What Are Positive Affirmations and Why Should Your Child Try Them?

What are Positive Affirmations and How Can They Help Kids?

You know those nagging, self-sabotaging thoughts that rattle around in your head? The ones that tell you that you aren’t good enough and attempt to stop you from reaching your goals? There’s a simple yet powerful way you can help quieten them and transform them into something positive.

By carefully crafting positive affirmations you can combat negative thoughts. When you replace those thoughts and harmful self-talk you transform them into encouraging motivational tools.

A thought, or belief like “I’m not good enough” is an example of this negative self-talk. Self-talk like this can stop you in your tracks before you even get started.

Now imagine how it must feel if you are too young to understand these thoughts.

Have you heard your child say anything like:

• I can’t do this, it’s too hard
• I’m stupid
• I’ll never be able to ______
• I’m going to get it wrong?

Do any of these sound familiar to you? If they do, then the ability to reframe them into positive affirmations could be a valuable strategy for your child.

In this post, I’ll define positive affirmations and how they can help children, share a few examples of affirming words and phrases and 5 tips for crafting successful affirmations.

What are Positive Affirmations?

If positive affirmations make you think of kooky instagram quotes from self-proclaimed wellness gurus, I’d encourage you to bear with me – they really can be powerful!

Put simply, positive affirmations are brief phrases that you say repeatedly. The intention is to counter the negative thoughts of the person who is saying them. 

Important note: positive affirmations are not the same as mantras. ‘Mantra’ is often incorrectly used instead of ‘affirmation’. Mantras have a sacred or spiritual importance, particularly in the Hindu faith.

Why Are They Important?

Positive affirmations can boost your mood, make you feel better about yourself, encourage and motivate you.

They can help children who lack resilience, confidence or have low self-esteem. This is achieved by changing negative thought patterns into encouraging, positive phrases.

Importantly, affirmations are easy to practice once the negative thoughts or self talk are identified.

Let’s use, “I’m stupid” as an example that a child might say. Take the phrase and reframe it to something like “I am smart”, “I am capable” or “I can do difficult things”.

After you’ve created the phrase, it needs to be spoken and repeated. That’s all there is to it.

By reframing the negative thought into a positive, you begin the process of rewiring the brain’s neural pathways.

5 Real Examples of Affirmations

What are affirming words?

Affirming words are words which declare something to be true.

To craft a positive affirmation, all the words in the phrase should all be positive. Change every ‘can’t’, ‘lose’ and ‘fail’ into ‘can’, ‘win’ and ‘succeed’. Importantly, they should always be phrased in the present tense, which might sound and feel strange! Using the present tense helps your subconscious to believe the affirmation to be already true. “I am capable of _____” is more powerful than “I will be capable of _____”.

What are examples of positive affirmations?

Here are five positive affirmations that may be useful, depending on your child’s needs. If not, I hope that they are useful in the process of creating unique affirmations with them.

• I am a capable learner.
• I am a great friend.
• I have a powerful brain.
• I learn from my mistakes.
• I have unique ideas.

Enjoying this topic? Here’s a related post:

• Children’s Mental Health: What Do Parents Need to Know?

5 Tips and Reminders for Introducing Positive Affirmations to Your Child

1. They should say their affirmations out loud several times every day – ideally whilst looking in a mirror.
2. Reframe a negative self belief into a positive phrase and use the present tense.
3. By all means help your child to create their affirmations, but be mindful that the words need to be theirs so that they are meaningful.
4. The best affirmations are simple and easy to remember.
5. Be patient – it takes time to rewire the brain and form more positive thought patterns.

Final Thoughts on Positive Affirmations

You may be wondering if affirmations actually work – are they effective?

There are convincing arguments out there for and against, and there is a growing body of evidence showing that affirmations can be a helpful tool for ‘reprogramming’ the brain to combat negative self-talk. I’ve added some links at the bottom of this article if you’d like to read more about the science.

They won’t work for everyone. However, affirmations can help to quieten the voice of the inner critic and enable positive self belief. Encouraging positive thinking can never be a bad thing.

Even if the impact of repeating affirmations is only small – if they help your child to think more positively about themselves and believe in their own abilities even a tiny bit more – they must be worth a shot!

Last but not least, I encourage you to not only help your child to create some positive affirmations that fit their needs, but also I encourage you to try some too.

One I always fall back on, that is really simple but helps me enormously is “You are enough”. It’s an affirmation that can be useful in so many situations. Give it a try!

Have you tried affirmations either yourself or with your child?

I’d love to hear about your experiences – were they successful? Let me know in the comments at the bottom of the page.

Want to try affirmations with your child?

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