Parenting Tips on How to Raise a Self Confident Child

Everybody wants their child to feel good about themselves and grow up to be a confident adult. When not targeted in childhood; self-confidence issues can follow on through later life. We don’t realise it but some of the techniques and strategies that we use can backfire; often we think we are doing a good thing for our children, but in reality we are actually lowering their self-confidence. Read on to find out how we can work to raise healthy, happy, self-confident children and set them up for great success in the future.

1. Allow your child to make mistakes

We all make mistakes, it’s part of human nature. What we don’t always realise is the learning that actually comes from making these mistakes, and as some may say, mistakes are life’s biggest teacher! Many parents rush to ‘save’ their child before they fall and with good reason- why would we want to see our children fail or mess up? However, allowing them to make mistakes is going to teach them to be able to bounce back and build up resilience which will help them in later life.

2. Let them learn to self-regulate their emotions

Young children are very much still learning about the world, how it works and what they can and can’t do. Even in adulthood, emotions can be difficult to handle. Our children feel these emotions on a much larger scale and at the same time they have not really learned how to handle them effectively. Self-regulation is a necessary skill for children to learn in order to support their self-confidence and emotional intelligence. It’s important that you allow your child to feel the emotions that they are having and that they understand that it is ok to feel this way. Instead of reacting negatively in these situations try to stay calm and give them space, once your child has calmed down, you can help them by teaching them some ways they can self-regulate the next time that it happens. The way in which they will self-regulate will be individual to your child and their nature, what may work for one may not work for another so it may take a few tries to find what works best. Some things you can try with your child are; taking deep breaths, counting, visualising, reading, stretching or even pausing to drink some water.

3. Don’t be overprotective

In the same sense as allowing your children to make mistakes, try not to be too overprotective. Of course we need to keep our children safe but there is a way in which we can do it and still allow children to be free to explore the world, with managed risk and challenge. For example- you may take your child to the playground, the huge climbing frame may strike fear or increase your anxiety levels and you may follow them around everywhere to ensure they don’t trip or fall. However, whilst it’s important we prevent a big accident from occurring a small loss of footing or trip is at the most only going to cause a small graze or bump, so allow them to trip or fall, the lesson which comes from it is much more valuable to healthy growth and development. They are learning how to navigate new equipment and practicing co-ordination and other physical skills.  As much as we want to keep our children in a protective bubble, it’s doing them more harm than good, try to take a small step back and manage the risks but ensure they experience some small challenges as well.

4. Discipline vs punishment

Some of us rush to punish our children when they have done wrong in order to ‘teach them a lesson’ as such. However, there is a huge difference between punishment and discipline. Of course children need to learn what is right from wrong but when children are punished it will only lower their self-esteem, giving them little support to prevent the behaviour in the future. Instead, positive discipline techniques will help your child to understand that the behaviour was wrong but also teaches them the appropriate behaviour for the future, raising their self-confidence to make smarter, healthier decisions next time. Positive discipline is a process – try to be a positive role model as much as possible and use every situation to teach your children to understand the difference between right and wrong. Ensure your child is held responsible for their misbehaviour and that the consequence you give (if you deem appropriate) matches the behaviour that they demonstrated.

5. There is no such thing as perfection

Nobody is perfect, we all know that. Whilst its healthy to have high expectations for your child be careful not to set them too high- you don’t want it to have the negative effect and lower their confidence to the point of giving up. Praise the good things that they do and also praise their efforts, pushing them little by little to do better. You will find that by using this strategy your child will be much happier and willing to do more. You will also find that your child will learn better because of it. The key here is to create a love for learning, when forced, yes they may learn but the effectiveness will be much lower. When they actually want to do it you can be sure that they will learn and retain the knowledge much better.

At The Little Dreamers Nursery our staff are highly trained in helping our children to be self-confident learners and provide support for our parents in implementing the above strategies and techniques. If you feel you need any further support, please feel free to contact us at [email protected]. We are always happy to help!