Hi guys, welcome back to another mindful motherhood Monday today's topic is about
branding or labeling our children saying things like he's the naughty one or
she's the quiet one or he is the best at swimming he's not very good at tidying
up things that we say on a day to day basis without thinking and just because
you know it's the sort of thing that comes out quite naturally without you
thinking so I just want us all to think about that to think whether that has a
negative impact on our children and if there's anything that we can do to
change what we say to maybe kind of help our children's self-esteem
instead of damage it with our words so that's what we're talking about today I
hope you guys like today's topic it is very closely linked to last week's
topics so if you haven't seen that one yet I talked about how we can swap
praise for encouragement on a daily basis and yeah I'd love for you guys to
watch that video as well because it will be very closely related to this one if
you're new to my channel hi my name is Aziz and I post mindful motherhood
videos every Monday at 7 p.m. so please just subscribe to see more of these
videos also if you can see that my setup is a little bit different I'm actually
sitting on my sofa bed which has been pulled out as a bed my mum has come from
Brazil to stay with us for a couple of weeks which is so lovely and we're so
happy to have her here so we have the guest bedroom all set up as a proper
guest bedroom rather than my office so yeah that's why I'm sitting on the bed
so anyway without further ado let's get straight on with the video
so the idea for this week's topic came from when I overheard someone talking
about their child and referring to them as he is a naughty boy and I don't
usually use the word naughty in any case I hate that word and when I heard it
being referred to the child I instantly felt quite sorry for that child because
that child you know they might have been naughty in a specific situation but to
say that he is naughty it instantly branded that child and labeled that
child so it wasn't like anyone I knew it was just a conversation I overheard and
it gave me the idea for this video because this is something that I'm very
conscious of and I've always been really conscious or not branding my children
and it made me think and then I actually realized how much I do brand them maybe
not with the word naughty because that's something that I'm overly conscious off
but with other things you know I say things like she's a terrible sleeper
about Isabella and although these are you know minor things things that you
don't even think about it got me thinking is there a way that I can
improve my speech or say these things differently and that's when I started to
think about the topic of this video so the whole point about branding your
children is that you're not giving them a chance to change to be who they are or
who they want to be you're defining their personality based on maybe a
specific behavior over something or just one moment one situation or just one
side of their personality and that goes for positive behavior and negative
behavior as well I think we're just so quick to kind of categorize them or put
them in a box and say this child is like this this child is like that and we
don't really think about the impact that that has on our children and their
personalities their self-esteem their development we all know from firsthand
experience being parents that a child can be naughty and loving within the
space of a second so does that make your child loving does
make them naughty both none your child may have been mischievous by snatching a
toy but they could also have been the child who helped someone else who fell
down or someone horse alone in the corner of the classroom one child can be
the one that always comes first in the swimming class and the other one could
be the one that has the more refined technique when you actually think about
it labeling the behavior makes way more
sense than labeling the child and that's when your speech starts to change and
you start to say things like that was naughty or I don't like the word naughty
I would say that was very mischievous instead of saying you are a naughty boy
or a naughty girl I know saying things like you're a
naughty boy or a naughty girl is more of a trait of an older generation but there
is still a lot of that nowadays and I still hear a lot of that and also we
still do it with words that are not so negative or things that we don't think
there's any harm in saying like you're the best at swimming I didn't think
there was any harm in it until I actually thought about what am I saying
to my child am i saying anything about their behavior or am i putting them in
that little category that that person that's what they are our children
changed so quickly and we do too if someone said to me she's the one that's
good at languages then I would argue what about she's the one that's not so
good at socializing because she's got a little bit of social anxiety and that's
kind of the damage that it does by putting our children into boxes of
saying you know she is the naughty one she's the clever one she's the good one
of this is that they start to take those things as their identity and they might
not explore other areas of their personalities because they hear it over
and over again that that's what they are and so they start to believe that that's
all that they should be if you watched last week's episode I talked about using
encouragement to build your child's self-confidence and I think that goes
hand-in-hand with breaking down the branding the labeling of our children it
also helps to reduce the amount of excessive competitiveness that some
children can have because if you focus on the effort instead of the end result
that child won't necessarily want to do everything and anything to get to that
end result because they think that that's the only time they will get the
praise and the you know the well done is if they achieve so if you're struggling
with a child who's extremely competitive and you're finding it difficult maybe
try encouragement more than praise but that's last week's topic so go and watch
that video I'll leave it linked below it was a really interesting video with the
play a different perspective on praising your children so in general is all about
rewiring our brain to label the behavior and not the child so we would say that
was very mischievous or that was very naughty depending on the word that you'd
like to use instead of saying you're a naughty boy
or he's the naughty boy instead of saying he's the clever one or he's a
clever boy how about you say that was very clever of you when they do
something clever but to not label the child and label the behavior that is the
trick there if you use the naughty step that can become the thinking step and
that's what we do in our house when our children are having timeout they go onto
the thinking step so this might be something that you're all already doing
and if you are that is absolutely great because I think that it's so important
but even if just one or two of you are thinking this might give me a little bit
more encouragement to change my language and to kind of you know rewire my brain
for behavior rather than child labeling then I will feel very very happy that I
was able to help you guys in any way these videos helped me so much more than
you guys know because in doing these videos it makes me think about my own
parenting journey and the way that I say things to my children the way that I
think about certain things sorry that was my watch so yeah doing these videos
are great for me as well as a parent and I hope you guys find them helpful too if
you do please give this video a thumbs up don't forget to subscribe if you're
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from me I post on Mondays Wednesdays and Fridays it
p.m. so that's it for this video I hope you guys are doing well and I will see
you all in my next video bye