Deborah Hamu
Thursday, December 18, 2014
Your child’s body language affects how others see and interact with them. It can also change how your child sees him/herself. Encourage them to physically stand and project confidence, even when feeling insecure. Just by showing confidence their chances of success increase while their chance of being bullied decreases”
The following tips and strategies can help children feel confident, be successful and avoid being a bully target.
What You Should Do
Show Pride
· Standing up straight, expanding your chest and your body position, having your chin up, exudes confidence and pride. Encourage your child to have a good posture; it shows they are sure of themselves.
Make Eye-Contact
· Teach your child to show confidence when interacting with others. When talking, working and doing things with others, your child should look them in the eye, not to the floor or any other place. Eye contact leads the conversation to wanted or unwanted places because it gives cues to one-another, making it an important statement to read within the interaction.
Show Empathy
· Smiling, making eye-contact, a handshake, or just a nod can make a huge difference. These non-verbal empathic messages make the other person start a conversation, or just a non-verbal interaction in a positive note. The non-empathic other person, if looking for a victim to bully, will not choose your child as the victim to harass, but will choose the one that seems vulnerable and will not stand for himself.
Practice it Even When it Feels Fake Until it Becomes Real
· Forcing oneself into an open position (standing tall and straight, expanding your chest, using larger movements), taking space and “owning” the place makes our bodies produce more testosterone, known to help our power to take action and decreases our cortisol, a substance associated with being in control. Therefore, posing this way creates feelings of power and tolerance for risk. The combination of high testosterone and low cortisol is a profile that is linked to disease resistance, leadership abilities, and appears to be optimally adaptive.
Support and Believe in Your Child
· Let your child know you believe in him/her, that they are very dear to you. It’s important to ensure they always know and remember this. Help them build the much needed self-confidence by letting them know how much they are loved and how much you want them to succeed and be happy.
What You Shouldn’t Do
Stand Powerless
· Posture not only shows a message to the others, but it also shows that same message to oneself. No matter how fake it feels, standing strong is important. When your child forces him/herself to assume a strong, secure position it will eventually become natural and automatic. And that face feeling will be replaced by true confidence. It takes practice and repetition, but it will become real.
Look Elsewhere When Having a Conversation
Emphasize Insecure Thoughts
· Insecure thoughts will only make your child miserable, emphasizing all the negative possibilities around him/her is known to be no good. Help your child minimize insecure and negative thoughts and practice encouraging, positive thoughts, or at least secure and self-assuring ones.
Negatively Judge Oneself
· Negative judgments will naturally decrease your child’s power. It is known that low power individuals have chronically elevated cortisol levels, these are associated with negative health consequences like impaired immune functioning, hypertension and memory loss (Carney et al, 2010).
Express You Are Cold, Insecure and/or Incompetent with Your Body Language
· If your child expresses coldness and shyness with his/her body language, others will judge these messages as if he/she is cold and incompetent. Studies show that these assessments determine whether and how we intend to interact with others. When a child is judged as insecure or incompetent, he/she is vulnerable to being bullied. Do not let this to happen to your child.
