At the primary school speech contest, the child who accomplishes standing on stage to say a speech for the first time and gets a prize ends up leaving the speech contest feeling confident.
We need the child to experience that very first moment of basking in the joy of having a newfound ability to do something incredible and actually getting acknowledgement for that ability.
For younger children, eating food on their on or even colouring within the lines can result in the child feeling more confident in his or her ability to do something new or different.
All children from time to time will experience moments of confidence: confidence in speaking a new language, confidence in doing a ballet move, and the confidence felt from sliding down the slide by himself or herself.
But the thing about confidence is that it doesn't always last. That feeling of empowerment and confidence may end rather abruptly like when a child doesn't take a position in the elimination rounds of the speech contest or when someone else does the ballet move far more gracefully than he or she can.
While praising your child often to encourage confidence is one thing, you do want to ensure that you leave a lasting positive mark on your child. For this reason, you will need to rely on confidence building activities and roping in different confidence building activities throughout your child's life.
Here are some activities that you can get your children to perform in order to build confidence in your children:
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Children's Self Esteem Activities
One way to boost your child's sense of confidence and ignite his or her inner curiosity is to take him or her out to the playground.
"Look, Mum, I’m climbing the monkey bars!"
This is the excitement that you want to hear from your children who are out playing. You want to sense the awe in your child's voice when he or she realises that he or she can do something new.
Yes, taking your child to the playground and allowing him or her to rough it out is one way to inculcate a sense of confidence in your child. Another way to ensure that you set the foundations of confidence in the 21st century child is by allowing him or her to play an online educational game that he or she can excel at.
Easier games such as Teach Your Monster To Read, work well to build a sense of confidence in your child and shows him or her that he or she can read.
Activities like playing on the jungle gym and playing online games require a fair amount of confidence from the children who want to do well.
This, however, is not the only activities that you can use to build self-esteem in your child.
Ways to Build Confidence in Children Through Sport
There was a story of a child who trained relentlessly at a particular sport during the entire lockdown period only to lose hopelessly at the sport in front on everyone two years later. While it seems like the child would have be shattered with all her confidence shot, this wasn't the case. The child kept going and tried her best at the sport over and over again. Sport teaches children to have a sense of confidence and not to lose the confidence when a match doesn't seem to be going in their favour. From the age of 4 years, you need to allow your child to participate in activities on the sports field that may provide that needed confidence boost to your children.
For children over 8 years of age, the football field or tennis court is best place to instill a sense of confidence in them.
Knowing that they can be part of a team, or stand for something provides reason enough for children to feel confident. While getting your child enrolled in a sport is an excellent idea, you need to ensure that your child has the ability to handle being put on the bench or not being selected for the team.
If you are worried about your child not being able to work well in a team, consider sports best for individual players, such as:
- Swimming
- Racing
- Archery
- Rock climbing
- Martial Arts
Then again, not all activities to build self-esteem and self confidence can be sport-related.
Activities that can spur on a sense of confidence can include learning to play a musical instrument. A musical instrument can help your child to gain a sense of confidence in his or her abilities in terms of playing the instrument.
The bottom line is to allow your children to do that which they are good at. The only way to ensure that your child will gain the confidence that he or she needs is to allow your child to engage in an activity that he or she enjoys.
Activities to Boost Children's Confidence Out of the Sport's Field
When it comes to ways in which you can boost your child's self confidence, any activity that can make your child feel better about himself or herself will be worthwhile.
Sometimes children feel as if they lack confidence simply because they do not perform well at school. Children who lack the self confidence to do well academically will also lack confidence in other aspects. A child who does not perform well academically suffers from low self esteem too.
You do want to make sure that you cut out any negative self talk that may further be pushing your child away from having a positive sense of self confidence.
If you start encouraging a positive sense of self confidence in your child, you cut out the possibility of growing up a teenage who lacks the self confidence to resist negative peer pressure.
You can allow your child to assist you with meal preparation from time to time if that is something that your child enjoys doing. Always praise your child if the food that he or she has created has turned out well.
Never underestimate the power of teaching your child a new skill such as sewing or rollerblading. Sparking the creativity in your child and getting him or her to learn a new skill will enable your child to understand that there is more to life than academics.
If your child finds excelling academically very difficult, it is important to find what your child is good at in order to ensure that you build your child's confidence in what he or she is good at.
Simple activities such as reading from a book of positive affirmations can assist in building your child's self confidence. You could also allow your child to partake in something more practical. The book, "I Am: Positive Affirmations for Kids - Self Esteem and Confidence Colouring Book for Girls," is an excellent colouring book that will teach children to value diversity while encouraging positive affirmations at the same time.
However, there are many other books that teach kids about being confident.
You want your child to stop having no self esteem or a negative sense of self esteem and start to have a positive sense of self esteem so that they have the confidence to handle any obstacles head on.
Building Confidence Through Play
Sometimes the best way to encourage confidence in your child is to allow your child to feel more confident during play. A simple game of Snakes and Ladders will very well do the trick.
During a game of relaxed play, your child may feel the added confidence to keep playing due to lucky rolls of the dice. While luck has everything to do with a game, the confidence that comes from winning two out of three games is undeniable.
Get some books on building confidence in your child on Superprof
The Perfect Recipe
Your child may have had a bad day at school. He or she may be feeling down in the gutters and ultimately lacking self esteem. You can start by pulling out a page.
Have your child write down all the ingredients that he or she thinks is necessary in order to build his or her self esteem again.
You may prompt your child to answer questions such as, ‘What am I good at?’, or 'What will make me feel happy again?'
Giving your child the chance to discuss his or her feelings after experiencing a knock to his or her self confidence is a great way to start building up his or her confidence again.
You purposely encourage your child to build confidence again once it has been lost. Through the perfect recipe, you encourage your child to believe that confidence can be developed.
Confident?
Confident? the board game is a fun party game great for teenagers. You answer quite intense questions but you answer the questions within a range. If your range is quite close then you score more points.
This guessing game teaches the participants that it is not necessary to know all the answers, sometimes you just need to be confident enough that you will get the answers right.
This game is one that enables conversation and laughter while encouraging you to be confident and self assured about your guesses.
Remarkably, this game is also effective for team-building and is the ideal game to get your shy and reserved child talking too.
Get some tips on how to Build Your Child’s Self-Esteem on Superprof
Get Children Talking About Themselves
A game need not be overly complex in order to build confidence. You can simply play a round of, "What do you prefer?"
In that way, you encourage your child to speak about himself or herself and express ideas. It is important to get your child to speak about his or her feelings often as that helps them to get to grips with what they are feeling. Sometimes children need a push in the form of a basic game in order to get them talking.
Look at other ways that you can build your child’s self-esteem.
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