Confidence is a vital life skill of our lives. It navigates our life towards positivity. Confidence makes you ready to face any challenges of life. Therefore it is very important to build confidence in children from beginning of their childhood. Since birth, a child learn new things everyday and enhances their capabilities according to their age. So it is important to teach them to have trust on their own capabilities to overcome their hurdles. And here comes the role of a parent and teachers to build children’s confidence so that they can trust their skills.
A child with low self esteem have to face many problems that lead to depression and anxiety. When a child have low confidence they give the control to other people and are treated poorly. It is often observed that lack of confidence makes you suffer without any reason or fault. American Psychological Association has shared in one of their articles that how students with low self esteem expressed their emotions. They often express themselves in negative ways like, “I am a stupid”, ” I don’t know anything” e.t.c. They give up very easily in life and take the blame for the things that are out of their control.
Now the question is who plays the major role in building confidence in children? Parents and teachers are the key players to boost a child’s confidence. But don’t take it as a pressure, it is no hard work. In this post there will be 10 effective strategies to build confidence in children that you can start from today.
Understanding How Important is Self-Confidence In Children
Now let’s know what do we mean by Confidence? In simple words confidence allow us to have faith in ourselves to try something without focusing on how difficult it is. It is the strength to try new things and courage to move on despite of hurdles on the way.
A self confident child believe in himself and his capabilities. Children with self confidence have a inner voice that make them sure of their skills. Their confidence help them to move ahead even after failing. Vice versa lack of confidence will pull a child backward. He have the fear of failures and rejections that will hold them from trying new things.
A child who is confident becomes a secured person in life. Confident children will have a positive aspect of life and growth mindset. So being a parent always try to build the confidence in children as this the foundation of a strong and positive mindset.
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10 Best Ways To Build Confidence In Children
1) Acknowledge the effort rather than focusing on result
Our actions and efforts are in our control not the outcomes. So if children are trying something whatever be the outcome never forget to praise their effort. It will give them more empowerment and satisfaction. They will try more harder the next time when they receive accolades for their efforts. Learning to focusing on the process makes them more confident as it helps them to enjoy the process. Instead of getting stressed and anxiety while thinking of the results.
2) Encourage Healthy Risk Taking
It is very necessary to come out of comfort zone to achieve something. Share your experiences of taking manageable risks to get something big. Let them learn to take small healthy risks to try something new. And give them the confidence that your support and love is always with you. So that they don’t have the fear of loosing something or getting punished of not achieving something. Taking calculated risks builds resilience and confidence in children.
3) Foster A Growth Mindset
First thing that we need to teach our children is that there is no option other than hard work to reach a milestone. Fostering a growth mindset is a journey of accepting challenges and embracing the mistakes by learning from them. If children fail and say, “I can’t do this.”, explain them that failures are part of the process. This is natural but quitting is not natural. Motivate them to keep learning and gaining experiences.
4) Providing Opportunities For Success
When children do activities involving skill development, they think critically to find solutions and give their maximum effort to solve problems. These in turn boosts their confidence to proceed further and learn more. Giving children tasks and chores according to their age make them capable of taking their own decisions and develops a sense of responsibility among them.
5) Model Confident Behavior
Children are very good absorbers, they absorb everything they see around them very quickly. So model confidence for them. If your actions show how resilient you are in your life, your children will learn that too from you. They will learn how to bounce back with full confidence after any difficult situations. So be a role model to build confidence in children and provide them a positive and supportive environment.
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6) Emphasize on Children’s Strength
Focus on a child’s strength and positive traits, it will foster confidence. Highlighting children’s positive qualities and hard work will boost their confidence. This will offer them a supportive environment where children will not get afraid to take healthy risks. When children start believing in themselves they will never step back due to fear of failure.
7) Develop Problem Solving Skill
Let your children try different ways to solve a problem. Avoid offering help to find the solution. When children brainstorm about the problem, they approach different ways to find a solution. And in this process they will surely get number of successes and failures too. But this will have a positive impact on their behavior. They will feel more confident and keen to try new things. Discuss small day to day problems with your child and encourage them to find solutions for that and express their opinions.
8) Encourage Positive Self Talk
To build confidence in children it is very important to instill positive self talk in children. And for that parents should also be positive in their body language so that children can learn that from parents. This is the key part of being confident. Positive affirmations have a huge impact on any individual’s life. Use positive phrases or quotes in your daily conversations with your child. Encouraging words always build your confidence. There will be difficult situations in life and phrases like, “I can’t do this” will just take you a step back but phrase like, “I will try my best” will always take you one step close to success.
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9) Provide Developmental Feedback
Be careful while providing feedback to children, never use criticizing or comparing words. Instead provide actionable suggestions that include ways to develop more. Highlight their hard work, strength and areas of growth too. A parent’s feedback has an everlasting effect in a child’s life. Therefore be sure to have a communication that have a positive outcome and it should focus on improving your child’s skill.
10) Celebrate Your Child’s Progress
When your child tries something to do or achieve something, whatever be the outcome, never forget to celebrate their progress. Winning should not be the only reason to celebrate, their progress and hard work also need acknowledgement and celebration. Your sincere praise will help them to identify their strengths and they will continue their hard work to reach the goal point. And this journey of trying, putting their all effort will boost their confidence at each step of their life.
Final Thoughts
I am sure we will all know and realize the fact that how being confident is important in our lives. Therefore we want our children to be confident in their lives too. But this not a task of one day. It is a process that have to practiced by parents and children from very beginning to build confidence in children. I am sure the above ways will surely help to instill confidence in children if followed religiously. Be patient, as this is one of the major ingredient of parenting and everything else will fall on their places.
Model confidence to your child and give them opportunities to boost their confidence. Kids will absorb this trait very easily if they are encouraged properly. Share your experiences as parent how you worked on boosting your child’s confidence. I am sure we all love to know each others success and hard work in the journey of parenting.
