Each month, this series introduces fun and impactful healthy habits to help families with kids and teens prioritize physical, mental and spiritual well being – fostering a lifestyle of shared growth and lifelong wellness. Healthy habits built together are the ones that last a lifetime.

That inner voice you hear all day, every day? It’s been forming since you were a child, before you could even fully express yourself in words!

The Importance of Our Inner Critic

From teenagers down to toddlers, the “inner critic” that will follow them through life has been learning how to take in every piece of verbal feedback, facial expression, body language and social environment cues. While that voice is meant to help protect, it can also create unwelcome and unhelpful inner monologues fueling negative things like anxiety and self consciousness. This month, show up intentionally to help the kids in your life build a positive groundwork for an inner critic they can count on!

Help Them Build a Guide, Not a Bully

Teaching even the littlest of kids to understand their inner voice doesn’t mean silencing it! Help them learn to be thoughtful about their own thoughts! When speaking to adults, we call this skill “metacognition.” We can pause to observe our own thought process and ask questions like, “Is this helpful? Is this rooted in fact? Is there another way I can look at this?” These principles work beautifully when teaching youth but a more kid-friendly approach is to remember that our inner critic is like a storyteller! Our brain will tell us all kinds of stories about who we are, what we’re capable of and what others might think about us – but we get to ultimately decide on the stories it tells and the ones we believe to be true! 

Shaping Their Inner Voice is a Long Term Goal

Research published in Self and Identity, a peer-reviewed psychology journal focused on the study of the self, found that self compassion is strongly linked to emotional well being – without the harmful side effects of harsh self criticism. When we teach kids to assess themselves through a lens of compassion rather than focusing solely on their shortcomings, self criticism begins to lose its grip and take a back seat. Whether it’s performance during a sport, grades on a test or conversation with a friend group, that inner critic is going to show up. Creating healthy building blocks for self reflection is going to make all the difference in how your child sees their wins and losses. 

Simple Ways to Get Started

Here are a few age-appropriate ways to create a healthy inner critic in your child: 

#1 Get Silly and Give It a Name! 

Maybe “Martha” shows up when you’re feeling hangry or frustrated? Perhaps you have a child with social anxiety with their “Worry Monster” showing up uninvited? Young children can find giving their inner critic a name or imagining them as a separate character to be really helpful. When big feelings show up, you can reference their inner critic to create a little distance between them and their thoughts which we all need help doing sometimes! 

#2 Be a Self Compassion Model

In every area of parenting, you want to model the behavior you are expecting out of your child. Even when you’re up against your own inner critic, help model how to talk about yourself kindly and with compassion. If you make a mistake, give yourself grace in front of your kids. Talk about your own inner critic’s voice and which stories it tells you that you have to reshape. You can correct or want to improve while being kind to yourself, and they can too!

#3 Is This Fact or Fiction? 

Children of the 90s may remember a show called “Fact or Fiction” where that very question was asked to the audience after each interesting story was told! Same here for the stories our brain tells us about ourselves and others. Play a thought-checking game together by helping them answer questions like, “Is there evidence to support that thought?” or “What would you say to a friend who thought that?” Empower them to check their own inner critic to see if it’s leading with compassion and kindness.

Creating Practices That Last a Lifetime

Being a kid or teenager isn’t always easy! Allow their inner critic time and opportunity to see themselves as someone to be proud of while also having an opportunity to improve. The most impactful gift you can give to your kids is an emotionally safe environment for them to feel safe growing in. When you allow them time and a judgment-free parent by their side to learn about their feelings and thoughts about themselves, you are giving them exactly that!