More than saying I love you—part 2

Last week I reviewed the book, “More than saying I love you” by Andrea Goodman Weiner.  It’s a book about how to teach your child self-love.  I’ve explained what self-love is and why it’s important to teach your child (and yourself, too) that.  This week, I’m going to share two of the activities provided in the book.

The first one is called “Youer than You” statements.  It’s an alternative way to praise and/or provide feedback to your child.  Young children see the world through their parents’ eyes.  They take in the parents’ comments/opinions as their own and use that to figure out who they are.  We often hear parents or teachers say “I like how you draw that picture”, “I like how you help Johnny pick up all his toys” or “I’m so proud of you, getting an A in the test”.  This kind of statements puts the emphases on the adult who says it and encourages the child to seek outside approval from the authority.  By using “you” statement, you will put the verbal verification back to the child.  For example, when your child asks if you like her painting (My girls used to ask me this question about once a week), instead of saying, “I like it”, you can ask her “do YOU like it?”  After she says “yes”, you can say, “Great, because YOU liking it is the most important thing”.  Other examples are “You must be so proud that you aced that test.  You’ve worked so hard”, “you are such a good friend to Johnny, helping him clean up his room.”

The second activity is “Thought Lie Detector”.  This is especially helpful if your child tends to be a “worry wart”.  People have hundreds of thoughts going through their head each day.  A lot of them are not as positive as we like.  When a negative thought keeps recurring or takes hold in your mind, it tends to become a reality for you.  We need to teach our children to catch such unhelpful thoughts.  These thoughts sometimes contain the word “should”, such as “I shouldn’t say that in class, now everybody would think I’m a dork”, “I should’ve done better in that test, now I will never get into a good college.”  Or you can teach your child to catch the feelings that comes with the thought, such as the fear, the anxiety, the lump in her throat.  When your child is bothered by an unfounded negative thought about herself or about a situation, ask her “is this thought really true?”  If the answer is “yes,” then ask the next question, “if so, how do you know for sure?”  Ask her to find the evidence that support this negative thought.  When she understands that that negative thought was unfounded, then you can ask “what is a truer thought?”  Help her to find the evidence supporting the new, more accurate thought. 

There are more useful and fun activities in the book.  They go from pregnancy all the way to 18 years old and beyond.  In fact, some of the activities that she created can be used by adults.  It’s like the Chinese saying, “教學相長”, meaning, teaching other people will help yourself learn more.

More than saying I love you—Part 1

Over the summer, I read several interesting books, some fictions, others self-help.  There’s one book I’d like to recommend to all parents.  That is “More than saying I love you: 4 powerful steps that help children love themselves” by Andrea Goodman Weiner.  It’s a short book talking about the importance of self-love and how parents can help their children achieve that.  There is a review of every chapter in a bullet point format so you can refresh your memory after you finish a chapter.  She also provides easy, practical, and fun activities for parents to do with their children.

But, what is self-love and why do we need it?  Self-love is the acceptance and understanding of one’s own attributes and faults at the current moment.  It’s a non judgmental way of looking at yourself, recognizing and accepting all your goods and bads.  It’s happening right at this moment, not sometime later.  There is no “when I get straight A this year, I will be loved”.  It’s more like “I know math is hard for me right now but I’m pretty good with social studies.  I could spend a little more time on math to make it better.”  Self-love is not being self-centered or teaching children have a sense of entitlement.  It’s not about teaching children to think that they are better than others and deserve special treatment from other people.  Self-love is to treat yourself with loving kindness and with that, to treat other people with the same loving kindness, like what Confucius said, “Do unto others what you want done unto you.”

A person with self-love is a person with confidence and kindness.  You take real stock of yourself, not an over critical one or an exaggerated estimate of your ability.  When you can do that, you won’t spend time on beating yourself up or complaining why others don’t see your potential.  Instead, you can enjoy your life and work on things that you need to work on.  This is the greatest gift you can give to your child.  It will shield her from the unwanted judgment and self-doubt.  It will give her the inner strength that she can draw on for the rest of her life.  It will give her the ability to love others.  In the next blog post, I will share two of the fun activities from this book.

Got Milk?

A couple of years ago, my daughter’s Chinese teacher forwarded a video made by TzuChi to all the parents, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=681454phu6A  It was a doctor talking about the problems caused by cow’s milk.  That was the turning point of my family’s life.

My daughters never like the taste of cow’s milk, especially whole milk.  I only ask them to drink a cup of soymilk in the morning and that’s that (we switched to almond milk now).  Yet, it becomes a point of argument with our pediatrician during our annual check up.  It always went like this,

Dr.: “how many cups of milk does Dana/Kate drink?”

I: “One cup of soy milk in the morning.”

Dr.: “That’s not enough calcium for their bones.  They need to drink more milk.”

I: “We eat lots of green vegetables, tofu and bean curds.”

Dr.: “Yeah, but they need more milk to make their bone stronger.”

Eventually, I cracked under the pressure and I decided to ask my kids to drink more milk.  Since soymilk is kind of expensive, I tried cow’s milk.  To get them to like cow’s milk, I put chocolate syrup in there so they can drink chocolate milk.  That became part of our dinner routine for a few months.  My older daughter started to gain weight and her nose is stuffed up.  She also has so much nasal discharge that I was wondering if the allergy season has extended for her.

Then I watched that video.  I was also reading The China Study by Dr. T. Colin Campbell at the time.  I was appalled by the information I saw.  I stopped the nightly chocolate milk and cut dairy off our diet (I was drinking cow’s milk every other day and ate one slice of cheese every day for breakfast).  In a month, I saw some changes in my daughters and myself.  Gone were the phlegm, the stuffed nose, and my younger daughter’s cough.  I used to have quite a few discharges in my eyes.  Those are gone, too.  I was amazed at the changes.

We still eat dairy products sometimes, mostly in a restaurant.  My girls love pizza and ice cream.  I don’t want to deprive them those occasional treats.  Yet, I stopped buying cow’s milk and cheese in any form.  I still notice the effects of dairy every time we eat out and have food that’s made of cheese or milk, though.