How you can influence a child’s inner voice

By Gabby Goodier; Co-Founder of Same Page Co + Clinical Psychologist

3 minute read

What was the last thing you said to yourself, in your head?  Was it a brutal put down? Or an encouraging pep talk?  For me it was, “seriously, Gabby!”, as I managed to spill coffee on my freshly cleaned white jumper for the second time today!

The way we speak to ourselves and how early in life this begins has a more profound impact on our mental health than many of us recognise.  Have you ever noticed that how you speak to yourself can set the emotional tone for your day, or influence how you approach life’s challenges?  The real question then becomes, how can you work this in your favour, and in your kid’s?

The research 

Even though you can feel like one distinct person, I am a firm believer that there is a multiplicity to all of us and researchers would agree!  And when it comes to our kids, we know that how we speak to them shapes the voice inside their head.

Thanks to the work of Lev Vygotsky, we know that our capacity for inner speech develops around the age of 2 or 3, when children start talking to themselves out loud, particularly during play.  Vygotsky argued that this acted as a precursor to inner speech, with the inner voice becoming established in a child by age 5!

Brain imaging has confirmed this theory, showing how the neural connections between areas in the brain that are involved in speech production and comprehension start to develop around the same time as inner speech.

What about the content?

Knowing when this development starts to take shape is key, but how does the content develop?  We know that this is predominantly influenced by what key adults in someone’s life said, and most importantly how they said it.  Essentially, these ‘parts’ or ‘voices’ are internalised representations of your early experiences and caregivers.  Interestingly, researchers believe that the origin of say your “critical” part comes not from the criticism you may have heard, but from your emotional reaction to it.  In other words, how you felt shaped the narrative and the power that the voice inside your head has.  For example, researchers at the John Paul II Catholic University of Lubin in Poland showed that people whose parents strongly disagreed on how to raise them experienced more intense and distressing internal dialogues as adults, as the opposing viewpoints continued to play out in their heads over a battle of what was ‘right’.

How can you tune in and conquer?

For so many of us there is a lack of awareness of the content that runs through our heads on the daily.  A first step in relating to these parts differently is getting to know them.  One way you can do this is to start noticing your inner dialogue and tune into which ‘part’ of you is talking and importantly, how it makes you feel.  When you get to know these ‘parts’ you are in a better position to befriend them.

Sounds a bit strange right? I get it, and wonderfully researchers have shown just how effective this ‘befriending’ can be.  Kross and his colleagues induced ‘stress’ in participants by asking them to give a presentation with short notice.  Half were told to prepare by silently talking to themselves, either using a name, or non-first-person pronouns, such as he, she or you (e.g. “Hi, Cynthia… I can hear how stressed you are about this presentation.  I get it.  It’s last minute, this feels intense”).  The other half of participants were directed to use the first-person pronouns, “I”, “my”, or “me”.

The results showed that using nonfirst person pronouns not only provided psychological distance from the stressor, it also improved their performance!  More than this, these participants were more likely to be proud of their presentation and spent less time pulling it apart in their heads.

How can you help your child with this?

Once you’ve established this for yourself, you’re in a great position to help your child learn to relate to these parts of them as well.  After all, we can’t ‘get rid of a feeling’, you can, however, change your relationship with it. 

As soon as you name something as a part or as a voice, something insanely powerful happens inside you…. you add presence to that feeling.  And by adding that presence, the feeling doesn’t become you and it’s no longer alone, you literally get into a relationship with it. The part that has popped up and is screaming strongly, is no longer all consuming. Remembering it as ‘just a part’ means that all your other parts, the good bits too, are still there within you. 

That’s why doing this internally sets you up to be able to do this with your kid because you can actually relate to your feelings instead of them having to take over and be singular.

Setting your kids up in this way, helping them to relate to parts of them is one of the most important things you can do.  By helping them learn to relate to the things inside of them, you will give them the power to use whatever gifts they have.

This is a powerful notion to create in the home, ahead of tricky moments, to help set your kids up for success. This is how I’d introduce the concept to a kid with say, big worries…

“Do you know that every single person has a worry part?

And if I was saying this to my daughter I’d say, “do you know that there's a worry girl in me?  I think you might have a worry girl in you too!”

Kids get so interested and curious when you set it up in this way and might ask, what is that?

Next you could say, “well the worry part of us is the one that has all of your worries.  And here's something really interesting about that part… did you know that our worries actually try to protect us? The worry part of us is the part of us that thinks of things in advance and thinks about things that they feel we should be worried about.  It is a good thing for me to be worried about crossing a street if there are cars coming.  Thank you worry part, thank you for keeping me safe, BUT sometimes our worried part can get a little loud and a little over-excited and when they think that they’re protecting us, some days they can just get in our way… and do you know what, just talking to that worried part is SO helpful.  Just recognising when it comes up and saying “hi”, because here’s something that’s really important darling, we don’t get rid of our worried part, we don’t have to, because that worried part is really important.  We just have to kind of talk to them when they come up”.

I’d encourage you to give this a try.  Get your kid to give their worried part a name (my son’s is called Knuckles and my daughter’s is called Jasmine) and better yet, name yours! Mine is called Margo.  And remember that these are just parts of you, not all of you.