A Child’s Self-Confidence Starts with the Parent
Self-confidence helps our children develop mentally and emotionally. It also adds the extra bonus of helping with life skills and building self-esteem in our kids. If your self-confidence is low, it can be hard to build your child up. First, empower yourself, then you can empower your child.
Building Your Child’s Self-Confidence
A very important goal for parents is to try and help our children gain self-confidence and self-worth. This not only helps our children develop mentally and emotionally, it also add the extra bonus of helping with life skills and building self-esteem. As a parent, there are certain things that we can do and skills we can develop in ourselves and in our child that will help our children grow in self-confidence.
When you parent a child, one thing that you must remember is that you are in control of a life and what you do and say will control and change your child forever. It is a pretty humbling responsibility. Without a doubt self-confidence and self-worth are the most important emotions you can help your child learn.
It is a privilege and a huge responsibility as a parent to help a child grow in self-confidence. There are certain things you can do to help a child achieve and gain the self-confidence he or she needs in life.
Here are some basic guidelines:
Give compliments.
Provide positive feedback.
Show a child how to break down large projects, and tasks into more manageable portions.
This is positive parenting.
Praises and compliments
Praising a child when he or she has achieved a good grade or has completed a project or task well, can make a big difference. It will build importance and the desire to be more and to be and do better. Find ways to give compliments, even when there is not much to complement.
Life is hard and not always fair, so you must help a child be prepared for the ups and downs life will throw at them. Furthermore building self-confidence via complements will give a child courage to face people who might be better in the skills and knowledge than they are.
And a sense of being sure of their own skills and knowledge and self-worth will help them in a competitive situation. Knowing that their efforts and achievements are the best that they can do will fill them with good feelings about their self and will help them make better judgments and decisions.
Children are like a sponge
What you say and do is absorbed into your child’s mind. When a mistake is made or an accident occurs, it is very important how you respond in voice and body language. Positive feedback, even when things or actions are negative is important. Look for something positive and uplifting to say.
Remember not to be too enthusiastic in your praise. It will actually make your child less confident. It might help to recognize what a child is doing. For instance, I notice you are being careful in carrying the dishes to the sink. This helps a child build their own self-confidence, and they won’t seek approval or praise as much. However, the child will still feel good about their self because of your positive feedback.
Positive feedback is important in the development of a child’s self-confidence, self-worth, and self-esteem. How you respond will teach them how to handle situations in life. Their life skills are formed early in life by life’s experiences, emotionally and mentally.
Sincere compliments, positive feedback, breaking down projects into smaller portions and repetition are good basic parenting skills. You as a parent need to help your child grow and learn and be self-confident.
Your child comes first. If you find that your child is struggling, look first at yourself. We’re all human. We all make mistakes. But the biggest one we can make is not putting the mental and physical health and wellbeing of our child first. Need help empowering yourself or your child? Contact Children With a Purpose today!
