Building Our Kids’ Resilience with Positive Affirmations

As parents, one of our primary goals is to protect our children.  We hold their little hands, put helmets on them, and make sure they don’t stray too far from us.  But we don’t only want to protect them physically—we want to protect them emotionally, too.  And we can’t do this by being there to combat every verbal or emotional assault (as much as we may want to!).  We need instead to arm them with resilience.  Fortunately, there are a lot of ways we can do this.  And one way is by practicing self-affirmations with them. 

You may have heard that the physical act of smiling actually creates a positive response in the brain.  When we feel down, even if we force a smile, we’re creating a chemical reaction in our brain, which then releases the feel good neurotransmitters responsible for positive reinforcement.  In a (I think hilarious) study about Botox, researchers concluded that Botox recipients who could no longer physically frown reported being happier.  (Though it seems reasonable to wonder if they’re just happier because their wrinkles are gone!)  But regardless, “turn that frown upside down” is much more than a corny little cliché—it’s actually good advice.

The same sort of effect occurs with self-affirmations.  A self-affirmation is simply a positive mantra that reinforces (or creates) a positive belief about oneself.  And just like a smile results in the release of our feel-good neurotransmitters, studies show that affirmations similarly activate both the reward circuits in our brains (ventral striatum (VS) and ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC)) and the centers responsible for “self-related processing” (medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) and posterior cingulate (PCC)).  This means that, as we repeat affirmations to ourselves, our brains reward us, therefore reinforcing the message, and simultaneously dampening emotional pain and maintaining balance when faced with a conflicting, negative message.  And because affirmations increase our self-related processing, we’re processing these positive messages about ourselves, and ingraining them, so when we’re (inevitably) faced with an emotional insult, we’re better buffered.

All of this supports the idea that we should be practicing self-affirmations with our kids (and ourselves!) as often as possible, so when we send them out into the world, to the (usually socially demanding and challenging) playground, they are armed with emotional strength.  When another child tells your little one they’re “dumb” or “ugly,” your child will be able to fall back on the positive default messages they’ve heard themselves repeat over and over–that they are a hard worker and a beautiful person inside and out.  Those false, emotionally wounding messages will have a much smaller chance of penetrating that shield of resilience.

So what should our kids be saying to themselves?  I think this is super child- and family-specific.  For us, we have a static list, and then I rotate in additional affirmations that are most relevant for my kids at that moment in time.  Our static list is: “I am kind.  I am loving.  I am brave.  I am honest.  I am funny.  I am good at sharing.  I am so loved.  Jesus loves me.  I am not better than anyone else.  And no one is better than me!”  And then when other issues arise (like listening or confidence), we add additional affirmations like “I am a good listener,” or “I am a hard worker.” 

As far as how we practice self-affirmations, I think again that’s up to your family!  Although I do think it’s important that kiddos say them aloud.  In our home, most of the time my kids look at themselves in the mirror and say their affirmations out loud, repeating after me.  And we have our list posted next to the mirror, which is a helpful reminder.  Sometimes, if we’re having our homeschool family meeting to start the day, we’ll say them in our little family circle.  Maybe it’s easiest for your family to say them together in the car during the morning commute.  Great!  Whatever works! As long as your kids are saying the affirmations out loud and meaning them, I think that’s what counts.

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One day, hopefully soon, we can swap out our kids’ protective masks for a protective layer of resilience.  So let’s move into 2021 affirming ourselves and our kids!  We all deserve it.