Read our tips on how to raise a happy and successful child.
Published: 21/03/2023
From birth, children learn new skills at a mind-blowing rate. Along with these skills, is the confidence to use them.
Confidence is a skill in itself, and there are steps that children have to take to build on this, which is where it comes back to you, as parents or carers, to help them on this journey.
We’ve put together five tips and pieces of advice on how to build confidence in children, which will help with laying the foundations for a happy, successful, and confident child.
Something which can hugely aid in instilling confidence in children is actively encouraging them to try new things and tackle new challenges. By doing so, they’ll be gaining new skills, while making them feel capable and confident that they can handle new obstacles and challenges they come up against.
You can help them achieve these little goals by giving them responsibilities (age-appropriate, of course) such as small tasks around the home. These jobs can make them feel valued, all while helping you out too – win, win!
If you really want to nurture your child’s confidence and help increase self-esteem, the small wins are often going to be what they remember the most!
Using positive language to celebrate each small milestone as part of their overall journey in accomplishment can really help to instil confidence in the process. This positive reinforcement will, in the long run, outweigh any fear of embarrassment or worry for trying and not quite getting it right the first time around.
Building children’s confidence can begin with something as little as asking them for their advice or opinions on situations. This can show them that you value their ideas and thoughts. It demonstrates that even adults need help sometimes and it’s okay to ask for it!
Another element that feeds directly into this is allowing them to make simple decisions by themselves, such as deciding what to wear, what to have for lunch, or what game to play. This not only helps with building children’s confidence but can make them feel competent and powerful.
Rather than the end result, celebrate the process they’re going through to work things out for themselves, by adding extra pressure to them throughout the process of working something new out, you could be affecting the overall end result without even realising, and knock the precious confidence they’re building.
Building children’s confidence needn’t be a huge task, it stems from something as simple as applauding their confidence to try something new. The positive reinforcement you give them on their journey could make all the difference to their self-esteem.
This comes hand-in-hand with encouraging risk-taking when tackling new challenges. As much as it might be slow, and sometimes painful to watch the process (it’s in your nature to want to protect them!), allowing your child to attempt things their way first, can help them discover that through trial and error, you can get things right.
Most importantly, it’ll help them to understand that getting things wrong isn’t the end of the world, and will help them to want to work harder – a great attribute to carry through life!
As parents, you’re likely to be automatically doing most of these things anyway – it’s in your nature! However, we hope that highlighting some of these tips will show you how your actions can have a huge impact on building children’s confidence during their early years.
For more helpful tips, advice, and information, visit our blog.