Naomi Richards - Being Me (and Loving It): Stories and activities to help build self-esteem, confidence, positive body image and resilience in children

Being Me (and Loving It)

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Being Me (and Loving It)

Stories and activities to help build self-esteem, confidence, body image and resilience in children

Naomi Richards and Julia Hague

Jessica Kingsley Publishers
London and Philadelphia

First published in 2016

by Jessica Kingsley Publishers

73 Collier Street

London N1 9BE, UK

and

400 Market Street, Suite 400

Philadelphia, PA 19106, USA

www.jkp.com

Copyright Naomi Richards and Julia Hague 2016

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form (including photocopying of any pages other than those marked with a *, storing it in any medium by electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of this publication) without the written permission of the copyright owner except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 or under the terms of a licence issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd, Saffron House, 610 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Applications for the copyright owners written permission to reproduce any part of this publication should be addressed to the publisher.

Warning: The doing of an unauthorised act in relation to a copyright work may result in both a civil claim for damages and criminal prosecution.

All pages marked * may be photocopied for personal use with this programme, but may not be reproduced for any other purposes without the permission of the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 84905 713 4

eISBN 978 1 78450 236 2

This book is for all children. Its aim is to help them to understand the wonderful but often painful side of growing up, to learn how to manage any problems they come up against and to enjoy their primary years. Most of all, it will help them to accept and love who they are and, in doing so, see everyone around them as equal.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book would not have been possible without chance meetings. Every part of its journey to reach your hands has unfolded at the right place at the right time. Coming together and sharing our passion for helping children to cope with the challenges they face as they grow up has been a delight for us both. Thank you to both of our families and close friends for supporting us and giving us space to write it and for E and K for adding their thoughts too. Thank you to the whole editorial team at Jessica Kingsley Publishers and to their marketing team for getting it out there. It is great that you see and share our vision to make a difference in young childrens lives.

CONTENTS

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

NAOMI RICHARDS

Naomi is known as The Kids Coach, a life coach who provides coaching for children on issues such as self-esteem, confidence building, social interaction, challenging negative thoughts and beliefs, friendships and school problems.

She empowers children to solve problems for themselves and passes on valuable skills that they will need for life. She does this through interactive and supportive coaching sessions and shows them there is more than one way to solve a problem. Some solutions are common sense and practical but many are innovative, creative and original. A subtle change to the way a child thinks or does can have a huge impact on their life.

Naomi was the first life coach for children in the UK and has been coaching since 2004. As well as coaching internationally she runs tailor-made workshops for children in schools, writes about the world of children and parenting in the press, is a motivational speaker for children and the author of The Parents Toolkit published by Random House in 2012.

Naomi has been recognized as a Remarkable Woman a female entrepreneur who is leading the way in a chosen career path an initiative backed by Nokia, and in 2013 entered into the realm of conferences for girls aged 1113 years. In 2015 she launched a range of products to help boost childrens self-esteem.

JULIA HAGUE

Julia has a wealth of experience in the environment of primary and secondary education given her 16 years of working within the administration of a private girls school in London.

A writer from a young age and a mother of a grown-up daughter herself, Julias passion is in showing parents and educators how they can instil a healthy self-esteem and body image in children from an early age and help them to understand friendship issues and bullying from the very start.

Julia uses her unique storytelling style to show children, from the perspective of others just like them, how their feelings on subjects such as friendship and relationships with others are quite normal, and in doing so provides the children themselves with the tools and confidence to cope with friendship issues and peer pressure, including bullying, while they move through their education and beyond.

Having been born in and lived in London all her life, Julia has recently moved to Cornwall with her husband and is enjoying a new life in the country. In her spare time, Julia heads up her own event company, which has successfully specialized in charity fundraising in the world of science fiction TV for the past ten years.

INTRODUCTION FOR EDUCATORS

This book has primarily been created to be used as part of Personal, Social and Health Education (PSHE) with groups of children or in one-to-one settings. It can also be used by parents with their children. It is a unique educational teaching resource, as its structure is around real-life stories that all have key messages within them. Reading the stories out to a group of children or with an individual and working through the accompanying activities will give children a deeper understanding of who they are and how to solve problems. Problem-solving is not a natural skill for all children and therefore it needs to be taught. The main purpose of the book is self-esteem based but it also addresses friendships, peer pressure, body image, social media and puberty.

It can be hard growing up in the 21st century for many children as there are a great deal of external influences and challenges around today that they have to deal with. There is the pressure to look and act a certain way and both are having a detrimental effect on childrens self-esteem. This low self-esteem is affecting childrens relationships and their energy for life as the way they think and feel about themselves is so negative. They struggle to accept who they are and how they look. Most of this negativity stems from the way their peer groups are interacting with them and what they are seeing in the media in terms of what their role models look like, are doing and are saying. Understandably, these role models tend to be those who are on TV in reality shows, on both UK and American soaps, and pop stars. Many parents would rather their children did not aspire to be or behave like these people.