Build your Child’s Self-Confidence

Through everything a child does, he is getting to know himself and his capabilities. What are the different parts of his body and what can each one do for him? Build Self-confidence in children because self confidence will also build success. A child gradually gains self-confidence and does not inherit it.

Can he jump from a low height, climb up a tree, speak in front of other people, recite a poem on stage, construct a building using building blocks . . . through each of these he is slowly but surely constructing an idea about his abilities and skills. The more his abilities, the more will be his self-confidence and the lesser his abilities, the lesser his self-confidence.

Children indulge in lots of games and play during a large part of their childhood. They see picture books, interact with parents and other caregivers and make funny faces at people, throw food items around and have a good time. But there is something serious and important going on behind those activities that not many of us understand.

An Overprotective Attitude

Amit and Meena were a loving and successful couple who were delighted to be blessed with a child. They named her Surbhi and showered her with loads of love and affection. They bought her plenty of toys and fulfilled everything she demanded from them. They believed this to be their responsibility as parents and never asked her to do anything on her own.

Meena fed her food till she was six years old and practically did every little task for her so she would not be inconvenienced in any way. Only when she was seven years old, did she learn to brush her teeth on her own. She believed it to be her right to not do any household or personal task on her own and this became an ingrained part of her personality.

She never helped her mother with anything even when she became a teenager and lived a cushioned and protected life. Amit and Meena genuinely believed that she was a delicate person who should not subjected to any task or activity which needed her to put in effort.

Psychologically, she absorbed this thought pattern and developed her self-concept as being delicate, incapable of hard work and inferior to other people who achieved success in different fields like sports, arts, literature and the like.

Build Your Child’s Self-Confidence

Encourage your child to do as many things as possible on her own like using the toilet, brushing her teeth, combing her hair, buttoning her shirt and packing her toys instead of only playing with toys and watching endless TV shows. Let her do as many things on her own as you can. Train and teach her and then supervise her too (from a distance, if she doesn’t t like you watching over her) but do let her do things on her own.

Many a times, in the enthusiasm to be a good parent, people feel like serving everything on a platter to their child which does more damage than good to the child’s self-esteem. When a child experiences success in completing such small tasks, she feels positive about her capabilities and develops self-confidence.

Build self-confidence in children because your child measures her/his worth and achievements by what you think of them. “Well done, that was hard, and you managed it” is music to young ears. Reassure your child that it’s okay to make mistakes and that it’s all part of growing up.

Praise her and appreciate her after each success to set a positive dynamic in motion in your child’s psychology. The foundation of self-confidence gets laid down in this manner and the child, as a grown-up, is able to approach challenges and attempt new things instead of dismissing them as ‘too difficult’ or ‘not something I can do.’

Conclusion – Build Self-Confidence

Children are often not as delicate as we believe them to be. They have a number of latent capabilities which often remain unutilised due to ignorance on the part of the parents. It is now common knowledge that a human being’s personality gets formed significantly over the first seven years of life thereby making it important to feed beneficial information and encourage positive personality traits in the child.

One of the best things one can do as a parent is to develop a child’s sense of ‘can-do’ rather than make him feel incapable or inferior through a wrong parenting style. Much of a child’s self-confidence comes not only from what the child perceives about themselves but from how they thinks others perceive them.

Give your child chances to explore new things so as to boost his self-confidence by learning from his own mistakes.