By Lucy Roberts
Jennifer Barnfield-Lee used to be a competitive figure-skater after she first showed an interest when she was just a three-year-old and it has since enabled her to experience freedom which is something she craves.
Jennifer Barnfield-Lee
Now mother of two Barnfield-Lee, has turned her attention to helping other children realise their true worth and find their confidence after helping her now 19-year-old son when he was told he wouldn’t amount to anything.
Barnfield-Lee spoke to Female First about why she created the PEPP method to help children feel empowered and find themselves, explained why she created affirmation cards for kids and revealed what she credits her success to.
Q) Why did you want to go into figure-skating?
A) That was a story that I’ve been told- so I was about three, hiding under the table, I remember- you know when it’s very vivid in your imagination, and I was underneath the table and it was around the time when Torvill and Dean were competing back in the good old days when BBC Sport used to show all the figure skating and all the competition at the championships. I remember watching them and I was like I want to do that! My mum had said, because I’d had an interest in it, that she’d take me down, I had a go, had a few lessons with one of the coaches and the rest is history.
At the time Joan Slater had walked past my mum and said: ‘She’s good that one.’ And that was about it, my mum was like oh okay, what do I do with this? My mum’s background is in music so it’s quite an alien atmosphere and she approached Joan and said would you be interested in coaching her and she said yes absolutely. And at that time, you could only have lessons with Joan through invitation only because she was the best coach in the ring. So, it sort of went from there really.
Q) But you faced some challenges along the way, so how did you find the strength to continue with your figure-skating career?
A) I have to track back to the feeling that being on the ice gives me, I’m sure other people have other similar feelings to the things that they have a real passion for. For me ice skating it’s like that feeling of freedom, it’s the only way I can explain it, it’s like being able to breathe. To somebody it might be running, to somebody else it might be sky diving. Because having gone through being homeless and the relationships that I was in, and I’d had my son at this point, it’s almost like the feeling of being stifled and figure skating was the only thing that I knew at the time where I thought I’d be free.
So going back into skating at the time I just wanted to go back into it because it was the only place that nobody could hold me down, nobody could hold me back, nobody could stop me because it was a safe place. Now I look back and what I realise is that actually it was creating a space that I could grow. It was not just going into a place where I didn’t feel stifled being on the ice, it was actually a space where subconsciously I could go to think, be able to process situations and look to the future.
I don’t know how but I used to do a lot of thinking when I was skating. To go back into it after I’d had my break and after I’d had my son, I think it set those seeds of knowing how I can produce and create and grow and achieve and what I need to feel in order to create those opportunities for me going forward.
Q) You created the PEPP method, so could you explain what it is and why it came about?
A) It came about because over the years as a parent there’d been some quite turbulent ups and downs like with any parenting journey, they hold the unknown. And some of the experiences that I’d had as a parent of a child but also the experiences my child had gone through made me ask what can I do with my experience? My childhood, my growth through everything I’d experienced and how can I amalgamate that with the experience that my son Tobey was going through and benefit other children and families? Through a lot of tears, frustration and stress I created the PEPP method because I always say we can ask people what is a pep talk? And people will go well I’ve heard of it, and they’ll say I know what it is but when you ask somebody to explain what a pep talk is very few people can actually explain exactly what you do in a pep talk. Do you go home and stand in front of the mirror and have a word with yourself?
So, I wanted to give reason to that, but I wanted it to be really, really special and something that people could focus on, so that is why I added a second P and I gave it the name of an acronym. PEPP stands for positivity, empowerment, power and productivity. In my experience the reason why I gave it those words is because positivity comes from something that makes us feel good. So that was tracking back all the way to me being on the ice, that made me feel really good, safe, free, it allowed my creativity, my subconscious brain to flourish. So, positivity is about finding your own version because kids go through schools and the curriculum is drummed into our brains within an inch of our lives. It’s really important that children understand that actually sometimes their parents’ version or their friends or teacher’s version of positivity is not necessarily their version of positivity and what makes them realty positive and makes them tick.
If we understand why we feel positive and what makes us feel positive, we feel empowered, so empowerment is the gift we give to ourselves, that’s how I talk about it. When we give ourselves a gift of opening up, of being creative, or thinking- we actually in turn are able to inspire others around us most of the time without realising. When we feel empowered, we then feel confident because we’re sharing, we’re inspiring, we’re creating, learning and developing. So, we create an inner confidence where we take hold of ourselves, our decisions, our future, all those kinds of things and we have the willingness or the want to be able to move forward, and that’s where it leads into productivity. Productivity is the amalgamation of knowing what makes us tick and makes us positive, knowing that then makes us empowered to empower people and that then enables us to grow our own confidence bit by bit and then want to move forward and be productive. When children understand the PEPP method, it’s almost like they begin to give themselves permission, so they then stop looking for external validation.
As with anything, it was very much built on my experience, my beliefs, everything that I had gone through as a child and as an adult and what I had seen my son go through, so he then almost became my guinea pig. As a parent, and many parents will know, the hardest children to teach are our own. So, I was like if it doesn’t work on my own kid, it’s not all failed but I might need to borrow someone else’s kid! Mine and my son’s stories sort of merge a little bit because what then happened was, he had a lot of things going on at school, he had injuries as he played rugby and he never wanted to play again. The method was part of the business that I’d created so because I was working from home it was a bit of an eat, sleep, repeat kind of business. But because it was a mindset business when we look back, we didn’t realise we were creating a communication and a dynamic and a family of how do we find a positivity? How do we move forward? It’s not all doom and gloom, it just means we have to re-direct, re-align or find a different way forward.
Unknowingly it rubbed off on him so he’d then gone from being very poorly, badly injured; he couldn’t pick up a rugby ball through injury and he had about six months out. And then in a total of nine months with the last three months of that, he went through a lot of rehabilitation, he was like, ‘Mum I never want to pick up another rugby ball, I don’t want to play rugby.’ And I knew that as a 16-year-old he had more determination, more capability and more passion for rugby than I had when I was at the top of my competing game. So, when you can see that as a parent and they’re saying 'I just want to quit', and you’re torn between supporting them and going 'okay quit', and then knowing 'oh you’re literally on the brink, don’t do it, give it one more go'. We said look do you still enjoy the game? Yes. Do you want to play? No. Why don’t you want to play? Because I don’t want to get injured. So, you either want to overcome the injury or you literally just want to give up and play recreationally.
We went through the whole method, and we used the experience that I’d gone through in sport of how do we change the mindset, where’s the focus and how do we go forwards? He ended up being selected for the international Welsh touch rugby team and was capped at the age of 16. That for me almost concreted that the method worked but also the power of that method. My daughter is eight, my son is nearly 20 – but my daughter who was 18 months, grew up with this communication method, so to her she’s never known any different, so she’s grown up with that whereas my son was 15 so the mindset is already set and focussed. But what we didn’t realise was with sport and mindset- it can be dead easy to change because it’s solid in a direction that somebody wants it to go in or it can be really difficult to change because the mindset is so solid in itself.
So, through the method and through the experience that I’d had in sport when my daughter started to do her gymnastics she then actually applied herself. Both my son and daughter are chalk and cheese but when it comes to sporting mindset and when it comes to how to apply that not just in sports but academics, friendships and life – they seem to have developed this ability to be really open but really clear in their communication and really positive in what they want in their beliefs and their dreams. It’s almost like seeing what I had come alive in both of my kids and obviously the many other children that I’ve worked with. But I also saw the power that it can have and how it can impact not just the right there and then moment when they’re in the moment but also how that carries on and how that then grows and develops in the future when they grow up.
Q) During lockdown you started designing affirmation cards for kids, so why did you want to do that and how successful has it been so far?
A) That was something that was designed right at the end of 2019, and I launched them just right before. It was initially part of the primary school workshops that I was in the middle of developing. Nobody knew 2020 was going to hit the way it did so I did this launch and we sold out and I think we ended up selling about 150/200 decks by the time lockdown had come. I developed those because it was the easiest way for me to get positive communication into the family home where children can feel inspired quietly, because not all kids will respond to 'yay, oh my God, you’re amazing!' Kids will look at you and say, 'okay….are you alright there?' It’s about how can we help children to feel loved, appreciated and grow and develop without it being in your face.
These cards helps not only to create communication amongst the family but also parents were also using the cards to inwardly digest. Like the word proud, how can I use this word proud to include my children and help them feel good about themselves. But I also wanted to take it one step further in helping adults and children to not just talk about themselves because when we talk about ourselves it’s very ego-led. We have to remember that there’s a community of people around us and that if we don’t build the community, we’re always going to be alone. So, the cards took it one step further in showing children and parents how to talk about each other. For example, 'I feel proud of you because of', and then the child is hearing the other person talk about them, not just themselves. It’s not 'I’m proud of myself because I did this', it’s 'I’m really proud of you because you did that'.
And that’s the difference in my affirmation cards and the reason why I built them because sometimes we have to help other people realise the value in themselves before, they realise it themselves. And then that’s different to then looking for external validation as that’s very ego led, whereas helping somebody with worthiness is something that comes from the heart.
Q) What do you credit your success to?
A) I honestly think it’s my kids- seeing them grow and develop through their lives. They’ve both had different family dynamics and different opportunities in their lives, but I've seen how they’ve navigated through it, how they’ve handled it, how they’ve adapted and grown and how I’ve been able to contribute to that. My inspiration comes from how I see them grow and develop because it’s almost like it shows us what’s possible. Even as an established adult, it shows us how much we have the choice to change and better our lives over settling for something that’s mediocre and okay. I always say (about my kids) one was brought here to show me the way and one was brought to prove that it was right.
Jennifer Barnfield-Lee is a Speaker and Mindset Coach specialising in card deck publishing (www.affirmationcardsforkids.co.uk)