is a parent who believed first.
GREAT PRINCIPLE BUT...
What if we, parents, with all our love and best intentions, haven't learnt to believe in ourselves first?
It is widely acknowledged that children learn about themselves and the world by absorbing their parents' BEHAVIOURS (these are stored in our subconscious so we may not even be aware of them when they come up).
Those behaviours create beliefs in our children's minds, which essentially download a filter (positive or negative) through which they start to see themselves and the world. This filter gets reinforced over time.
So if mum or dad have all the best intentions in the world but cannot help constantly worry or over think, (“Careful, don’t climb there you might fall”, “Oh I don’t know about that, this looks hard, let’s do that instead”, “Let me do this for you”, “But this or that could happen”, “I don’t think you can do this”), their BELIEFS will be absorbed by their children, who will in turn start to display a lack of SELF CONFIDENCE: “This looks challenging, better turn away from it”, “I could make a mistake. This thought is scary; better not try this”, “I am not good enough for this”, “What if someone said “no”? Better not ask at all”, “I can’t do this”...
In my view, one of the great Life gifts we can pass on to our children is to have the strength to ALLOW them to fail (as much as we want to protect them from feeling negative emotions), coach them to spot FOR THEMSELVES the message or lesson to take away from their failures, reach out our hand to them, help them get up and show them unconditional love (no judgment!) after they have failed.
This is, in my opinion, the best way to teach our children to believe in themselves.
To achieve this, we must learn to believe in ourselves first and let go of our own fears and insecurities.
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