205 Resources for Growing Confidence

One Announcement, Two Lists, and the Next Confidence Manner...

Imagine unlocking the treasure of good manners in your children and seeing them navigate the world with poise and confidence. This episode includes my favorite manners books and a character development chapter book.

Some programs mentioned in this episode include: AmericanHeritageGirls.org, TrailLifeUSA.com, Meals on Wheels, CYIA, and Teen Pact, Speech and Debate Leagues, STOA USA and NCFCA, designed for homeschooling parents keen on teaching speech, debate, and apologetic skills. We wrap up by discussing the art of maintaining attention, and teach your kids to be like a carrot, not like jello!
Some books I mentioned in this episode (they are not affiliate links):
The Berenstain Bears Forget Their Manners: Stan Berenstain, Jan Berenstain: 9780394873336 - Christianbook.com
Pinocchio's Quest, Grade 5: Robert Rogland: 9781932971118 - Christianbook.com
The Children's Book of Virtues: William J. Bennett: 9780684813530 - Christianbook.com

Chapters

• 0:04 Manners Books and Big Announcement
• 8:21 Youth Leadership and Communication Opportunities

Transcript

val harrison: 0:04

THIS TRANSCRIPT WAS GENERATED AUTOMATICALLY AND IS NOT EDITED. Welcome to the Practically Speaking Mom podcast. I'm Val Harrison, the Practically Speaking Mom. I'm your fellow intentional mom friend, walking this parenting path with you each week. Being intentional isn't easy, but it sure is worth it. Galatians 6-9 says let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. So, my intentional parent friend, let's get going with more intentional right now.

val harrison: 0:37

Today I've got a big announcement. I've got two lists for you that I promised to give you last time, and also we're going to look at the next manner in a lineup of manners on helping our kids to develop confidence, which also helps others develop confidence in them. So let's get going. First, I'm going to give you a list of manners books. The first one is called Berenstein Bears Forget their Manners. The second one is called A Child's Book of Manners from Happy Day Books. These first two are simple, short. They're great for I would say that they're great for preschoolers, but honestly, you can use them older than that too. It's how you use them. What I liked to do was just look at one specific page and see that manner and then talk about it, role play about it, have them come up with scenarios of role playing, that specific manner, not with teenagers. By teenager years we are beyond role playing. And then there's two more manners books I'm going to recommend for the years that I would say younger, through middle school, because some of the things in these next two books are really short little poems about a particular manner or their longer stories about a person who had a different behavior and how that resulted, what happened because they had that behavior. So the Children's Book of Virtues by William J Bennett is one of those books, and then another one is the Child's First Steps to Virtue and that's by Emily Hunter, and all of these will be in the show notes so you can take a look at those there.

val harrison: 2:26

Now for my favorite. This one is great for elementary through middle school. They will all love this storyline. It is a chapter book, so you will read one chapter at a time. You wouldn't be able to read it all in one setting with your kids. But it's called Pinocchio's Quest. It's by an author with the last name, rogland ROG L A N D. It's published by Christian Liberty Press.

val harrison: 2:54

Okay, this book is so one of my favorites of all time because Pinocchio makes a lot of bad decisions and gets into all kinds of mischief and trouble and travels throughout the world. When I read it with my kids, we'd pull out a map and look at these places in the world. So it can be a great adventure for your family, but also a phenomenal source of discussion of whether to make decisions impetuously or whether to think before we take action. For example, there's lots and lots of opportunity for discussion in there about how to treat others as well as how to recognize when someone is taking advantage of you. There are people who take advantage of Pinocchio, and he needs to learn how to handle that. What should he do about it? And learn to recognize when it's taking place.

val harrison: 3:48

So it's just a fabulous book for having discussion with our kids, and I'm also going to mention something else here Little House on the Prairie. I love that TV series. Now there's a few episodes that I don't love, but 90% of them are a wonderful opportunity for discussion about different life issues, about different attitudes and approaches to situations. There's plenty of people in Little House on the Prairie that make the wrong decision and then have the consequences to deal with afterwards, and so it's just a fabulous way to discuss these different good behavior, techniques, good often, fruit to the spirit. Do you know what the fruit to the spirit are? Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness and self-control are the different fruits of the spirit mentioned in scripture that our hearts develop with the help of the Holy Spirit in our heart, and that's one thing to definitely mention here Whenever we're talking about character issues with kids, we really want to help them learn how to partner with God in the process of maturing their heart.

val harrison: 5:03

That's what you're doing your entire lifetime. You are wanting to partner with God in the process of growing your heart. We're still working on so many things as adults, and our kids are really no different. The list in front of them of what they should work on next is different than your list, but it is the same human condition and we want to help them learn how to go through life growing, and we grow best when we're partnered with God in that process. So I just kind of think that fall and winter was made for cup of tea and bull's soup and Little House on the Prairie. So watch it with your kiddos. Something we're watching it on right now is free with ads, so at our house we just mute ads and sometimes we have to do more than that.

val harrison: 5:57

Okay now, I also told you that there was going to be a big announcement today, which I will give next. So the big announcement is I have been telling you that I've been praying about how am I going to accomplish both getting this book finished that I've been working on my fifth book, which is your love becomes their strength, answering the six questions of your child's heart at every age. I have been talking to you guys about that book for two years and it is so time to get it out. But I don't have enough time to get it finished because I spend so much time on the podcast and the chores just life in general is big. So God has finally given me some clarity on how to do this, and that is I am going to be moving to shorter episodes. They're going to be very short ones when it's just me, and then they'll be regular length when I have someone on the podcast with me. I will still take a break through the holidays, but other than that, I'm going to keep the episodes really short until I'm finished with the book, and this is going to help me to have time to get that done.

val harrison: 7:11

Okay, let's move to the next list. So I told you I'd give you a list of organizations that are great for helping our kids have opportunities to develop healthy self-confidence, communication opportunities and leadership skill development. So I mentioned last time in episode 203, american Heritage Girls, and the counterpart to that is Trail Life for Boys. They are both fantastic organizations that I highly recommend, so check those out. There'll be links to all of these on show notes.

val harrison: 7:51

Now I asked this question in our group, intentional Mom Strong Family. If you're not a part of that Facebook group, I hope you'll join in the discussions. So I asked on there what are some groups that people recommend that moms on there recommend for growing leadership skills and communication skills and self-confidence in our kids? And Debbie Smith, one of our faithful listeners and contributors in the Intentional Mom Strong Family Facebook group. She had some great ideas.

val harrison: 8:21

She mentioned meals on wheels and that, if you're not familiar with that company, it's great. So you pick a day of the week and you deliver lunches for them. Well, I shouldn't say lunches. You're delivering meals, because it could be a freezer meal in the wintertime, like if the weather's going to be bad, they might have you deliver multiple for the freezer, but most of the time you're delivering fresh meals to have that week, and this is an opportunity for you to go to the front door, allow your kids to smile at someone that that is newer to them. Then, after they are used to smiling at someone, they can learn to greet them and say hello, and then pretty soon it can be Hi, how are you today? And they can learn to experience the joy of blessing somebody else. So meals on wheels helps shut ins. It could be mostly elderly, but disabled also. Okay.

val harrison: 9:18

Then another confidence booster that Debbie recommended was CYIA, christian Youth in Action through Child Evangelism Fellowship. So check that out. And then she mentioned one that I also participated in, which is teen packed, and I've talked about that one before the podcast. So I don't want to jump into time about that really, but that's just one week a year and it happens at your state capital and teaches your kids a lot of great citizen skills as well as communication skills. And it is specifically for teenagers although they have a one day thing at the end of the week that is for the younger siblings of the teenagers.

val harrison: 10:03

Okay, and I'm going to mention two more organizations really quick for you about leadership and communication skills, and these two organizations happen to be homeschool specific. As you may know, I homeschool. I graduated six of our kids from our homeschool so far, with one more to go. She's a freshman. So I've still got three and a half years left of homeschooling and I'll finish up at about 30 years that I'll have homeschooled by the time we're done. But I want to mention two organizations that are specific to homeschoolers what is called stowa USA, s T O A USA dot org. Both of these, by the way, are Christian speech and debate leagues. The other one is called NCFCA. One aspect of these organizations is actually teaching your kids apologetic skills, that is, learning about your faith and learning how to communicate about your faith, understanding why you believe, what you believe, and so it is really good at teaching kids how to articulate their thoughts about their beliefs.

val harrison: 11:12

Okay, now I've told you that I would finish up today with a manner. So last time I talked to you guys about learning to say someone's name and waiting until you have their attention before you continue talking. That that is a manner you want to teach your kids, you know. So you could say Emma, and then you wait for Emma to say yes, mom. So that interaction is so helpful in getting someone's full attention. It's something you want your kids to learn that manner not just in saying yes, mom, but also in expecting other people's full attention. And what this does is it can phase a level of confidence which, in turn, causes other people to have more confidence in you or in your child. Well, today I want to talk to you about the next step of that. So I want to talk about full attention.

val harrison: 12:08

Last time we talked about the manner of saying someone's name and waiting for their full attention. But what? What does full attention look like? Full attention while someone is talking to you, it's, of course, being involved, mentally, listening. So I'm listening with my ears, I'm listening with my mind, I'm listening with my body, which is focused, turned towards the person. I don't have my eyes up at the sky, down at the floor, looking all around. I'm not shaking my leg or drumming my fingers on the table, because all of those things are what I would call static. You know, if you ever listen to a radio station and you hear this fuzzy noise that makes it hard to hear, that static, and that static is a distraction from the message, and so anything that we're doing that is a distraction from the message of the person who's talking to us. I'll call that static. We don't want to have static. It's not kind because it distracts from the message. It also says I don't value you and I don't value your message and we don't want to send that message. So we want to honor their time and their message by not producing static and so we give full attention by our mind and our ears being engaged in what they're saying and the rest of our body not being any static. So this is something that you can help your kids learn and, again, you can just do this through a little, once or twice or three times a week, a little manners practice time and do some role playing with that.

val harrison: 13:50

Now I also encourage especially when they're old enough to understand the which what I'm talking about today is a little bit older of a man or toddlers, have a harder time with this, and I don't expect toddlers to stand like a carrot all the time. That's what I say. Are you going to stand like carrot? You're going to stand like Jello. You know Jello is like slumped over and loosey, goosey arms and all that.

val harrison: 14:14

But when I'm presenting a message, I want to stand like a carrot shoulders back, chin up, looking intently at my audience, and this conveys that I have self confidence in me and in my message and therefore they can also have confidence in me and my message, because I do. And so that's standing like a carrot versus standing like Jello. But I don't expect toddlers to stand like a carrot and, you know, chin up, shoulders back all the time. You know that kind of thing. I mean. Not, I don't expect that of kids all the time ever, but when they have a message they're trying to get across, it is helpful to do these things, and they will never start doing these things when it's important messages if they're not in the habit of doing it sometime right. So that's where practice comes in.

val harrison: 15:08

And anyway, I just wanted to explain that some of the things that I'm talking about in this manner are a little bit older than toddlers. But this is the last thing I want to add to this manner, and that is that we want to give some. Not, there are nonverbal things we don't want to do that produce static, but there's also some nonverbal things we can do that reinforces their message and says, yes, we're on board, and it turns us into little cheerleaders about their message, and that is a smiling and nodding our head. Yes, like yes, I'm listening. Oh yeah, that makes sense. You know those nonverbal cues of smiling and occasionally nodding.

val harrison: 15:49

Let the speaker know I'm paying attention. You've got my full attention. I am on board with what you're saying. Hopefully that's another little manner that you can share with your kids today. And, oh my goodness, I took much longer than five minutes in doing today's podcast. I was supposed to keep it short. This was supposed to be my day one of practicing short podcasts. I did not succeed, but I am so thankful to be doing life with all of you.

val harrison: 16:20

We're going to wrap it up here for today. Next time, Val will share steps for helping your child overcome negative habits, particularly the habit of always running late. I don't know if it's an issue with any of your kids, but it has been an issue at our house over the years. Well, intentional parents, it is always Val's prayer that you have received encouragement, inspiration and some practical wisdom from these episodes. Don't forget to subscribe in whatever podcast platform you use to listen to the Practically Speaking Mom podcast. Then you could click share and send it to a friend. You can always learn more about this ministry or find Val's books and other resources at PracticallySpeakingMomcom. Then join Val right here again next time on the Practically Speaking Mom podcast the place for intentional moms to build strong families.