7 Ways to help your Child Bloom

Spring is in the air, seven ways to help your child to bloom rather than wilt…the Buddy Bench method. 

As parents it’s a key concern to do everything we can to raise a happy, confident and creative child, but it can be difficult to see the difference between what actually works long term and what will eventually become a quick fix that didn’t work or even worse a total myth..

Years of research into how the mind works. The first and most important being that it’s best to start at the beginning!  All too often we as a society try to ‘fix’ problems later down the line.

Reacting to what has already gone wrong. Research has indicated that as that old adage says ‘it’s far better to prevent than cure’. With that said,  teaching children to identify and manage their emotions, thereby building emotional intelligence skills, resilience and  wellbeing at the earliest possible age is certainly the way forward when it comes to preventing mental health issues further down the line. Yes even as young as three in our Little Buddies workshop.

7 top tips are supported by some of the pioneers of our time when it comes to Positive Psychology, Positive Thoughts and Empowering Children.

1.Teach your child to live in the moment! A wandering mind is an unhappy mind… It has often been said the the present is called just that because it is a gift! Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert recently conducted an experiment that showed that focus on what we are doing rather than what has happened in the past or may happen in the future produced vastly increased levels of happiness…

2. Encourage positive emotions!  Learning to purposely invoke feelings of love, happiness, care and appreciation is now proven to have profound positive effects on both our minds and bodies. Even greater is the ability to notice a negative emotion and choose to shift to a positive one instead.

3.Allow your child to play to their strengths, while learning to grow… Finding the balance between doing what is familiar and easy, with discovering new things and learning strengths we never knew we had is one of the keys to feeling happy and fulfilled.

4.Provide your child plenty of opportunities for love and connection… Research has shown that a child can increase their school grades through simply eating meals with their family and engaging in conversations. Put your devices away and chat.

5.Encourage your child to ask empowering questions… What else is possible? For example will generate completely different answers than What’s wrong with me, why can’t I do this? Asking empowering questions will cause your child’s brain to search for empowering answers, while asking dis-empowering questions will return answers that confirm the question being asked!

6.Encourage your child to build a vision for the future… If you don’t know where you’re going all roads lead there!  If a child is able to decide from an early age what they want their future to look like they can engage something called the Reticular Activating System (the part of our brain responsible for seeing more red mini’s on the road than ever before once we either decide that’s what we want to buy or actually get one!). Once engaged the Reticular Activating System (RAS) is designed to seek out and move towards what we have created as a vision. Helping a child set goals, write them down and draw what they will look like will power rocket the RTA into action!

Last but not least, in fact vitally important is to 

7.Celebrate Successes… Once a child has set and achieved even the smallest of goals, celebrate, celebrate, celebrate! Look for things to celebrate.

Why not pick up a journal for your child and get them to start with three things they are thankful for each day either written down or drawn on the pages so they can spend vital time feeling good about themselves and their lives.

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