From the moment they are born, your children begin learning life skills. Their skills grow alongside their confidence. You may sometimes find your child lacking in confidence and, as a parent, you will want to do everything you can to boost their confidence and allow them to thrive. At SISD, we place high importance on building our students’ confidence as well. Read on to find out our top tips for building confidence which can be used both at home and at school.
Be a confident role model
As a parent, you are the person your child will always look up to and learn from. They will look up to you and, often time, mirror your behaviour. If you’re lacking in self-confidence, your child will sense that and believe they should also feel and behave that way. This doesn’t mean you have to pretend to be completely perfect. It’s perfectly normal to have feelings of anxiety and you don’t have to hide them from your children. Instead, you can show them that despite feelings of self-doubt you can still achieve great things.
Putting emphasis on positive feelings and successes will instil a positive outlook at the forefront of your child’s mind. Learning to think positively about things will certainly help to boost their confidence in taking risks or tackling new feelings.
Introduce and encourage new things
Confidence comes with experience, no one will be completely confident when trying something new. By frequently trying new things, children will learn to become familiar with the feelings that arise and make them more comfortable the next time. This of course broadens your knowledge. If you introduce new after-school activities to your child, they will become comfortable with being in new environments and learning new skills. This way, they won’t shy away from new challenges in the future. Putting them in a different environment will also grow their independence and knowing what they can accomplish by themselves will further grow their confidence.
If your child travels into school every day you could look into weekly boarding. This would allow your child to spend weeknights at school, putting them in an environment where they can independently study and mingle with other students. This will help to develop their social confidence.
Allow them to fail
Parents are very often inclined to want to protect their children from the pain of failure. Of course, you love them and only want to see them succeed. But a little bit of failure can be very beneficial. Indeed, trial and error is key to their learning. Letting them make mistakes allows them to learn that you can’t get everything right. Getting used to making mistakes and failing allows them to get back up quicker when it happens in the future and not get discouraged. That way, they will learn that you can still be confident and make mistakes but it’s about having the courage to try again.
Show them you love them
It is essential to offer your children unconditional love and support. To reassure them that getting back grades or falling off their bikes changes nothing about the way you feel towards them. It may seem obvious to us but it can be very easy for children to lose self-confidence. Failing can affect their self-worth. By showing them love, it will boost their confidence and allow them to move past these negatives feelings.
Embrace difference
From a young age children will begin to notice differences between them and their peers. It can be very small entirely normal differences like freckles, hair colour or height, for example. As adults we know that those differences don’t make you better or worse than anyone but we also had to learn that. By explaining to them early on that was makes them different also makes them unique and beautiful can increase their confidence and they go into the world. In turn, this will also make them more open-minded and empathetic towards people different to them.
Include them
Although your children may complain about doing tasks with you at home, it actually gives them a sense of belonging. By contributing, they will feel valued and connected to the family. Having that connection boosts confidence in the knowledge that they belong. Giving them a bit of responsibility helps them to develop their independence, confidence and grow a variety of skills.
Set Goals
Setting goals not only helps to add structure to your routine but helps to make your child feel more capable. Ticking off and accomplishing goals will boost your child’s confidence in doing these jobs as they know they can succeed. It sets them up well for the future when they eventually have goals and deadlines set in school and, later, in their careers. Knowing they can achieve goals that are set will boost their confidence in starting and achieving them.
Building confidence does take time, but with regular encouragement and support your child will flourish. Introducing these tips will help to boost the confidence your child already has, and it will grow even further as they make more friends and accomplish many more goals.
