To make positive self-talk an effective tool, children need to learn to use it to counteract negative self-talk. The first step is for children to recognize the negative thoughts or self-talk that they have. Then, they need to find ways to transform these negative thoughts into positive ones. Using a whiteboard can be a helpful approach to this process. Write the negative thoughts on the board and have children erase them and replace them with positive thoughts. You can provide examples or have children generate their own. For example, a negative thought that could be written on the board may be “I am not good at soccer” which could be replaced with “I am learning how to play soccer”. Through this exercise, children will gain practice in replacing negative self-talk with positive affirmations, allowing them to better handle negative thoughts in the future.