Terry’s story, they may relate to not feeling like they’re good enough. As Terry wishes he was more like his dinosaur friends, your child may understand what that feels like. It’s all well and good to have a parent lifting you up and talking things out, but young children are very impressionable from outside influences too. They tend to listen to the cool dinosaur character in a book over what mom says. This is because children think their parents have to love them and have to say nice things. But, others don’t.
Seeing Terry’s struggle, and learning from the important people in Terry’s life, children struggling to love themselves will start to see it’s okay to not be perfect. As Terry makes mistakes, they learn they’re not so different. In fact, making mistakes is important and completely normal. While relating to Terry, children become sympathetic and can begin to see the fault in Terry’s thinking. They realize all that negative self-talk isn’t actually true. Parents, you can help children make the connection that if Terry is still special, just the way he is, so are they. You can guide them during the reading to understand it’s okay to not be perfect, and everything that makes your child different from others, also makes them special.
Use Terry as a tool to help your child overcome negative self-talk. Show them the parallels they share with this dino, things that every child can relate to and see in themselves. Terry is special. He is also clumsy, has a big mouth, tiny arms, and a long tail that always gets in the way. And, that’s okay!
Enjoy this book reading of “Terry Tyrannosaurus Gets An Instrument” with your kid(s). Talk to them and guide them in their journey towards self-love. Open up the discussion on perfectionism, making mistakes, and being different isn’t such a bad thing. Not everything is made in shades of all “good” or all “bad”, there’s always a balance it is normal, it is acceptable, and it’s okay. It’s important to be happy with yourself, who you are, and to love yourself. Once you’re done with the video reading, head over to the Palosaur Tales website below and do fun dinosaur activities with your kids! Spend some fun time together with the character your children now love and have read about.