5 ways to help your child build their confidence

Building confidence and self-esteem in your children is important for their future, helping them to develop the essential skills they need to navigate their way through life’s challenges. But children aren’t born knowing how to be confident, you have to support them and here are 5 ways you can help!

Parents juggle many jobs, sometimes at the same time! But one of your main jobs is raising happy, well-rounded children by looking after their health and overall wellbeing. One of the ways you can do this is by helping them build their confidence so they grow up with a healthy attitude towards life and able to cope with the situation they may face later on in life.

Here are 5 ways to help your child build their confidence!

Encourage independence

Children grow in confidence when they try things for themselves and succeed. They might need a bit of practice at first, but once they’re able to do something on their own for example, doing up a tie or setting the table, they’ll feel great about themselves and learn that it’s a task they’ll be able to do automatically.

You as a parent can encourage independence by setting them tasks around the house, for example making their bed, sorting their coloured laundry from the whites or even picking what they want for lunch.

Accept their failures

Children need to know that no one is perfect, there will be setbacks in life, failures and criticisms. Failing is a great learning tool which gives us a chance to develop problem-solving skills and boost our coping mechanisms, this goes for kids too!

Walkthrough the failures with your children and talk about the steps they can take to succeed next time around. Your children will then feel pride in their accomplishments and know that they can do anything with a bit of trial and error.

Give them new challenges

Set your children new goals to work towards and reassure them they can do anything if they put their mind to it. Setting small challenges to reach big accomplishments will give your children the boost they need to move onto the next challenge.

Whether it’s taking the stabilisers off the bike or saving up their pocket money, these little challenges increase responsibility and boosts self-confidence.

Support their interests

If your child finds a passion, something they excel in, make sure you support them by showing an interest in what they enjoy. Praise your child when they accomplish something good in their chosen activity, this will encourage them to keep going at it and they’ll grow in confidence with the ability to be independent.

You could even try to generate interest in something new like sports and hobbies, this will help expand your child’s horizons and ability to deal with new situations and people. Check out one of our previous blogs which provides advice on how to motivate your kids to take up sports.

Provide encouragement

Encouragement is the key to helping keep your children feeling positive and motivated while building the confidence they need in life to keep going. Try to adopt a healthy balance of praise and encouragement. Too much praise will create pressure to perform and your children will feel like they need constant reassurance. Encouragement acknowledges the effort made and that is what truly matters.