Practicing Affirmations with your Teen Daughter: How to take affirmations from awkward to amazing
By Farrell Lindemann, MSW, LiveGirl Mentor
“I am smart. I am strong. I am special.”
This is the affirmation that begins every LiveGirl Confidence Club meeting. In a room full of middle school girls, saying this affirmation loudly while doing hand-motions can, at first, feel awkward! But affirmations are impossible to avoid at LiveGirl Confidence Clubs. Icebreakers often include questions like, “What is one thing you like about yourself?” “What is something that you are proud of accomplishing?” “What is something you are great at?” Confidence Club is, in many ways, a practice in learning how to say good things about yourself.
I walk my groups through the following discussion questions when the young women find it uncomfortable to say affirmations with pride. Going through this exercise with your daughter is a step towards creating a relationship where you can affirm yourselves and each other with confidence.
Practice saying the LiveGirl affirmation together, “I am smart. I am strong. I am special.” Say it together and then say it individually.
Discuss with each other as candidly as possible how it felt to say the affirmation. Be specific about your emotions (i.e. proud, awkward, comfortable, insecure, confident, etc.).
Watch the Youtube video of Jessica’s affirmations: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qR3rK0kZFkg. To make this exercise even more powerful, record or request a video from a little girl in your life—little sister, niece, friend—saying the LiveGirl affirmation for the camera.
After watching a young girl saying affirmations, discuss the following questions. What did you think about the video? Did it make you smile? Do you think that the affirmations are true of this little girl: is she smart, strong, and special?
Do you think that these affirmations will still be true of this little girl when she is 10 years old? 12? 15? 20? 30? Etc. This would be a wonderful time to tell your daughter how smart, strong, and special she was as a child.
What do you think changes from when you are a little girl to when you are in middle school, or an adult, that makes it more difficult to say affirmations with confidence?
The answer that I often hear to the last question is twofold; because others have made fun of, bullied, or disparaged a young women at some point in her life, she doesn’t feel comfortable saying affirmations because 1. she doesn’t feel safe saying them (she would get made fun of) and/or 2. she doesn’t believe they are true anymore. This may the reality for you or for your daughter.
As a team, you and your daughter can help each other with both of these obstacles!
The two of you, together, can create a safe place where you know you will never be made fun of or mocked for your confidence. You can affirm each other so that you begin to believe the best of yourselves.
As a final step in this exercise, discuss with your daughter what it would look like to have a safe space with each other. Give your daughter an opportunity to tell you ways that you could help her feel confident that she is smart, she is strong, and she is special. Now look each other in the eyes and tell each other the affirmation “You are smart. You are strong. You are special.” (No qualifiers, such as “You are smart, I just wish you would work harder at school.”)
You have just taken a step together as a powerful mother-daughter duo in creating a team that affirms and uplifts each other! As a mother, you have a powerful role in the life of your daughter and I applaud your efforts to teach your daughter confidence.
