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Self-esteem is important in a child’s development and can heavily impact who they are. A child’s self-esteem can be influenced by their parents and how they react to their behaviors. If you’re trying to boost a child’s self-esteem, or are wondering how parents can affect a child’s confidence, here are 8 ways to build a child’s self-esteem. Read on and get familiar with how to prevent low self-esteem in children.
Be a role model
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Children learn habits, emotions, and behaviors from their parents and especially their mothers. Being a role model and not being too hard on yourself, taking risks, and exploring different options will help your child understand that it’s ok to fail, to be imperfect and that you continue to try again and again with a positive attitude despite your defeats. This will help your child be willing to try and understand that failing does not make them a failure.
Give your child the space to make mistakes
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People learn by making mistakes and it is too much burden on a child to expect them to be perfect. Making mistakes helps a child understand where they went wrong, learn from their mistakes, and improve along the way. Giving your child the space to make mistakes without punishing or lecturing them or even being disappointed will make them more willing to try and not affect a child’s self-esteem when they do something wrong.
Encourage your children to try new things
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A child will gain more confidence by exploring passions and knowing where their strength and weaknesses are. A child will never excel or discover their true selves without trying first. That’s why parents should encourage their children to try new things and explain that trying doesn’t mean excelling.
Praise the effort rather than the results
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One of the best ways to boost a child’s self-confidence is by making them focus on the little things and seeing them as accomplishments. Taking baby steps should be praised and this will make a child feel how much they’ve accomplished and will try even harder.
When you just look at results and disregard all the effort being put in by your child, you make them feel unworthy and make the failure hit hard resulting in a lack of self-confidence or not believing in themselves or their abilities.
Set and reach goals by breaking them down
Children’s self esteem
The best way to praise effort and make your child feel accomplished is by breaking down everything you can into smaller goals that they can actually reach. Let’s say your child wants to draw a car, instead of expecting them to draw a car at once, you can set a goal to draw a circle for the wheels.
Once they’ve done that part you should celebrate their win and start adding on to it, bit by bit by breaking it down into smaller steps that are easy to reach. This will make your child feel successful and have a huge impact on your child’s self-confidence.
Give them responsibilities
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Giving a child responsibilities makes them feel trustworthy and dependable and teaches them how to become confident and responsible children. These can be chores around the house, the responsibility of taking out the trash, keeping something safe for you, or any age-appropriate responsibility. Be sure to give them responsibilities that they can easily handle and be easy on them when they can’t to avoid it having a negative impact on their self confidence.
Celebrate their accomplishments
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Whatever it is, no matter how small, you should always celebrate your child’s wins. It doesn’t matter if it’s their first time on the potty, they scribbled on a page and called it art, or tying their shoelaces. Every milestone, every little thing should be celebrated and every step back should come with words of encouragements.
Shower your children with love
Love, kindness, and understanding give a child the room to grow and be themselves without worrying about being punished, disciplined, or judged. Children want to constantly please their parents and when you shower them with love despite their behavior, you send a message telling them that you love them no matter what and allow them to bloom into who they are in a confident and stress-free environment.
Further reading:
- Parenting: How to Raise Independent and Responsible Children
- Parenting: How to Raise Compassionate and Kind-Hearted Children
- Single Mom Struggle: How to Raise Children Without Spoiling Them
Sources used in this article:
- How to build a child’s self confidence – WebMD
- Understanding behavior – Raising Children
- 12 Tips to Raising Confident Children – Childmind.org
- 5 Ways to Build Your Child’s self-esteem – Scholastic
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