Teaching Children to be Confident
Confidence is an important lesson we all have to learn as we grow up. It gives us the strength to get through our day, make decisions, and live independently. Without it, our lives would be plagues with anxiety and insecurity. When we feel good about ourselves, everything just feels easier.
Here are some ways you can teach your kids to be confident.
1. Be an attachment parent – This is a common parenting buzzword, but you’re probably already an attachment parent. This means being a supportive caregiver who spends lots of time with your child and makes him feel loved. Every time you respond to your child’s cues (hunger, sleep, attention, etc.) you are making him feel valuable and worth loving.
2. Encourage problem-solving – Nothing inspires more confidence than being able to handle one’s own problems. When your child is confronted by a challenge, don’t solve it right away. Give him time to analyze and suggest his own solution. Even if you know the solution won’t work, allow him a chance to try (keeping him safe, of course). Failure is an important part of learning.
3. Find ways to help others – Kids feel more confident when they feel like they are making a change or impacting the world, even in a small way. Have your child assist you or a friend with a project, a chore, or a challenge. Work side-by-side and show appreciation for his contribution.
4. Find opportunities to spend time with adults – Children need to play with their peers, but they also need plenty of interaction with adults. This will expand their world and force them to take part in conversations and social behaviors that they wouldn’t around younger kids. This makes them feel like they are prepared for the world.
5. Talk about the future – If your kids can imagine themselves doing something or being a part of something later on (maybe next week or in 20 years), they’ll feel more confident about life. This gives them control and hope. Allow for big dreams.
6. Allow decision-making – If you make decisions for your child at every opportunity, you never teach the decision-making process. Give chances for your child to decide, even if the choices are only superficial. For example, ask him if he wants grapes or strawberries for a snack. It doesn’t matter to you, but you’re giving him a chance to practice control.
7. Nurture special interests – Give your child plenty of opportunities to explore whatever interests him, no matter how odd it may seem to you. This gives them a chance to excel at something that matters to them, thus boosting their confidence. This is called the “carry-over principle,” where confidence in one area carries over to other areas.
8. Stay positive wherever you can – It’s not possible to keep a happy face on every minute of the day, but it’s important to approach life with a can-do attitude. Don’t bother with the “chin up” nonsense. That’s just a cliché. Find ways to actually improve your situations. Is your child upset because all the dinosaurs are green and not any fun colors? Pouting isn’t a solution, but a bit of paint is!
Also read: Raising Socially Confident Children
Written by Stephanie Parker from Sleepingbaby.com, inventors of the Zipadee-Zip
The motto for Sleeping Baby, makers of the Zipadee-Zip, is: "Inspiring Dreams One Night at A time," and that, in a nutshell, is how it all started…with one little dream that has since become the Parker family's reality. When Brett and Stephanie Parker's daughter, Charlotte, was born, the feeling that welled up inside of them was indescribable; they never realized until first looking into those baby blues of hers that they were even capable of that kind of love.
When it was time to transition baby from swaddling, the Parkers tried every sleep sack on the market and everyswaddle weaning trick they could find for nearly two weeks and nothing worked to get baby Charlotte to fall and stay asleep.
Stephanie became determined to restore sleep and sanity to their household and set out to find a solution that would soothe Charlotte's startle reflex and provide her the cozy womb-like environment she loved so much but still give her the freedom to roll over and wiggle around in her crib safely. Out of sheer desperation and exhaustion, the Zipadee-Zip was born. The first Zipadee-Zip(R) Stephanie put together on her little sewing machine worked like magic!
To date tens of thousands of Zipadee-Zips have been sold and all from word-of-mouth marketing. It is so rewarding for the Parkers to see other parents and babies getting the sleep they both need and deserve!
Interested in writing a guest blog for Sleeping Baby? Send your topic idea to pr@sleepingbaby.com.
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