6 Ways to Build Your Kid’s Self-Confidence

Posted by Tiara on April 22, 2013

Guest Post by Ryan Rivera.

Building your preschooler’s self-confidence can be a challenge and a crucial responsibility for a parent like you. Giving your child a sense of self-worth is the bedrock of the future of your child as he grows up and sets his own life on a roll. Experts agree that building the self-esteem of your child will lead him to believe that his contributions are valued and are appreciated by the society and the world where he lives in. Here are some of the ways you can help boost your child’s self-confidence and help him hurdle life’s greatest challenges.

Love your children unconditionally
A child gets a real boost on his self-confidence when you give him a seal of approval that you will not get angry even if he screws up. Your child will get a lot of lessons when you are able to accept his faults and misgivings. It is important that you are able to remind the child on how much you love him or her despite his shortcomings and inability to meet expectations. Try to pat him on the shoulder and hug him when he is at his lowest point. Be clear that you are angry at the behavior and not on the person.

Play with your kids
Play is an investment that can help your children gain solid self-c0nfidence when they grow up. Allow your kids to initiate play since it allows them to become interested longer compared to play that is dictated by an adult. Child-initiated play also gives the kids more self-worth because they feel that they are being responsible on how the play pans out. When you play with your kids allow them to dictate and decide on the outcome because it allows them to practice their decision making skills that will definitely prove to be valuable when they face real-life situations later in life.

Pay attention to your kids
Focus on your kids and spend time with them. It would do wonders to your children because it gives them an impression that they are important and worthy of your time. You need not to spend lots of time with them; just a few moments would do. If your child approaches you to ask a question, it would help if you pause for a while and establish eye contact so he or she would have the impression that you are indeed interested on what you have to say and are intently listening to what your child has to
say.

Be a positive role model
When you show your child how to behave, they often would mirror you. Okay, you are only human and nobody expects you to be all perky and smiling all the time. If you think that your child cannot tell your fake smile then you are dead wrong. It all boils down on sensitivity. If you are sensitive to the needs of your child then it will help the
relationship immensely.

Teach your kids about limits
Establish some reasonable limits to your child. Start with simple rules such as telling your child not to play around the living room and never let the dog drink the toiletwater. Be clear and consistent with the limits that you cast in stone and there is a need to repeat as your child starts to live within your expectations which can boost his or her
self-confidence.

Empathize with your kids
If your child feels frustrated, offer some degree of empathy and show him or her that you understand what he is feeling and at the same time offer to boost his confidence by highlighting the things he did well and away from the things that he did wrong. This will tell your children that nobody’s perfect and next time they will have the chance to bounce back and do better.

Your children will become better persons if you are able to boost their self-confidence. However, self-confidence is akin to a roller-coaster ride, sometimes you feel good about yourself and sometimes you don’t. We need to teach our children how to become resilient in the face of life’s challenges amid stress and anxiety.

About the Author:

Ryan Rivera writes about panic attacks, depression, stress and anxiety. You may reach him through his Calm Clinic Twitter account.

Image credit: Arlo MagicMan

 Rasha IS A Gifted Kid, Trust me!

Posted by Tiara on March 8, 2013

Rasha is an absolute prodigy! She is writing and reading at the age of five, well ahead of her peers and I’m so excited to see what she’ll be learning in the future.

Who will she be? What will she do? It’s miraculous to see her sit down with a piece of paper and a pencils and start to put her ideas on paper. Sometimes it is hard to read and follow, but the fact that she’s practicing this skill at the age she’s at now is simply phenomenal.

I found a website on About.com that offers tips and ideas of how to keep her interested in learning and enrich the skill levels she’s currently on, not necessarily the ones expected of her age group or development level. It’s actually quite silly to put learning and development of a child or any entity on a time scale— don’t we all learn at our own paces, in our own ways? I try to remind myself that while what Rasha is doing is very rare at her age, I should not regard her as “smarter” or “better” than other children, simply see her in a different place. I love her dearly but I do not want to be arrogant or make her feel by my actions towards her that she is superior to others on account of what she’s doing at age four. Or any age!

I have encouraged my daughter to write something every day, no matter what the subject matter is. It does not make any difference if she were writing about quantum mechanics or the tea party she had with her teddy bear earlier that morning. We set a schedule where we each sit down and write together and share our pieces with each other. I haven’t witnessed her writing about quantum mechanics yet, but she did share a very sweet, interesting perspective of the tea time she and Teddy had an hour earlier!

There is also an australian essay website that has helped me to be a more efficient parent of a gifted child as well as how to develop my own skill sets that will allow me to raise Rasha to be the most productive as well as kind person she can be. It keeps us both in check and helps to put this phenomenon into a more comparable and comprehensive idea for me as her parent as well as for Rasha herself. All of the helpful hints on how to enrich her and keep her involved in learning when perhaps she will be far ahead of her classmates as well as concepts for her teachers about how to include her in the learning process while tailoring lessons to her levels of development and comprehension.

I highly recommend that parents of all children of all age and skill levels seek counseling or at least visit websites related to gifted children and find unique and personalized ideas on how to be a good teacher to your gifted child.

After all, aren’t all children “gifts” anyway? :)

Thanks to au.superiorpapers.com for inspiring this post and for providing precious help. Image credit: Lubs Mary.