Rebranding Childhood®

It happens everyday inside and outside the classroom, where children label themselves as: not fitting in, feeling a failure, being stupid, being different, worthless. These children didn’t get to this thought space on their own. Somebody or something has reinforced their perceptions of their inabilities rather than their abilities. They have come to believe this as their truth and this leaves them vulnerable to life’s natural ebb and flow of stress that is part of life.

Then we have the children who feel accepted, likeable, confident. They can solve problems and overcome challenges. They are the ones who are optimistic and put a smile on their face even when they have the right to cry. What is it that makes these children able to deal with life positively and evade the feelings of worthlessness that have come to surround other children who have faced challenges and have been unable to surmount them?

Many would sum this up by saying that these children have learnt to thrive because they have the skills for being resilient. So where did these skills come from? It is almost like what came first, the chicken or the egg? Did these children experience adversity first to build their resilience, or did they have the resilience to deal with adversity.

In the context of children who have been knocked down by life and have been unable to stand up again, perhaps a “Childhood Rebrand” is necessary. This concept was coined by founder, Zelna Lauwrens in 2003 when she first initiated her research on the aspects of the changing landscape of childhood and the need to revert back to basics. Rebranding Childhood® focuses on coaching children to rewrite their story and deal with the wobble and fall which is part of everyday life. Salman Rushdie said: “Those who do not have power over their story that dominates their lives, the power to retell it, to rethink it, to deconstruct it, joke about it and change it as times change, truly are powerless.”

Building Resilience in childhood, is a personal journey, but one which doesn’t have to be traveled alone if they have a Kids Life Coach working alongside them. One of the prevailing themes in all resilience research is the notion of support. Although some children are born genetically with a higher stress tolerance, all children are the same when it comes to overcoming stress. They all need a support system in place that reassures them on a consistent basis that positive stress is an important tool that helps them grow and learn and ultimately gives them the power to deal with whatever life throws their way. Coaching children to rethink stress by choosing what they can do about it, can massively affect whether a stressful event has a positive or negative impact. To do this, they need to know that they are accepted and loved according to their abilities and not their disabilities.