Unconventional Ways To Teach Your Child To Be Kind To Themselves

As parents, we all want children who are kind not just to others but to themselves. Good self-esteem and a solid sense of self-worth are some of the most important gifts we can give our little ones, and some of how we do that feels very intuitive. Tell them they are loved! Praise them! Reassure them when they’re feeling down! These are all good ideas, but TikTok creator Noor (@noor.elanss) recently offered some off-beat advice on how to build self-kindness in children.

“I was raised with kind parents who taught me how to be kind to myself, but it wasn’t in the ‘Oh my goodness! You’re so smart! You’re so beautiful!’ type of way,” she explains.

Here’s what they did instead.

Defend kids from negative self-talk by making it personal

“Whenever me or my siblings would ever say anything negative about ourselves, or speak badly about ourselves, my mom would look at us and be like ‘Don’t speak about my daughter like that,’” she shares.

It reinforced the idea they weren’t allowed to put themselves down while also letting them know they were loved.

De-emphasize the importance of pretty

This one is funny in a cheeky, lighthearted way.

“Whenever I felt uncomfortable, or I felt ugly, or I was just self-conscious and didn’t want to go out, instead of being ‘Oh my goodness, no you’re so beautiful!’ she’d be like ‘We’re not getting married today. I’m not going to marry you off today. Get out the door: we’re going.”

Noor says it really helped her understand that she didn’t have to feel beautiful every moment of every day. Not only did it get her up and out the door, but it took pressure off her to always be or even feel beautiful.

Brag on your kid

This one is maybe the most intuitive, but it still bears mentioning.

“[My mom] would always say super nice things about me in front of our friends and our family,” Noor recalls, smiling. “She would never complain about me ... in front of other people. And whenever she talks about me to other people ... it feels like she’s proud of me. It’s such an amazing thing to see the people you love speak positively about you.”

Seriously.

Be wary what you’re praising

Noor explains that she was a gifted child — school was easy for her — but because her mom didn’t particularly praise her natural talents too much, being smart was never her “defining feature.”

“I never felt like my self worth was tied to me being smart or me excelling,” she says. “So that was amazing in teaching me that my worth was not tied to my achievements or tied to what I’m able to do. My worth is just tied to me as her daughter and as a human being.”

At the end of the day, these are all little things, but according to Noor, they’re extremely effective.

“[They] really ingrained in me the idea of kindness and self kindness and self respect and how to be kind to myself and how to speak to myself kindly,” she concludes.

So next time you’re hoping to instill a bit of self-love in your children, maybe think about implementing these techniques... and maybe go ahead and try them on yourself as well.