Cheering on Confidence Through Activity

Genuine confidence is a way of thinking about yourself and your abilities. Confidence is your perception of your own potential; it’s a kind of long-term thinking that powers you through the obstacles and tough times, helping you solve problems and putting you in the way of success. Your confidence is quite a separate matter from your social skills.
John Eliot, Ph.D.

An avid quote collector, Dr. Eliot’s words offer me a way to tie up the topic of helping kids relieve stress by becoming “endorphin motivated” through “locomotion motivation” which hinges on positive self perception, or confidence. As parents, how can we foster confidence in our children that inspires physical activity, a known stress reliever?

Be a cheerleader! Our children look to us for support, approval and encouragement (even if their actions say something different.) But cheering for the sake of cheering stops short of instilling confidence. Instead we need to take into account a child’s current skill level and cheer her on to the next.

Helping our kids set realistic goals is another confidence builder and physical activity motivator. That’s why, in my opinion, it is great for a child to be involved in an individual sport. Take swimming for example. Each race is an opportunity to improve on your own personal time. The benchmark belongs to you – it is yours to break, establishing a new personal best. And then, challenged to go beyond, the process begins all over again and confidence grows.

Hearing those cheers and reaching personal goals are two of the three components needed if we want to instill in our kids the desire to be physically active. The third component is FUN! Perhaps this fun comes from being with a certain group of people or maybe it is derived from a personal sense of accomplishment. Either way, the desire to be physically active is being reinforced, building a behavior for life.

Speaking of fun, in “Kid’s and Stress” I mentioned that laughter is an endorphin producing activity. That’s right. It turns out that the muscular exertion used to create a joyful “Ha, ha, ha!” produces a shot of endorphins. On that note, here’s something to leave you laughing!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjXi6X-moxE]

Locomotion Motivation

This past weekend,  I noticed a group of kids playing out in their front yard.  Listening to the sound of their laughter brought back memories of the many hours my brothers and I spent outdoors engaged in a variety of individual and organized physical activity.  Our endorphin factories worked to the max as we played tag, hide and seek, and games that incorporated our imaginations with movement.

My mother’s directive for us to go outdoors and “blow off some steam” makes sense now.  Intuitively she must have known the positive impact of being “endorphin motivated,” even if she didn’t  know the word endorphin. Physical activity has many benefits that are both health-related as well as psychological.   But, how as parents, do we motivate our kids to achieve 60 minutes of physical activity a day suggested by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services?

Simply put, motivation is what encourages us to continue to engage in a behavior.   The September 2000 edition of the President’s Council of Physical Fitness and Sports Research Digestoffers a  model worth considering.



Self-perceptions, how a child feels about his/her self, is at the core of the model.  How are those perceptions formed?  For young children, feedback received from caregivers and parents plays a huge role in how feelings about abilities and performance form.  When significant adults in a child’s life  model physical activity its importance is instilled in a child.  Whether its going for a walk, throwing a ball, or riding a bike – doing these activities together demonstrates that activity is important for everyone.  As children grow in their physical skills, the reinforcement that parents provide of effort and accomplishment outlines a child’s image of self.

As children become older and involved in activities outside of the home, comments by teachers and coaches are added to the mix of information a child receives.  My son had the good fortune to play for the same soccer coach for 9 years.  Early on, feeling our son, Nick, was not receiving the playing time he deserved, we approached the coach.  Before responding to our concern, Coach invited Nick to join the conversation.  Talking together, we learned that Coach had established goals for Nick to achieve before he would be given more time on the field.  We also learned that he wasn’t taking these goals too seriously.  Coach concluded the conversation by encouraging Nick to move beyond his physical ability and achieve a higher level of performance that would not only benefit him but also the team.  These words stuck and continue to influence our son in new endeavors, both physical and otherwise.

Peer acceptance and friendship are powerful forces when it comes to self-esteem. This is especially true when it comes a child’s acceptance of his physical ability.  Remember how it felt to be picked first for a team?  And who can forget the disappointment of being chosen last?  Peer acceptance when it comes to physical ability is a huge influence.  Friendship, especially for those kids who feel like they are not accepted, serves as antidote for the negative feedback received.  Not only is participation more fun when done with a friend, it also provides the encouragement and support, both of which foster improvement.

So there you have it – Locomotion Motivation.  The positive feedback a child receives from their parents, caregivers, teachers, coaches, and peers nurtures positive self perceptions of physical ability leading to enjoyment and motivation for continued activity.

How have you seen this model play out in your child’s life? How about yours?


Kids and Stress

Becca’s recent posting “Easy Stress Reduction In a Busy, Crazy World”  got me thinking about how this applies to kids.  How do we help them become “endorphin motivated?”

Recognizing stress is our inability to meet the demands placed upon us, I believe that stress can be felt even in the youngest of children. Sometimes that stress comes from outside sources. For example, wet skin and feeling chilly when bathed for the first time resulted to my grandson’s rather loud expression of discomfort. Stress!

Sometimes a child, teen, or adult is unable to do what they believe is expected of them, leading to stress from within. Remember your first days in kindergarten and being asked get ready to go home in the middle of winter? How did it feel when some of the kids were able to zip their coats and the teacher had to help you? Even though the teacher was zipping coats for half of the students, you saw others performing this task on their own and felt this was what was expected of you. Stress!

And let’s not forget how perceptions impact stress. Think about the middle school student sitting by herself at the football game as her best friend visits with other kids. There are lots of explanations for what’s going on, but if you’re the person feeling left out it’s easy to perceive that you’re loosing your friend. Stress!

Physical activity produces endorphins in kids as well as adults resulting in stress reduction. According to a 2008 study by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, children and teens benefit from 60 minutes per day of high intensity physical activity. According to the CDC’s 2006 School Health Policies and Program Study (published in a 2007 issue of “Journal of School Health”) only 3.8% of elementary, 7.9% of middle, and 2.1% of high schools provide daily physical education or its equivalent for the entire school year.

So what’s a kid to do? How can parents help? I’ll share some motivating ideas for the entire family in an upcoming post, including how laughter is an endorphin producing activity!

The struggle for identity – An adoptee’s search

A post in the ‘Adopted from India’ facebook group inspired this post.  As a disclaimer, every person’s experience about adoption is totally different; please take this note as simply my thoughts on the subject. I will say though, if my clarity about adoption and identity can help just one person, I feel that my duty to give back to the world has been fulfilled for today. So, yes, enough stalling, here we go…

Being an adoptee, I spent many years struggling in a search for belonging.  It’s a subtle thing, this struggle for belonging, but it occurs deep within one’s day-to-day life and often does not attach itself to tangible ideas. For me the struggle was a deep desire for identity.  The problem was that I didn’t have to vocabulary to describe why I was so confused.  I guess the best example I can give is this: imagine if if you were grieving over the loss of a dear friend but couldn’t figure out why you were sad.  You might constantly feel that your emotions had no root cause.  Like all of a sudden you would start crying but couldn’t figure out why.  That’s kind of how it is.  It is my experience that if something is confusing, such as emotions without a cause, people often feel helpless, vulnerable and often, stupid.

During my 20s, through a number of experiences, I was able to realize that my feeling of foundation-less existence was not anyone’s fault, especially not my own.  Phew.  A friend named Hollee McGinnis shared with me an analogy that I think explains the position of adoptees in the world perfectly. I realized that as an adoptee, my position in this world is like being on the S curve of a yin/yang symbol.  If you view this symbol you see that the S curve divides the two different sides.  The two most comforting things for me, as an adoptee, are that a) there are thousands of others on that S curve with me and b) when you spin a yin/yang, it all becomes the same color.

I am resolved to share my continuing journey with those who are questioning who they are and how they fit in this world.

An adoptee’s quest for identity does not, in any way, have to cause pain in their life.  As adoptees we are uniquely positioned to give back to this world through our blended and non-conflicting backgrounds that ARE our identity.  Every person has their own set of skills they can offer the world.  Adoptees are no different.  🙂