Sometimes, when kids have big feelings, they come out in the form of negative self-talk, especially if they’re feeling like they don’t belong, no one cares about them, or they just can’t get it right.

Today, I'm talking about coaching kids through negative self-talk, so that you know exactly what to do when your kid says things like “I’m stupid”, “No one likes me”, or “It’s all my fault”.

You’ll Learn:

• What to do when your kid is having negative thoughts about themself
• When and how to have a coaching conversation, with a full real-life example
• How to shift to a more positive way of thinking using the 3 Cs of thoughts
• Why your child might be resistant to coaching or teaching (and what to do about it)

It’s a big lesson: We can’t necessarily change our circumstances, but we do get to change how we respond to them.

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We’ve all done it, and you’ve probably heard your kid talk negatively about themself, too. Things like:

• I'm stupid
• I'll never be good at this
• Nobody likes me
• Everyone hates me
• You love him/her more
• You're always mad at me
• I'm a bad kid
• No one cares about me
• It's all my fault
• I can't do it

As they get a little older, you might even see these negative statements come up around their appearance: I'm fat, I'm ugly, I don't like my freckles, I don't like my red hair, I don't like my dark skin, etc.

Especially between the ages of 0-11, kids are building a set of beliefs about themselves. And as a parent, you want to guide them toward positive core beliefs. That’s what you’ll learn how to do today.

When Your Kid Expresses Negative Thoughts

It can be really hard as a parent to hear your child say these things about themself. At first, you might freak out a little bit and worry that your kid has anxiety, or they’re going to grow up to be depressed and have bad self-esteem.

But here’s the upside - saying these thoughts out loud, narrating them, is much healthier than keeping them secret and holding them all inside their head. When you know what they’re thinking and struggling with, you can help them through it.

Here are a couple of other things to keep in mind.

This is one specific moment in time. I often talk about parenting the kid in front of you. This is a great example of that. These thoughts and feelings are not who your child is. This is a moment in time. And it’s an opportunity for you to talk to them, coach them, and help them with their big feelings and their negative thoughts.

These statements are often general and/or exaggerated. When you hear things like, “I always,” or “I never”, it’s a sign that they are generalizing. This is a sort of extreme language. You can still validate that your child is feeling that way right now, while also holding the perspective that they won’t feel this way forever.

Be careful about dismissing or minimizing. Often, when parents hear their child say something negative about themself, they laugh it off or say, “that’s not true”, or “don’t think like that”. It’s a bit of a tricky balance.

You don’t have to get into a full coaching conversation every time your kid says something negative, but you also don’t want to consistently dismiss your child’s negative self-talk. You’re looking for some middle-of-the-road parenting here, where you’re not freaking out, but you’re still staying attuned to where your child is.

If you’re not sure whether something needs to be addressed, look for patterns. If there is a certain statement or insecurity that keeps coming up, that’s when you want to dig a little deeper and do some coaching.

Coaching Kids Through Negative Self-Talk

When I use the term “coaching”, I simply mean that you’re offering your kid a different way to think. You’re teaching them how to think better thoughts.

The first step (as usual) is to be sure that you and your child are both regulated and calm before you have a conversation about a thought. It is impossible to learn something new when you are in a Big Feeling Cycle. If your kid is mid-meltdown, they won’t be able to connect the dots or think logically. Connection always comes before coaching.

When your kid expresses negative thoughts about themself to you, they are looking to you for reassurance. This is one of those times when you being calm is super important. Your worry doesn’t help your kid. They’re going to borrow your state of mind, no matter what. So let’s make it a positive one that helps build their confidence and trust in themself.

In these moments, your child needs to borrow your confidence in them. They need to borrow your belief that they are going to learn to love themselves and they're going to grow into a strong adult who can handle lots and lots of things.

The goal with a coaching conversation is to fill a skill gap. You’re trying to move them from one set of behaviors or thoughts to another. Toward more self-love, accountability, and maturity.

I think of coaching conversations as having 3 parts:

1. Reflect on what’s been happening. What did they say or do? What pattern have you noticed?
2. Teach. First, you teach why their behavior isn’t working. Then, give them a new skill that they can use instead.
3. Practice the new skill.

Let’s walk through each step in a little more detail.

Reflect

There is no “right” time to start a coaching conversation. Maybe the thing you’re talking about happened a few minutes ago. Maybe it was yesterday or last week. The more important factor is that you wait until everyone is calm. Give yourself space to think about it a bit.

Some kids will want to talk about their thoughts and feelings with you. Some kids won’t. What’s important is that you give them the opportunity to reflect. And then you validate and normalize what’s going on for them.

Here are some steps to guide you.

• Remind them of what they said.
• Ask them about why they think they said that. Give them time to reflect.
• Validate. Let them know that it’s normal to have those kinds of thoughts.
• Ask them how that thought makes them feel.
• Ask them how they want to feel.

This last step is a big one, because kids have no idea that they actually have power over how they think and feel. What we're trying to do over the course of their childhood is to teach them that they have the power to change how they think about things. That they get to decide to think positively and feel better.

It’s a big lesson: We can’t necessarily change our circumstances, but we do get to change how we respond to them.

Here’s an example of starting a coaching conversation and going through reflection:

Earlier, I heard you say, “I’m stupid.” Do you remember saying that? What happened that made you say that?

It's normal for people to have thoughts like that, especially when you're feeling overwhelmed or you're feeling sad or you're feeling a little disappointed. It makes sense that you would think that because you made a mistake.

But guess what? When you think that way, does it make you feel happy or does it make you feel sad? Does that thought help you feel good about yourself? Or does that thought help you feel bad about yourself?

How do you want to feel?

Okay, well you can keep your sad thoughts, but what about if you tried to think of a different thought?

Teach

Here, you’ll continue teaching that your child has power over their own thoughts (and remember: you can’t force them to think positive thoughts).

To do this, you’ll teach them the 3 C's of thoughts. You catch your thought >> check your thought >> change your thoughts

1. Catch. Identify the thought. What was I just thinking? “I’m stupid” feels like a fact, but it’s really just a thought.
2. Check. Take a closer look at the thought. Is it helpful? Does the thought help you feel better or make you feel sad?
3. Change. If you decide you don’t like the thought, and it is making you feel bad, replace it with a more positive thought.

The new thought you choose doesn’t have to be the exact opposite of the one you are replacing. The positive thought has to be something that your brain will believe. Something that is useful and also true.

Going from “I’m stupid” to “I’m smart” might be too big of a jump. You can use what I call a bridge thought as an in-between to get to a more positive way of thinking.

For example:

Did you know that thoughts and feelings are like clouds? They come and they go. Negative thoughts are like rainy days. Positive thoughts are like sunny days. Sometimes it's raining, sometimes it's sunny.

But sometimes a negative thought can get stuck in your head. And instead of just being a temporary cloudy day, it might become part of your everyday weather. Like a rainy day every day in your mind.

I don't think you want to have a rainy day in your mind every day, right? Do you want to have a sunny day or a rainy day?

Did you know that you get to choose if you want to have a lot of sunshine in your mind or a lot of rain? You get to pick thoughts that make you feel happy and more calm.

I'm going to teach you a little thing called the 3 C's of thoughts. You catch your thought; You check your thought; You change your thought.

Practice

Try saying…

Do you want to practice this now? Okay, let’s practice.

What was that thought you said earlier? You said, “I’m stupid,” right? Let’s catch it. Okay, we got it.

Now, let’s check the thought. Is “I'm stupid” a helpful thought or is it a hurtful thought? Yeah, it's hurtful.

So what can we change it to? What can we think instead? How about, “I make mistakes sometimes and that's okay.” Or, “I did my best, and that's okay. I'm still learning.” Or, “I'm figuring it out.”

The beautiful thing about this is that it becomes a part of your family culture. As a family, you can decide to improve the way you think about yourself and your circumstances. Your kids might even call you out when you get a little down on yourself, too.

I wish that I had learned how to do this as a kid. I didn't learn this until I was in my 40s, and I have benefited so much from being able to be in charge of my own thinking. I hope it does the same for you and your family.

Related Episodes:

• Episode 2.20: Preventing Meltdowns in the Long Term
• Episode 2.16: The Connection Tool
• Episode 2.15: 3 Essential Beliefs for Emotional Health

Free Resources:

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✨ A simple tool to stop yelling once you’ve started (This one thing will get you calm.)

✨ 40 things to do instead of yelling. (You only need to pick one!)

✨ Exactly why you yell. (And how to stop yourself from starting.)

✨A script to say to your kids when you yell. (So they don't follow you around!)

Download the Stop Yelling Cheat Sheet here

Connect With Darlynn:

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Welcome back to Become a Calm Mama. I'm your host. I'm Darlin Childress.

I'm a life and parenting coach. And over the last

few weeks I've been talking a lot about how to have better

conversations with your kids, particularly in those

times where they have big emotions or they're having

problems regulating their feelings or their behaviors out of

bounds, sort of what to do when your child

is having a meltdown or what to do when they have off track

behavior. And in that process, I've been teaching you a lot about

the connection tool, which is this principle

around how to coach your children how

to help them learn how to process their own emotion,

how to take all that inside messy stuff

that's going on within them, and how to move

those big feelings through their body in ways that don't cause problems

for others or for themselves. And in that process,

what we are doing in the connection tool is we're narrating

what we can see and we're narrating the circumstance.

I see you are throwing your food on the

floor or I see you kicking your brother. Then we name

the emotion I wonder if you're feeling really overwhelmed. Then

we validate that. That makes sense. Of course you're feeling

overwhelmed. And then we regulate that feeling.

It's okay to have big feelings. It's not okay to kick. I

want you to go kick this. I want you to go take care of your

body this way or I want you to use your words. So you are

using the connection tool as a way to validate your

child's big feelings and give them tools building

their resilience and their emotional regulation tools and so that they

don't have to have so many big meltdowns and so much

misbehavior. So that's been really useful. If you haven't listened to those past

few episodes, I highly recommend you go back and listen to those.

And now today I want to talk to you more about

how to resolve those

moments when your child has a lot of emotion

and they come out through

negative sense self talk. When your kids say

things like, I'm stupid, I'm dumb, I'll

never be good at this, or nobody likes me. Like if they feel

like they don't belong or I don't have any friends or everyone hates

me, I'm not invited, you don't like me, you love him more, you love

her more, you're always mad at me. Or they're maybe saying I'm a

bad kid or I'm a terrible person, I don't matter,

I'm. No one cares about me. Or if they

start to feel like I'm making mistakes all the time, it's all my fault, I

can't do it, right? So this is that negative self talk.

You might even see it as they get a little older around

their appearance. I'm fat, I'm ugly, I don't like my

freckles, I don't like my red hair, I don't like my dark skin, I don't

like whatever, right? See our kids,

they have these negative thoughts that come out and

I'm glad that your children are narrating those thoughts

and they're putting them out in the world instead of hiding them

and keeping them secret and having all these negative thoughts within their

own head and no one, you don't even know, right?

So what happens when our child has that big

emotion and they express their big feelings and they say

I'm dumb or I'm a terrible person or you don't like me or

nobody likes me or I'm ugly.

At first when you hear those words coming from your child,

you may freak out a little bit. It might feel concerning to

you. Your brain might take over and you might think, oh no,

they're going to have a bad self esteem or they're going to grow up and

be depressed or oh my God, my kid has anxiety. And

it's very easy to take a moment in time and

you make it a general evaluation of

your child when it really is just a specific moment

in time. Oftentimes our kids

are saying those things and they're making general

statements, they're making hyperbolic statements about

their thoughts. I'm always, I'm never,

you know, those kinds of emo, like extreme language.

When they use extreme language, it's really easy for us to

make it extreme for us as parents to be like, oh

my God, you know, my kid is freaking out and

this is like, I gotta fix this. Do they need therapy? Are they being

bullied? Like you might freak out. And I

want you to know that your kids, kids,

big feelings and their big thoughts

are not something that you want to freak out about

because your child needs to look at you

and be able to borrow your

confidence, your belief that they

are going to grow up and be strong and they're going to learn

to love themselves and they're going to learn to like themselves and they're going to

learn to make mistakes and they're going to learn to be big strong adults

who can handle lots and lots of things. So when you

See that mirror and you are worried that

they're going to always kind of think this way. I want to remind

you that it's not an always they're going

to think this way. It's a moment in time that they're thinking this

way right now. And it's an opportunity for you to talk

to them and coach them and help help them with their

big feelings and with their negative thoughts. I'm going to

teach you how to have a coaching conversation, how to have a

good quality conversation around negative self talk

so that you feel more comfortable and prepared. But I wanted to start

by just saying you might freak out, but your

child doesn't. You're not helping your child if you freak out.

Your worry doesn't help them, but your

confidence and your trust does help them.

They're gonna borrow your state of mind. So let's give them

a positive state of mind. Now the other thing I see that happens with

parents is they, you hear something ridiculous like, I'm

dumb, nobody likes me, I didn't get invited to the party, everybody's going,

I'm not, no one cares about me. You know, I never can do

anything right, or I'm a bad boy, or I'm a bad girl, you don't like

me. Sometimes when we hear things like that,

we will almost minimize or

dismiss it and be like, oh

don't, don't say that, hahaha, you know, or that's not

true or don't think like that. We kind

of go over the top of it now

sometimes that's really useful. Okay. I don't want to give you the idea

that every time your child has a negative sense self talk or a negative

perspective that you got to get right in there and, you know, coach them. Right?

That's overwhelming. But we want to make parenting simple. Simple. But if you start

to see a pattern, if you're noticing that your child kind of keeps

saying I'm a bad kid or keeps saying I'm stupid, then

that's going to be a time you want to double down, dig down and

coach them. And what we mean by coaching

is offering them a different way to think.

You're teaching them. Now as a parent, you're teaching your kids all the time, right?

You got to teach them about money and time and, you know, being kind

and your values and all the stuff that you're teaching your children.

This is the same exact thing that you want to teach your kids how to

think better thoughts, right? And I'm going to help you create kind of

a framework for how to do that. So

it's okay if sometimes you just kind of go, you know, oh,

don't worry about that. You think that way, but that's okay, you know it's not

true. You know, you can be a little bit passive

about moments like that, but I don't want you to

constantly or consistently dismiss your child's

negative self talk because it is an opportunity for you to

explore why they are thinking that and giving

them the tools to change their perspective.

So again, we're not going to freak out, we're not going to over

hype it up, but we're not going to under hype it up. We want to

find that kind of middle of the road parenting where it's like,

oh, tell me more, you're saying you're stupid. I would love to talk to you

about that. That's kind of the beginning of the conversation.

So you're always wanting to make sure that

your child is regulated before you have

a conversation about a thought.

It is impossible to learn something

new when your child is

in a big feeling cycle, when they're in the middle of a meltdown,

when they're having a lot of emotion. If you try to

teach them something, you go to logic, you go to lecture, you start

monologuing in that moment. Unfortunately,

your child's brain isn't quite connecting the dots and

they really need to be validated first.

They need connection before coaching.

So really want you to always remember if you start to teach your child

something and then they become kind of resistant, like, ah,

don't talk about it. I don't want to talk about it. Don't say that.

That's like, okay, maybe they don't feel quite seen yet. They don't

feel quite validated yet. We need to go back to connection.

I like to think about coaching requires consent.

Like really, you can't really teach somebody something until they're sort of in

a warm, safe environment. They feel supported, they feel

connected to you. So we want to use that connection tool

before you coach. So now a

coaching conversation. I want you to think about it in these three

parts. So I'm trying to make this

complex topic of like teaching your kids how

to think better thoughts or how to teach your kids

anything. What are the parts that are

necessary to teach someone something? Now I was a teacher, I used to

teach middle school and high school. So I do know how the best

way is to scaffold a conversation

about something new, a topic. So the three parts are

reflected, like reflect on what's been Happening kind of ground

yourself in a scenario. So reflect on what they had

said, what you've noticed a pattern.

Then you're going to teach them why that doesn't work and what

they can do instead. And then you're going to practice how

to do the new thing. So you're going to reflect, teach,

practice. So reflection really is just kind of

grounding them into the place of like when they said the thing, when,

when they did the behavior, when it came up. So you're gonna

reflect on that. Then you're gonna teach them

why that doesn't work. Whether that's hitting their sibling

or always making you late or having negative

self talk or being irresponsible.

Any conversation that you wanna have with your child

about like where they are and where you want them to go,

a skill gap, like they're here and you, you want them to move

forward towards more maturity, you're gonna

do a coaching conversation, you're gonna do these three parts, you're gonna

reflect on where they are, what's been happening,

you're gonna teach them why it doesn't work and what to do instead.

And then you're gonna practice. So let's break it down.

When we think about this negative self talk,

right? What you want as a parent

is to help your child have some perspective

on themselves so they don't get stuck in negative

thinking and have that negative talk.

I'm dumb, no one likes me, I'm a bad kid. We don't want

to get that thought stuck

inside of them in a way that makes it become a

belief. When you have your kids

0 to 11, they're building a set of

beliefs about themselves that you are. It's almost like an

inheritance of self concept. You are

guiding and having conversations about what you want them to think

about themselves. And we want them. The basic things

is I'm safe, I'm lovable and I'm capable.

So we want our kids to go into adolescence with those core

beliefs. I am safe, I'm lovable and I'm capable.

That's why it's so important to have conversations

about your kids thoughts and let them know that they're not

always gonna think that way. Just because they think that way in that one moment

doesn't mean that's gonna be how they think about everything forever.

If they have a moment where they're thinking I'm stupid, it doesn't

mean that they are stupid or they have a feeling

that no one likes me, it doesn't mean that that's always true.

That's why we want to have these conversations with our kids so that

they don't get stuck in those thoughts of, I'm not safe, I'm not

lovable, and I'm not capable. Okay, so how do we do

these coaching conversations? Now, remember, the first thing I said is, you're going to

reflect, then you're going to teach, then you're going to practice.

So let's talk about reflecting. How do you start that? Right? So your

kid is calm, you're calm. They've said the thing. Maybe they said it a few

minutes ago, maybe they said it yesterday. I want you to not feel

as if you have to be right on top of it. Like, oh, they

said it right now. I need to talk about it. Don't do that. Wait till

everyone's calm. Wait till you've thought about it a little bit. And then when

everyone's okay. Sometimes that's at bedtime, sometimes that's at dinner.

Sometimes that's driving home from school. Ish.

You're gonna say, okay, Earlier, I heard you say

no one likes me. I heard you say I'm stupid. I heard you say

that I love your brother more. I heard you say that

your. Your teacher doesn't like you. I heard you say that no

one likes you. Right? You're going to have a moment where you

point out that they said that thing, and then you would say to them,

you know, do you remember saying that? You know, do you. What.

What made you say that? What were you thinking? Or what happened

that made you say that? And you are going to have a moment when

where you get to ask them what was going

on? What made you say that? I want you to give your

child time to reflect and think about what

happened there. Why did they think that thought?

Once they've had a chance to say what's on their mind, what happened there?

Some kids will talk about it, some kids won't. No problem. You're just giving

them a chance to kind of reflect on it. And then I want you to

validate, to normalize, and I want you to say you. It's normal

for people to have thoughts like that. Sometimes that

happens, especially when you're feeling overwhelmed or you're feeling

sad or you're feeling a little disappointed. And so you kind

of really say, like, it makes sense that you would think that because

you made a mistake. Or it makes sense that you would think that because I

gave your brother or your sister the cocoa first. Or it

makes sense that you would think that because. So that said sentence

is really important. It makes sense that you would think

that because you were feeling that way, or it makes sense

that you would think that because of the circumstances that happened.

And then you get to say, but guess what?

When you think that way, does it make you feel

happy or does it make you feel sad?

Does that thought help you feel good about

yourself? Or does that thought help you feel bad

about yourself? Then you ask your child, how do

you want to feel? Now, this is really

advanced coaching, okay? Because your kids are pretty little,

and they're gonna be like, what are you talking about? Right? They have no

idea that they have power over

how they think. They have no idea that they have power

over how they feel. They. For your child, it's just

like coming at them all the time, these thoughts and these

feelings. And what we're trying to do over the course of their

childhood is to teach them that they have

the agency, the power

to change how they think about things, that they

get to decide that they can think positively and

feel better. Now, we're not bypassing

emotion. Emotion comes on us, and we need to process it.

But at the same time, we all can learn

to think about things differently. So, for example, as

an adult, you're thinking about, oh, my God, we're going to be so late. This

is a disaster. My kids are so irresponsible. We're always late to

everything. This is a huge issue. And then at the same time,

you're feeling stressed and you're overwhelmed and you're showing up and, like, you know,

barking at your kids, and you're impatient and you're frustrated. You're. That's

because your thought of this is a dangerous situation. This is. You're

panicking is going to make you show up in a way that

is panicky and overwhelmed. So I want

to say, of course you feel panicked and overwhelmed when

you're thinking, this is a big deal, we're going to get in trouble,

or you can think, oh, we're late, no problem, I'll figure this

out. I. I'm going to work on getting on time. Let's

just see what we can do to move this moment forward. Now, the

circumstance stays the same, right? For your child, the circumstance

stays the same. We can't necessarily change our circumstance, but we

do get to change how we respond to it.

So I give you that little teaching because I want you to help. I want

to help you teach your children this. So you get to ask them, do

these thoughts help you feel happy or sad? How

do you want to feel? Now, some Kids would be like,

mad. I'm like, okay, well, then you can keep your mad thoughts.

But what about if you tried to think of a different thought? Now

that's the reflection part. So we're just reflecting on what happened and

normalizing it. Now we do the teaching part, and I'm going to teach you

a concept as well. So you get to say to your kid, like, hey, let

me teach you something new. Did you know that thoughts and feelings

are like clouds? They come and they go.

Negative thoughts are like rainy days. Positive

thoughts are like sunny days. Sometimes it's

raining, sometimes it's sunny. But if you have a

negative thought, sometimes a negative thought can get stuck in your

head. And instead of just being a temporary cloudy day,

it might become part of your everyday weather. Like a rainy day

every day in your mind. I don't think you want to have

a rainy day in your mind every day, right? Do you want to have a

sunny day or a rainy day? And then

hopefully they say sunny day. If they don't, it's okay. They get to

decide. You cannot force your child to think positive

thoughts. All we can do is teach them that they get to have

power over their thoughts. Most kids, they're like, well, I want

to feel happy, I want to feel content. Like, I want to feel joy. You

know, I want to. I want to have fun. It's like, okay, great. Kids just

want to have fun, right? So you're saying, okay, that's so good. I'm glad

you want to have sunny days in your mind. Do you get to choose

if you want to have a lot of sunshine in your mind or a lot

of rain? Did you know that you get to ask. Did you know that you

get to choose? And it says when? Then you get to say, when it

comes to thoughts, you get to pick thoughts that make

you feel happy and more calm. You get to do that.

I'm going to teach you a little thing called the three C's of

thoughts. So you're teaching your child this concept. You're saying,

listen, this is what happens with thoughts. You catch your thought,

you check your thought, you change your thought.

So the three C's of thoughts are. Catch your thought, check your thought, change

your thoughts. So the first part is catching your thought,

identifying. What was I just thinking? What did I just say? I'm

stupid, I'm dumb, I'm ugly, I'm fat.

No one likes me. Everybody hates me.

That's a thought. So it feels like a fact, but it's just

a thought. So you want to catch your thought. Find that one thought,

catch it, hold it, and then check it, look at it. Is

this thought helpful? Does this thought

help me feel better, or does this thought make me feel sad?

So we're catching our thought, we're looking at it, we're checking it out. And then

if we decide we don't like it, we change it. We replace it with a

more positive thought. So catch your thought, check your thought,

change your thought. You can do this, too. As a parent,

that's part of move your body, move your mind. That's part of regulating your

own nervous system. We when it comes to your kids, catch yourself.

What are your thoughts? Are they hurting

you or helping you? If they're hurting you, change them.

The circumstance is the same. You get to think whatever you want. You get to

feel how you want to feel. You can be intentional about it.

Now, if you're in a default thinking, your feelings are going to come up. We

need to validate those feelings, and then we need to move our

mindset. So this is like the basic of cognitive

behavioral training for your children. It's so

cool. I wish that I learned this as a kid. You know, I

didn't learn this till I was like, in my 40s. And I

have benefited so much from being able to, you know,

be in charge of my own thinking. And that's a lot about becoming a

calm mama. Part about being this in this podcast is all

about learning how to regulate your emotions, either

after they come up or preventing those negative emotions. And a big

strategy we use is this mindset work. So

you're teaching your kids mindset. So we're reflecting what

happened. We're teaching them the concept of the three Cs.

Catch your thoughts, check your thoughts, change your thoughts, and then

you practice. So you say, do you want to practice this now? You can

do this with kids up until about 9 or 10, they're really open

to this kind of learning. Sometimes you

catch them at the wrong time or they're really resistant or they feel

like they're going to get in trouble. Just keep

working on having these conversations with your kids as much as

you can, being light hearted, not taking anything too

serious, like it's not that deep, you know, as my teenagers

would say, and not getting caught up in the moment,

but being able to see your child and

having their thought be real to them and then kind of trying to find

a wiggle room. So then you would say, okay, hey, let's practice.

You said earlier, what was that thought you said? You said, I'm Stupid. Right? Okay,

let's catch it. I'm stupid. Okay, we got it. Now let's take a look at

that thought. Is thinking I'm stupid. Is it

a helpful thought or is it a hurtful thought?

Yeah, it's hurtful. Yeah. So what can we change

it to? What can we think instead? How

about I make mistakes sometimes and that's okay.

Or I'm still learning and that's okay.

Or I did my best, that's okay.

I'm still learning. I'm prepared. I'm figuring it out.

So you can replace any thought with

a more positive thought. It doesn't have to be the exact

opposite. Like, I'm stupid, I'm smart.

Sometimes our brain won't quite believe that new thought. So we

want to have thoughts that feel more

useful and are also true. So when

we change those thoughts, you can try the

opposite. But then maybe sometimes it doesn't quite work.

So we have to kind of find. I think of those as bridge thoughts, thoughts

that you use in between to get you to that new place

of thinking. So like I said, there's going to be obstacles

sometimes there's going to be moments when your child doesn't want to have these

conversations or you get kind of tripped up yourself.

Don't worry too much. You do this work naturally. As a

parent, all the time, I know you're having

conversations. When your kids say, I'm stupid or you don't like me, or everybody

hates me or I hate myself or I'm a bad kid or I'm

ugly, I know that you are having conversations with

them already. This is just a tool to

help you have a better conversation if it feels comfortable to you.

If you like the three Cs of thoughts, catch them,

check them, change them. Teach that to your kids. And then

your kids will also notice if you have negative thoughts,

they'll start to catch your thoughts and they'll say, mommy,

is that helpful or hurtful? And then you'll be like,

oh, you're right. Let me change my thought. So be onto

yourself too. If you're like, I'm a terrible cook. I'm a bad driver.

You know, any kind of, I'm fat, I'm ugly.

You know, any kind of negative thoughts that you're saying out loud,

you're modeling that a little bit to your kids. So as

a family, you can decide. We are going to try really hard to. To

improve the way we think about ourselves and think about

circumstances. Now, if your kid, after you've taught this

concept and they Say, ah, you know, they get back into the habit and they're

like, you know, ah, man, nobody plays with me at

school. It's so everyone sucks. You know, you can

say, well, oh, everyone sucks. Is that thought helpful

or is that thought hurtful? Does that thought help

you get friends or does that thought hurt you getting friends?

You ask a question and you let them do their own thinking,

let them answer it and then you can say, well, I wonder if you could

find a different thought. I wonder if you could change that thought.

So if this becomes part of your family culture, it will be much easier

to just kind of bring this in whenever you notice that your kids are

having some off track thinking. I think it's really cool

actually. I'm really excited for you to have this tool, the coaching

tool as a whole that reflect, teach and practice.

But then specifically this three Cs of thoughts,

how to help your children when they have negative self talk. It's going

to be really handy and I know it's going to help you. So please reach

out to me. You can, you know, go to Instagram,

comment, send me a DM. If you're watching on YouTube,

you can like go ahead and pop in a comment there. Or if

you're on my email list, please say hello and let

me know how this is going. If you have questions, I'd love, I read all

those emails. I'd love to connect with you. And of course if you don't

have the Stop Yelling Toolkit, be sure to go to my website,

calmammacoaching.com and get your

copy of the Stop Yelling Toolkit where I explain

for you as a parent how to calm your nervous system

using the Calm Break super valuable tool. I hope you have

your hands on it. All right, I hope you have a great week and I

will talk to you next time.