Metaperception

"I am not what I think I am and I am not what you think I am; I am what I think that you think I am."

Sounds confusing?

Metaperception also known as the looking-glass self, a social psychological concept, created by Charles Horton Cooley.

The concept had me constantly reminding myself to think good things about my children and make known to them that my thoughts for them are positive. Because children grow up becoming what their parents believed them to be. So if you often think out loud, how lazy he/she is, how horrible he/she is, you will not get anything but that nasty-labelled child you thought you had all along.

This Aimee Mullins. Born without fibulae in both legs, doctors amputated both Aimee's legs below the knee on her first birthday. 

Her parents were told Aimee would never walk and would likely spend the rest of her life on a wheelchair. Aimee's parents refused to accept her medical prognosis and were determined to raise their daughter like any able-bodied kids. By age two, Aimee had learned to walk on prosthetic legs and she later went on to swim, bike and ski like all other children her age.

In her teen, she became the first double amputee to compete in nationally-ranked track team along side with able athletics. Then she went on to set World Records in the 100 meter, the 200 meter, and the long jump, with her prosthetic legs.

After conquering the tracks, Aimee was featured in Sports Illustrated for Women, being the first model without legs. In 1999, Aimee made her runway debut in London at the invitation of late fashion designer, Alexander McQueen.

Walking alongside with supermodels of the world and making her mark in fashion magazines like Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, Elle and many more, she was recently crowned as the new Global Brand Ambassador to the beauty brand, L'Oreal Paris.

If Aimee's parents would to 'accept their fate' and believed that their daughter was capable of nothing because she has a disability, do you think Aimee would be who she is today? In one of the interview, Aimee told her audiences, she never see herself as being disabled when she was young, simply because it wasn't in her parents' dictionary.

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I struggled with my identity and took a long time to finally become who I want to be because I didn't have the luxury of having parents around when I was growing up.

Ultimately, when you are an adult, how you see yourself could potentially be more important than how others perceive you to be. But if I can give my children a head-start, just by thinking more positively of them, then why not.