EP18 – Positive Affirmations Don’t Work

Hello and welcome to this episode of, I don't know Jack about parenting. Today I'm going to be talking about the power of positive messages that you share with your children, but I can't share that without sharing the impact of the negative message. We'll be talking about that really soon.

So over the weekend I was promoting my book

Hey, welcome back to this episode of I don't know Jack about parenting and today we're gonna be talking about the positive nature of impacting your children in a positive way through positive words. And again, we can't do that without talking about how they're impacted by your negative words. So over the weekend I was promoting my book and this is what sprung this entire thought around why I needed to share this. Because we as adults are also positively and negatively affected by the words that are said to us, so if we're a little bit more conscious, if we have lived a little bit more life, if we understand that there are haters out there, trolls people who no matter what you do or what you say are going to find a negative spin on things and that affects us. What impact are the words of a parent to a little child that looks up to you? Who looks up to me as, wow, I love this person.

They care about me. They're the person who created me. I'm there. The're the ones I trust the most in the world. I trust everything they say. So if you say something negative to your child or any child for that matter, for the most part, they are going to be affected by that. So what made me think about this, I promoted my book. It became an Amazon bestseller, hit the best sellers list. And as I'm going through this process, obviously there's a lot of buzz around it, a lot of purchases of the book, a lot of people leaving, beautiful comments, sharing how, how proud they are of me, friends and family. People don't even know, saying man, I just read your book. Awesome. Uh, I needed this when, when I was a kid, which by the way, you're probably saying, what's the book? It is called be the dad you wish you had, uh, 40 power lessons to becoming a powerful dad. And it is at bethedadyouwishyouhad.com. You can get your free copy there if you wish to have one.

Uh, I am not that person

So I go to the reviews on, on, uh, it's also on Amazon. So I go to the reviews on Amazon and I was like, oh, I got another review. Let me see what it has to say. And I look and, I'm like, one star, somebody gave me one star. Oh. And then this one star review has obviously nothing good to say. Now, here's the thing, there was nothing but lies on there, uh, saying that I'm a type of person who goes on social media talking about politics and some other googly gook. Uh, I am not that person. So and basically saying that the book was worthless, but I gave this person more energy than this person deserved because my first response, mind you, dozens of reviews, I've never responded to any of the positive reviews on my page, but every part of me wanted to say something to is person who had something negative to say.

So much so that I, I clicked on this person. I scrolled to see if they had anything positive to say about anything. They've left 29 reviews on Amazon. Most of them negative, but none of them is bad as the one that they left me to be fair. A lot of two stars, three stars. But I was the only one star and it got me thinking, if this is bothering me to the point that I'm going to research this person, if this is bothering me to point to a wanting to say something, but refraining from doing so I always say this in parenting and in life are our response determines our outcome, not our reaction or response. So if we responded in a negative way, we're probably going to have some negative. We respond in a positive way. We're probably going to have a positive outcome. So I decided not to respond at all at this point, but let's think about this. I've had dozens of positive reviews and don't think anything of it. Hey, that's great, but one negative review, which leads me to a statistic I want to share. They say for that every negative thing say to a person, children or people, it takes about twenty positive responses to negate that negative one.

Whoa.

So in order to empower our little ones, we must empower them with positive affirmations on a daily basis. So much so that when we say something negative, hopefully there's 20 that respond to it, that, that, that there are 20 that negate the negative one here's the thing.

You shouldn't do that

Most of us, myself included, as much as I pay attention to it, most of us to fill our children's heads with. Oh, you shouldn't do that. Don't do that. No, no, no. Um, I catch myself constantly going, how is that received? Let me empower him.

I've been told by outsiders that, hey, I'm too positive with my kid, but when I know a statistic like that, I'm like, I don't think I can be too positive. As a matter of fact, quite the opposite. I cannot be positive enough if I want him to be built up with self confidence in this world.

But there's outside forces. I'm going to share a story around something that recently happened. Um, and it goes back to episode one of this whole podcast where I started doing this at some point, uh, we brought my son and I'll give the backstory for anyone who hasn't listened to episode one, but you may want to go back. It's quick, 10 minutes, but the whole impetus for this entire podcast is, I don't know, Jack about parenting, right. But I do know that I do know that I need to look myself in the mirror in order for my son to be impacted in a positive way. I need to look at how I'm impacting him, uh, because I can't control the outside forces. Uh, so just a quick brief. My, my son got really frustrated with himself one day to the point where he punched himself in the face and he said that no, and gave himself a black guy and nobody, his response was, nobody ever says anything nice to me. That's the outside world and somebody inside world in the house. But you go back to episode one to, to hear that.

We had to wear a heart monitor

So soon after that we brought him to, uh, um, somebody to test his heart for a, to see if he's having a heart palpitations and things. And as he does have a, a minor heart condition that has never come to surface a, he does have an irregular heartbeat that we need to monitor. Uh, so we had to wear a heart monitor. He wore it to school one day. Apparently some other kid touched his heart monitor, which created a little bit of anxiety in him, right? Nobody's supposed to touch it. We had old dialogue around that. I was in the school that day helping out with something and his teacher saw me in the hallway and she said, hey, I want you to know that somebody, another kid touched his heart monitor. He was a little concerned about it. Do you want to talk to him? And I was like, not really. I think he's okay. And she goes, well, he's in PE right now. I think you should talk to them.

I'm like, she goes, would you walk down there with me? So I walked down 100 kids in his PE class, um, they go on the loudspeaker. First of all, he's uncomfortable listen to listen to the scenario that's going on. He's uncomfortable wearing his heart monitor at some level. Another kid touches it, his teacher draws attention to it. His father walks in the gym. Once his father walks into the gym, they go on a loudspeaker and pull him out of the middle of the class, which brings more attention to him. I immediately looked at him and I was like, Hey, you want to go home? He's like, yeah. I was like, let's get out of here. Let's go have lunch together. Uh, to his teachers, like, are you sure? I'm like, absolutely, and I'm sure I don't mean it in my mind. This is my thought. Why do I want to draw any more attention to him in an already uncomfortable situation? Because one of the diagnosis that we were considering is that he's stressed a little bit around different things.

I don't want to go to McDonald's

Why do I want to create more anxiety in my child? Who is suffering from some level of anxiety is my thought. Why am I drawing so much attention to such a minor thing? And why is the teacher drawing such, um, so much attention to a minor thing? Because the outside world, I can't control this. She goes, well, let's go get his folder, his backpack and everything. And, and, and we're walking down the hallway. My sons with me and she's like, are you sure this is okay? I'm like, yeah, that's perfectly fine, and then I'm just talking to him like, Hey, we're going to go grab lunch. What do you want to do? Daddy hasn't had lunch, probably about 1130. I was like, where do you want to go? He's like, I wand to go to McDonald's. I don't want to go to McDonald's, but I also want to go to lunch with my son and spend some time with him. We get to the classroom, he's grabbing his backpack. She's grabbing his folder. She's handed it to me right in front of my son. Once again, the lack of awareness of the adults. She goes, are you sure this isn't an inconvenience.

Like in my mind, my child is right there. How am I supposed to respond to that? If it was an inconvenience, and I imagine a lot of other parents who are less aware may say, you know, it's an inconvenience, but you know, I'm here and blah, blah, blah, and then make the kid feel like less than. But I look at him, I look them dead in the eye as she says that he actually slouches his head down on his shoulders, go down, and I'm watching all this body language. I said, I look at him. I said, that kid right there. I looked him in the eye as I said this to her. He was to my left. She was to my right. He is never an inconvenience. There's nothing about him that's ever going to be an inconvenience in today, especially not. He and I are going to go enjoy an amazing afternoon.

Listen, the most innocent words can be perceived as negative

We're going to enjoy amazing lunch. We're going to go home and play some games and we're gonna make the best of the rest of our day. To that. He perked back up. He smiled. He came over, I gave him a hug. I said, let's get out of here. Little Guy. Listen, the most innocent words can be perceived as negative to the person receiving them. Her saying that he potentially was an inconvenience. If I would've said yes and clarified it, he would have felt bad for inconveniencing his father. The outside world is going to beat our children up all day long. We as parents need to empower them as much as possible. I cannot control the outside world. You cannot control the outside world. What you can control are the words that are coming out of your mouth and whether they're empowering you, empowering your child or whether they're impacting them in a negative way. 

Choose your words carefully. I don't know Jack about parenting, but I do know that I to this day want the approval of my mother. I do things all the time so I won't embarrass her so that I won't disrespect her and I imagine a lot of us do that. We need to honor the family name, right? Some people are taught you have a good name, honor that name, so we still are seeking the approval of our parents. Just imagine on the little ones how much they seek our approval, so empower them with positive affirmation. We'll see you in the next episode of the. I don't know Jack about parenting.