Effective Strategies for Boosting Your Child's Confidence
Boost your child's confidence with helpful strategies for building self-esteem. Discover practical tips to enhance their self-worth. Read the article now!
Self-esteem is Important for Happiness
Self-esteem is the perception of one's self-worth. The way we view ourselves is important for our overall well-being and happiness. But, more importantly, it impacts others' perceptions of us as well. A healthy self-esteem can contribute to positive relationships, physical and mental health, and academic and professional performance. On the other hand, low self-esteem can lead to social avoidance and difficulties in taking on challenges.
Given the central importance that self-confidence plays in one's life, let's take a closer look at self-esteem building for our children.
Self-esteem Begins from Childhood
Self-esteem builds right from childhood - it increases from adolescence to middle age. Low self-esteem often begins in childhood due to negative messages from various sources.
Children develop their sense of self from birth. This develops from when they see themselves through their parents' eyes, by the way their parents interact with them. The tone of voice, body language, and expressions of the parent towards the child are all absorbed by the child, which then develops their self-esteem.
As they grow, a child's self-esteem is influenced by other social and environmental factors as well. For example, children who are overweight may experience bullying from friends, leading to lower self-esteem. Similarly, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender adolescents often face bullying that contributes to lower self-esteem. Studies have shown that girls, and later women, report lower levels of self-esteem compared to their male counterparts.
High vs Low Self-Esteem
Developing self-esteem in children is essential. Children with high self-esteem often feel liked, accepted, confident, and proud, believing in themselves and thinking positively about themselves. Those who have self-esteem and feel good about themselves are more confident to try new things and try their best. If they make mistakes, they can cope and try again, which helps children perform better at school, at home, and with friends.
Conversely, children with low self-esteem tend to be very self-critical and hard on themselves. They often feel inferior to their peers, frequently dwelling on past failures, lacking confidence, and doubting their abilities. Such children are hesitant to make friends because they think others will not accept them. As a result, they are more likely to let others treat them poorly and don’t often defend themselves. Low self-confidence results in difficulty in challenging negative thoughts. If they fail, they give up, rather than trying again. Without positive thinking, it is challenging to cope with mistakes, which could lead to depression and anxiety in extreme situations.
How to Build Self-Esteem from an Early Age
Experts suggest that having positive and reaffirming relationships in one's life helps to build self-esteem. Self-esteem is developed slowly over time and can start as early as babyhood. It starts developing because a child feels safe, loved, and accepted by those around them. Give your child positive attention and loving care. Ensure that other environments outside the home are also positive and reaffirming spaces.
As babies age into toddlers, they’re able to do some things by themselves. They start to build a sense of achievement by doing things on their own. This can then be amplified by parents who pay attention to the child doing activities, allowing them to try on their own. This approach gives the child positive emotions and expressions, such as smiling, while they try, and shows how proud you are of them, whether they achieve or fail. Positive affirmations of all efforts make them feel eager to try again without anxiety or negative expectations of failure.
Techniques to Build Self-Esteem
All children are different from each other, which means not all children develop their self-esteem as easily as others. Some children are affected more than others by low self-esteem, but even such children can be helped to raise their self-esteem.
Here are some techniques that you can employ as a parent to help.
Allow your child to do everyday things themselves.
During each stage of early childhood, children continually learn new skills, such as holding a cup, dressing themselves, and putting on their shoes. As they grow, they learn more complex things. Remember, each time a child masters a task, it is a chance to develop their self-esteem. Please encourage them to keep trying with the given task. Support them with just a little help, but do not take over the task. With this, it is essential to provide the child with time to overcome the challenge. Parents in a rush often tend to take over, just in the interest of time. This will not help the child in understanding their worth.
Help them learn a new skill.
When children are trying a new skill for the first time, show them how to do it. Then, let them try it, but help them during their first attempt. If it is a difficult skill, you may need to help them in more than one attempt. After this, allow the children to do what they can. It is important to let them make their mistakes as mistakes are an important step in learning. Trying and conquering the difficulty will make them feel proud and build confidence.
Build a Growth Mindset.
Developing a growth mindset is crucial at this early age to create the belief that abilities and intelligence can be developed through effort and learning. Such a mindset helps children cope with the reality of failure and overcome anxiety and fear. Growth mindsets also help children avoid pigeonholing themselves into labels of "I'm smart", "I'm good", "I'm stubborn", etc. Instead, encourage them to use sentences like "I can't do this YET", to help make them more assertive in their abilities.
Read The Harvard Business School article on The Growth Mindset vs The Fixed Mindset
Praising your child, wisely.
It is beneficial to praise your child as it shows your child that you are proud of them, but praise should be delivered in the right way. Avoid focusing your praise on only the results; instead, offer most of the praise for the child’s effort and progress. This helps to develop the growth mindset and encourages children to work towards a goal. Knowing that success comes in the path of multiple failures is an important life lesson, so that they focus on the effort, rather than on negative things or outcomes.
Remember too that not all praise is good for the child. If praise is not earned, then the insincere attempt to make them feel good can make them feel hollow and fake. It is better to add a vote of confidence that they will try harder next time, instead of telling the child they did great when they didn’t try.
Surround your child with good role models.
When you, as a parent, put effort into every task, you set a good example for your children on how to work hard in real life. When you avoid rushing or doing things by half, and take pride in the job well done, your child learns to do that too.
Modelling the right attitude counts too. Try to be cheerful or have a positive attitude towards doing the activity rather than complaining - your child will learn from you. And finally, let them see the failed attempts as well and model a growth mindset for them when faced with negative things in their own lives.
Parents are not the only role models in a child’s life. Teachers and other primary caregivers are just as important. Hence, selecting the correct school right from an early age that understands the importance of positive reinforcement is very important.
Avoid harsh criticism.
Messages children hear about themselves, especially from the important people in their lives, can easily translate into how they feel about themselves. Harsh words are not only harmful but also unmotivating. This can lower self-esteem drastically. When trying to correct children, use patience, focus on what they need to do next time, and if needed, show them how to do it. Teaching children that there is always a next time to try harder is an important step to help them achieve their dreams.
Focus on strengths.
Pay attention to what your child enjoys and does well, and try to make sure they have a chance to develop these. Focus on your child's strengths rather than trying to improve or correct their weaknesses. This makes children feel good about themselves, which creates a higher self-esteem and improves behaviour and attitude.
Encourage a healthy lifestyle.
Encourage your child to develop a healthy lifestyle. Healthy eating habits help, and good physical wellbeing improves a child's self-image. Exercising also helps improve self-esteem by releasing endorphins. Engaging in sports and physical activities is another avenue to boost a child's social interaction and acceptance.
Let children help and give.
Self-esteem is something that needs time to grow and grows when children see that what they do is important and matters to others. Have the children help out at home and do favours for siblings. Helping and kind acts build their self-esteem and feeling good about themselves.
We must recognize that some children who suffer from extreme anxiety and low self-esteem may need external help and therapy. Look for signs of persistent depressed moods in your child, and if this does not respond to positive things, then it may be time to seek help.
Building self-esteem can be a lifelong journey for some, and the foundation blocks are laid at a very early age by parents and other role models like teachers. Surround your child with positivity and encouragement, and help them to build self-compassion. Forgive them for making mistakes and allow them to talk through challenges, and they will learn to forgive themselves, too.