Building confidence starts from a young age. Our personalities are shaped by the combination of our innate nature and the social environment that we live in. Our confidence and self-esteem are shaped by these as well. We as parents play a huge role in building confidence in our kids. It is important that we realize the areas in which we are a big influence.
Confidence is a superpower! We can’t be there for our kids at all times. So, we want to equip them with confidence so that they may be able to better navigate and overcome any challenge in the real world. To help clear the fog on where to begin, here are some top tips for building confidence in kids.
Promote Self-Love and Kindness
Love must always start with loving yourself. Your child can observe how you treat yourself, so be a role-model to them by speaking kindly of yourself and praising yourself for doing well. Start a conversation with your kids about successes and milestones and how you treat and reward yourself for a job well done. Celebrate accomplishments with them. Talk about how you achieved those accomplishments, your work ethic and values, your skills, talents and effort, and talk about how they too, can be successful with the skills that they possess.
Your Love is the Foundation
Once you have mastered self-love, loving your kids will come to you naturally. Kids need to feel loved and accepted. And where does that often begin? It begins in the household. Raising a kid in a family that is filled with love and respect for one another accounts for a huge chunk of the boost in their confidence. This love can later flourish and expand to include other groups such as friends, classmates, and the communities to which they belong. If you ever become upset with your child, be sure to give them a hug, explain and apologize, and remind them that you love them.
Seek Opportunities to Give them Praise
Remember getting a star in preschool for doing a great job? We bet that you showed it to your mom with a huge grin after class! Children always turn to their parents for validation, especially at a very young age.
Children feel appreciated and loved when you acknowledge their good work and show that you’re proud of them. Giving them praise when praise is due is necessary in building their confidence but remember to also be realistic. Building confidence in kids comes with making sure that you’re not unnecessarily fluffing up their ego when they fail at something. Being there to praise their effort could go a long way. Teach your child that not everything can go perfectly, and that’s okay.
Encourage Realistic Goals
Aside from giving realistic praise, there’s also encouraging your kids to create realistic goals. Feelings of failure can come from falling short of what they feel is expected of them. Aim high, they say, but we don’t want our kids to feel discouraged after failing to fulfill extremely high expectations.
Building confidence in kids requires for you to be their trustworthy guide and not the person who puts pressure on them in order to maintain excellence. It’s okay to support their big dreams when they are young, but when they enter the real world and things gets tougher than expected, help them to set SMART goals in order to keep themselves on track.
Challenge your Kids to Try New Things
Oh, that crippling fear of failure, who wants that? Yet, a lot of us still face this fear, time and time again. The fix? Start young and and encourage your kids to try new things. Let them explore their surroundings, go on trips, expand their horizons, and find new hobbies.
Teaching your kid how to ride a bike? Demonstrate first and then let them try it. Give them space and let them explore it on their own. Supervise, but try not to hover. Soon your child will learn to be independent and confident in doing and learning anything on their own.
Sports are also a great confidence booster. They instill in your kids the value of practice, by which they can improve and achieve their goals. Sports also help them to evaluate their strengths and weaknesses and they also learn to handle defeat. Sports are a fun way to get in their physical activity, so help them to find a sport that they can enjoy participating in.
Help them Embrace Resilience
This is where teaching your kids not to give up comes in. Failure as they say is an essential ingredient for success. No one succeeds at everything, all the time. Disappointments get thrown our way along with criticism and hurt feelings. Although we cannot protect our children from failure and disappointments, we can teach our kids about the concept of resilience, which is key to building their confidence. Telling them to “Cheer up” won’t be enough. Make sure to validate their feelings by listening and empathizing, but don’t let them dwell on the situation. Help them to see the silver lining in every tough situation and teach them how to view those setbacks as learning opportunities. Then, discuss some things that they can do better the next time around.
Be their Cheerleader
You must feel lucky when you have a talented kid who excels and is passionate about something. Be the proud parent who supports their child’s pursuits at all times. Building confidence in your child requires you to be a person that they can rely upon whether things are good or bad. Give them praise, so long as it’s genuine.
Establish Rules and Stick to Them
Raising a confident child means that there needs to be some rules that are enforced within the household. This lays the foundation for your child’s values and establishes your authority as a parent and an authoritative figure. Having rules boosts your child’s confidence. They know what is allowed and what isn’t and they are able to move freely so long as they stay within the bounds of what is acceptable according to the rules that you’ve set.
Having a confident child is a delight. If you’re looking to raise a confident child that lives by the word of God, Cornerstone Learning Center just might be a good fit for you and your family! With three locations in the greater Memphis area, including both Olive Branch and Southwind, you can be rest-assured that your child’s education will never conflict with their values—or with your own. Find out more at Cornerstone Learning Center.