21 May '21

Dr Karen Treisman: Top 5 Creative Strategies To Help Enrich Children's Self-Belief

Posted by Carolyn in News

Following our inspiring ‘Creative Strategies’ training course live via Zoom on Wednesday, our course delegates were provided with numerous activities that can help build children and young people’s self-belief and positivity.

These ideas were shared by the engaging Dr Karen Treisman, the training course tutor, and are all aimed at helping teachers, healthcare professionals and social workers working with children to build up a child’s strengths, skills and self-belief in a classroom, care setting or at home.

So here are our five fun-filled creative strategies that can really make a difference to the children and young people you care for and/or work with:

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1. Skyscraper of strengths

The ‘skyscraper of strengths’ activity can be used to fully realise a child’s own positive qualities.

It encourages the child to build the highest skyscraper with as many positive traits they can think of.

Remember that for all of the activities on this list, the concept matters most. You can use whatever you like to reinforce the child’s strengths, such as LEGO, bric-a-brac or even just sticky notes!

2. Positive pillows

This activity is more suitable for children at home. The ‘positive pillow’ strategy is yet another way of building a child’s self-belief, literally and metaphorically ‘holding onto’ the pillow made up of strengths.

Have the pillow on the child’s bed so that when before they go to sleep, they are reminded of what makes them a good person. You can be as creative as you like, as long as you whatever you decorate the pillow with magnifies the child’s good qualities.

3. Treasure hunt for positives

Why not play a fun treasure hunt game with a child, allowing them to feel much more engaged and active when reinforcing their personal strengths to themselves?

Simply scatter sticky notes or objects which signify a strength around a home, garden or classroom and have the child look for them. This will be more memorable than most activities listed here, as this is a physical exercise - much more engaging.

4. Polystyrene head

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While the polystyrene head activity is primarily to underline negative elements of a child’s behaviour, it can be flipped to further express positive thoughts, traits, memorable thoughts, advice or even compliments received.

The idea is simple. Encourage the child to rid their head of their flaws, such as anger or worry, and replenish it with positive qualities.

5. Positivity magnet

This last educational activity is a superb metaphor for underpinning the positive aspects of a child’s character, with the child being the magnet in this case.

Once more, present the magnet to the child and give them time to think of their personal qualities or the happy aspects of their life and decorate the positive end of the magnet with these.

Tell them not to focus on the negative aspect of the magnet, only the positives.

You may be interested in this…

This blog was based around Dr Karen Treisman’s amazing online workshop with us, surrounding a whole host of creative strategies that can enrich a child’s strengths, skills and self-belief.

If you are interested in this area, then look no further than our upcoming CPD courses led by children’s mental health expert Tony France, focusing on child-to-parent violence and understanding and supporting children with violent or self-destructive behaviour.

See below to read more or to book now!

Awesome CPD Events for teachers, social care workers and health professionals.

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