“Behind every young child who believes in himself is a parent who believed first.”
– Matthew L. Jacobson.
How To Build Confidence In Your Child | Self-Esteem Tips
Self-esteem is feeling good about yourself and being comfortable with who you are. Children with good self-esteem will take the initiative to try new things and take healthy risks. They can cope, accept and learn from their mistakes and keeps trying. This, in turn, improves their confidence and self-esteem.
Children with low self-esteem usually exhibit signs like giving up on tasks and challenges easily, avoids initiatives, fear of acceptance by others, becoming sensitive to other people’s opinions about them, and have low confidence to stand up for oneself.
Did you know?
Children with low self-esteem are 1.6 times more likely to meet the criteria for drug dependence than other children
Self-esteem starts developing right from early childhood. It develops when child is provided with rich early experiences and safe environment where baby feels loved, cared and gets adequate attention. At every developmental milestone, they are able to achieve a new/advanced skill. it’s important for you as a parent to acknowledge the same to build their confidence.
Here is how you can build your child’s self-esteem / confidence:
- Communicate openly:Spend minimum 15 mins of quality time with your child where you communicate, connect and bond. Be it discussing about the events of the day, doing an activity together, etc. Make sure to tell them you love them unconditionally, irrespective of their achievements or failures.
- Give choices when possible:Give them choices – only if you will let them choose. It always helps to give them pre-selected options to choose from. Children feel empowered when they make their own choices.
- Don’t overpraiseMake a conscious effort to step back from overpraising your child all the time. It can inflate a child’s ego by making them believe that they are the best at everything and will hurt them in the long run when they won’t be able to handle real-life challenges. Also, exaggerated statements create doubt about their true abilities. As the child gets used to being praised, it creates high-performance pressure making them feel insecure. This creates the fear of failure and they stop trying new things
- How to praise?:Appreciate your child’s efforts by describing it and not just the end results. By appreciating and describing their efforts, you acknowledge the efforts that they have put or the challenges they have overcome to get the task done. For e.g., If your child builds a structure with blocks, instead of saying “Wow! Excellent building. You are the best” you can say “Wow, you’ve spent so much time and effort to build this tall building; I like that you have used 2 big blocks first to give a strong foundation. I saw that it did fall a couple of times but you didn’t give up on building it.”
- Give them responsibilityGiving or keeping them in charge of simple household chores makes them feel trustworthy and worthwhile which, in turn, helps build their self-esteem.
- Do not compare your childEach child is unique and has his/her own set of strengths and weaknesses. Comparing your child with their siblings or friends will do more harm than good. Instead, let them compare their progress on a task with themselves.
- Work on your self-esteemBefore building your child’s self-esteem work on your self–esteem. You are your child’s first role model and children learn from you. They immediately pick up the traits you exhibit. Be it how you execute any task at home or office – do you crib or do it cheerfully? How you handle your mistakes – do you blame or you learn? Do you give-up easily or you persist?
Did you know?
The best gift you can give your child is a positive feeling of self. Find self-esteem activities that you as a parent can do with your child. Subscribe to Jyppzer Kids’ Annual Plan.