If all your child knows is to be confident, it is hard not to feel otherwise. Boosting your child’s confidence from the beginning, from the moment they are born builds them up to be great and feel great about the things that they will accomplish in life. Confidence in being able to get through their school work even.
This post contains affiliate links, see my disclosure policy for more information.
How to Boost Your Child’s Confidence
When children are young, they seem to have all the confidence in the world. But as they get older, you see their confidence slowly drop. As soon as the teen years arrive, their confidence is sometimes non-existent. What can we do as parents to help our children stay confident in themselves and their talents? Here are a few ways to help boost your child’s confidence!
Positive Affirmations
Positive affirmations do make a huge impact on your brain and self-confidence. From the day your child is born, you can start saying affirmations to them. When they are old enough to talk, have them repeat the affirmations for themselves.
It will be a habit they don’t know otherwise, and they will continue for the rest of their lives. You can find plenty of affirmation cards online for kids.
You can also make your own for your children. You know their talents, strengths, and weaknesses better than anyone else. Make some that are just for each child. These will have the biggest impact on them.
Teach Independence
While it is so hard to watch your child struggle through something you know you can help with, you can’t do everything for them. Over time, your child will gain confidence in their ability to be strong, persevere, and do things independently.
Have a Positive Home
Often kids will focus so much on their weakness to the point where all they say is negative things about themselves. “Ban” self-criticism talk of any sort. If you can start this when they are younger, that will help even more.
While it is okay to recognize we are not perfect, there is really no need for that kind of talk. If it doesn’t motivate you or make you feel good, don’t allow it to be said aloud.
Be a Good Role Model
If you say negative things about yourself, so will your kids. You have to be the one to start focusing on the good and be confident in yourself. Show your children that you can do hard things. Allow them to watch you struggle every now and again, as this will help them when they have challenges. It all starts with you.
Encourage Them to Try New Things
The more kids try new things, the more confident they will become, as they will see they are actually really good at so many things!
Embrace Mistakes
As your children try new things, they will fail. It is bound to happen, and they will probably beat themselves up or not want to try a new thing ever again. However, if you embrace mistakes as a stepping stone forward instead of backward, they won’t give up.
Teaching our kids that mistakes or failure is part of growing and becoming successful. Think of things their failure taught them.
Share your mistakes with them, this will help make to make them normal and not a negative thing.
Give Effort-Based Praise
Often we will praise our kids for being smart or talented at something. But, that can be harmful to children when suddenly they aren’t “smart” if they get an answer wrong on their test.
Instead, you want to make sure to give praise to your children for their effort. Some examples include:
- “I can see how hard you worked on this craft.”
- “You put a lot of effort into studying for your exam.”
- “You worked hard on this throwing technique, and I am proud of you for that.”
- “I liked how you never gave up and tried new things until you figured it out.”
Take Care of Their Mental Health
Now more than ever, kids need to take care of their mental health. We focus so much on eating healthy and getting plenty of exercises every day, but that is only part of the equation. Parents must teach their children how to take care of their emotional and mental health to be confident and happy.
Start wherever you are, even if that means working on building confidence in yourself. Each of these nine tips will gradually build your child’s confidence in themselves. Try to stay consistent, and you will see a beautiful, happy child’s confidence boosted in front of your eyes.
Just like you need to take care of your mental health, you need to help your child learn to take care of their mental health. Allow them to see you taking care of yourself, making yourself a priority.
Similar Posts
10+ Kindness Activities for Kids