As you start working with your child to learn and develop new skills, one thing you may not think about teaching them is how to be confident. Confidence is an important trait for both children and adults to have. Business Insider mentions that when kids lack confidence, they may be less likely to try new things or challenge themselves because of the fear of failure.
By teaching your children confidence, you can help them feel more encouraged to push themselves, try new things, and help them be more successful in life. But how are you supposed to teach someone confidence? It really is not that hard and you can start working on building your child’s confidence when they are young, allowing them to develop this trait throughout the years.
At Yellow Brick Road Early Childhood Development Center, we know how important it is for your child to begin developing their confidence early on. Our encouraging, stimulating, and nurturing classroom environment allows for your little one to begin building their confidence. With locations in Maple Grove, Minnetonka, Plymouth, and Eden Prairie, you can find an amazing child care center for your child. Learn more about us and be sure to read this blog! We will be giving you tips on how to help your child feel more confident.
Let Them Do Things Themselves
It is natural for a parent to jump in to help their child when they see them doing something wrong. Whether you see an accident about to happen, you can tell your child feels discouraged, or you know it’ll be easier if you do it, try to refrain from this as much as possible. A Parents’ article mentions that your child needs to learn that it is okay to fail and that feelings of sadness, anxiety, or anger are normal. They will learn confidence by facing obstacles. If you are removing those obstacles, you are not helping them.
You need to let your child play, try new things, and take risks without jumping in to help them or criticizing them for doing something wrong. Let them try doing things themselves and give them guidance without doing it for them. This way they can make mistakes and learn from them, but more importantly learn that they are capable of trying again and succeeding after failing. To really push this point home, you may even purposefully make a mistake of your own to show them that it’s normal and you can just pick yourself back up and try again.
Coach Them
While some parents try to control their children and how to do things, a better way to do this is to coach them. Help them work through a problem rather than telling them how to fix it. Support your child and encourage their efforts. If they do something wrong, help them figure out why and encourage them to try again. Instead of doing everything for your child, do it with them and let them take charge. When you become their coach and encourage them to keep trying or help them work out a problem, they will begin to develop the skills to handle obstacles on their own and develop the confidence to do so.
Let Them Make Decisions
While this may seem like a dangerous game that will lead to you eating ice cream for breakfast, allowing your child to make some decisions can help boost their confidence and help them feel comfortable making their own choices and judgments.
A good way to give your child choices while also maintaining some sort of control is to give them three options to choose from. When you ask your child for their opinion or to make a decision, it can help them feel like their voice matters and allows them to begin feeling confident in the choices they make.
It is still important to establish that some choices are still up to you. They can choose what they wear or what toy they play with but you get to decide when they nap and what they are allowed to watch.
Don’t Push Perfection
It is important that you don’t teach your child to strive for perfection. As many adults know, there is no such thing as perfect. Instead, teach your child to try their best and to continue to improve. When you constantly push for perfection or try to improve whatever your child is working on, you can quickly diminish their confidence and make them feel as though they are not good enough.
While you want your child to do their best in school, sports, and whatever else they may be doing, there is a way to focus on them doing their best rather than performing perfectly. Even if you don’t try to improve their work, when you push them for perfection and they don’t reach it, they will likely lose confidence in their abilities.
Give Them Tasks
Giving your child tasks or responsibilities to take care of can help them feel useful and competent. Try giving your child special tasks that allow them to continue working toward something that they can achieve. When your children are young, you can even tell them that it is a “special” task to help boost their confidence even more. They will realize that you are trusting them with something important. Labeling something as special may not have the same effect with older children.
These tasks could be anything that you know your child can handle and don’t mind letting them try. Have them help you cook dinner, let them help you decorate for a holiday or birthday, or let them help their younger sibling with something. These sorts of tasks allow them to realize their abilities and feel useful.
Give Them Challenges
Along with giving your child tasks to help you with, you should also give them challenges that help them grow and develop new skills. Challenge them to learn how to ride a bike with no training wheels, taking small steps to get there. Challenge them to learn how to spell their name, then once they have that down, challenge them to spell yours. With these small challenges that eventually help them build new skills, they will also build more confidence. They will begin to see what they are capable of and continue to work on improving skills.
Don’t Set Them Up For Failure
When giving your child challenges or tasks to accomplish, it is important that you don’t set them up for failure. Make sure you choose tasks that you know they can accomplish and challenges they can succeed at.
When your child does do something that they are failing at, let them. As we already mentioned, failure happens and it is important that your child learns to try again. So instead of jumping in to help them avoid failure, let them fail and encourage them to try again. If your child asks for help, give it to them. You can help them and encourage them without taking over and rescuing them from their problems.
Focus On Effort
Instead of putting focus on the results of a project, task, or anything else your child is working on, focus more on their effort. Let them know that you can tell they put a lot of work into it or that you noticed how hard they tried. When you focus on your child’s effort and the work they put into something, it will motivate them to keep trying and improving. This can help them feel more confident in their abilities regardless of the outcome.
Provide New Experiences
Trying new things can be scary for adults and kids. But it is also a great way to build confidence. Find opportunities to give your child new experiences. When you expose your child to new experiences, they can learn that they can conquer anything, no matter how scary it may be.
However, these new experiences don’t have to be scary, just try something new with your child. Bring them camping, have them ride their bike with no training wheels, get them roller blades, bring them to a new park that they may not be used to. While these may all seem like small things, they are new experiences to your child and will help them develop more confidence in order to try them.
Celebrate Their Bravery
When you notice your child do something that took a lot of courage, be sure to celebrate it. If they go up to another child at the park and start talking to them or ask to play with them, let them know that you are proud of them for it. When they try something new, applaud them. When you celebrate these small feats, your child will feel confident in their abilities.
There are so many different ways to help your child build confidence. These are only a few of the many tips you can follow. Teaching your child confidence and encouraging it can help them be more successful throughout school and the rest of their lives.
At Yellow Brick Road, we believe that confidence is an important trait for your child to develop at a young age. Enroll your kiddo in our programs and help them grow and learn in a stimulating and nurturing environment! Contact us today.
