Fruit Shoot has just launched its new campaign It’s My Thing. The campaign aims to encourage children to have a passion point and relish in their "Thing". Here are CBeebies' Dr Ranj's Top Tips.
Find Your Child's Thing:
1. Expose your child to new things so they can explore potential passions and interests. This doesn’t have to be mean spending lots of money but could be helping them find information, resources and inspiration eg books at the library, digital information and videos or news articles.
2. Take advantage of what and who is available in your local community.
3. Give them free time to search and discover for themselves what they’re interested in.
4. Don’t focus on winning, its about trying new things and having fun.
5. Once your child has found the thing they love, support and encourage them to explore it further
Nurture Your Thing
1. Nurture confidence from an early age through reassurance and encouragement. Children are more aware of failure than they let on, so the more parents can support and instil confidence, the better-prepared children will be.
2. Don’t focus on winning, its all about trying new things and having fun.
3. Show interest and encouragement. Talk about your child’s interests and passions and talk about your own. Discuss how they give meaning to your life and ask other family members to talk about their "things" too.
4. Help them to get to know others who are pursuing their things. Sometimes, it’s helpful to find people who have a similar interest to your child’s, other times, children can learn a lot from people who have an interest that’s different to theirs.
5. Learn about their thing yourself so you can encourage and engage them. Some parents like to get physically involved e.g. by becoming an assistant coach or club leader.