Healthy self-confidence is your child's pathway to life with social happiness and mental wellbeing. Children are quick to learn new skills at an incredible speed, and they need to have the confidence to use the skills. The ability to trust their skills becomes the key. They need to have an understanding that success is not a mandatory outcome to all their skills. Think about a time when you were feeling terrific about yourself. You probably found it much easier to get along with others and feel good; it similarly works for children.
Having good self-worth or self-esteem is a close step to acquiring confidence in themselves. Sometimes we tend to associate self-worth with being narcissistic or arrogant. But that is a misunderstanding. A child enriched with self-worth will have a realistic knowledge about their strengths and weaknesses.
Here is how as parents, you can help children nurture their self-confidence-
Give them small tasks to do-
When you give them small tasks, it becomes an opportunity for them to display their skills. This can mean asking for their help in some household chores too. If your child is a proud organizer, ask them to tidy their playroom. If your child enjoys spending time outdoors, you can ask for their help in gardening. When you consider your child's interest, it can make them feel valuable and successful at the same time.
Give them opportunities to spend time with people not of the same age group-
It is great when children have other children around the same age to socialize. But make sure to add some social occasions in their life with people who are older than them too. Include your child in family discussions or whenever you think it is appropriate to have them around when conversing with other adults. Not all the time, but occasionally. This helps them to expand their world. And also to improve their range of thoughts.
Encourage them to try new things-
Introduce them and encourage them to try new activities. Once children excel at something, we need to slightly shift their focus to other things than solely focusing on the same activity. Children need to try a diverse set of things so that all areas develop adequately when their brains develop. It also makes them feel that they can do multiple things, and when they encounter a new challenge in real life, they feel capable of doing it.
When trying new things, children are bound to fail at some, and, naturally, we would want to protect the child from failure. But we need to express it loud and clear to them that it is okay to fail. We need to allow failure and trial and error. It will also make them set goals for themselves and push themselves to achieve it at their own pace, which will serve them well in adulthood.
Let them know that you love them-
Show your child that you love and support them irrespective of how they perform. Let them know that winning or losing, bad grades or good grades, don't affect your feelings about them. Even when you are angry, it should not give them a message of loving them any less. The child needs to know that their self-worth does not change with their accomplishments.
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