When I think about self-esteem I think about the huge responsibility we have as adults in the lives of our children and the children we come in contact with on a daily basis. I can remember as a young girl just not always feeling truly comfortable in my skin and not feeling all that great about myself in general. My Mom wasn’t the best at instilling confidence and positive self-esteem. I don’t judge her for that, she just wasn’t made in a way to offer me what I needed in that area. We have so much power with our words when we speak to our kids, if we only realized it every single time we spoke. At the same time, we can tell our kids to be themselves and stay true to who they are or tell them that they can be anything they want to be or do anything they that they want to do and probably the one that holds the hugest of power is to tell them we are proud of them. I don’t think you can realize just what those words mean unless you didn’t receive them yourself as a child or a young adult, especially from your parents. I think there are adults other than our parents who can have a huge impact on our self-esteem and I certainly can think of a few in my life, like a really awesome teacher that I once had or my Aunt who is more like a Mom to me, so although it doesn’t have to be our parents who we get the most encouragement from, it sure does make a really big difference.
Aside from building up our kids with words and love, we have to understand that those things only go so far. I mean I am not a person who is into material things, but I get what it means as a child to have nice clothes and a few electronic gadgets, just like everyone else does. An absolute favorite song of mine is this one because it’s really about this kind of thing, but with a great deal of humor. I mean, really, we can say things like “you go to school to learn not for a fashion show” but we can also remember just how tough it was to be an adolescent or a teen and the struggle to fit in with our appearance, can’t we? So why not send our kids out into the world with a few “things” that can boost their confidence and put a little bounce in their step? Our words can only go so far and are really always with them, but sometimes they need to show off a bit of style or perhaps some flair and this is exactly what I think of when I think of Ficklets and my dear friend Ros, who invented and owns the Ficklets company. She created these little “gems” out of a desire to add some pizazz to her daughter’s eyeglasses. Now, we all know if there is one thing that kids are self-conscious about and often get teased about, it’s the fact that they wear glasses, especially at a young age. I mean you can certainly teach them that the best comeback to “hey four eyes” is “four eyes are better than two“, but that’s so 1985 and we’ve matured at least a little bit since then, haven’t we? So, what’s even better than that? Accessorize the glasses! Oh yeah, that’s right!! Ficklets are totally the most cutest and adorable charms for eyeglasses and they even have a few snazzy styles for grown-ups too. Why should the kids have all the fun, right? Truly, though, I am not writing this as a sales pitch to you. I’m writing it because having gotten to know Ros over the course of several months, I think everyone on the planet should know about Ficklets and the little boost of confidence they could possibly give that little one who is a bit nervous about having to wear glasses for the first time. Instead, they will be the envy of all their friends
Disclosure: Ficklets is generously sponsoring my travel expenses to attend the TypeAMom conference in Asheville, North Carolina and this post is written in connection with that relationship. Regardless, I’d write this post without the sponsorship. No lie.
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