Raising confident children

It is natural for a child to feel uncomfortable when faced with a new situation, because he is not familiar with it, as a result of creating a degree of fear and hesitation and may wonder:

“Why take the risk?”

This may be because they either belong to the group of children who want to, or are reluctant to try new things. The most natural place for children to be themselves is the family. In this place, they can try things, express himself freely without worrying about what others think. As parents we must shape and maintain this environment of free expression and action. Our children must first of all feel COMFORTABLE with us. They must know that we love them and care about who they are.

There are many things that can make our child feel uncomfortable, especially when it comes to something new: trying new foods, making new friends, starting a new sport, changing schools or moving to another home. But, as in the case of failure, so the management of cases, which our child may feel uncomfortable, contributes to the strengthening of his mental and spiritual resilience. Most of us want our children to develop new interests. But the distance we have to travel with them, in order to appraise this wish with the least possible mistakes, is high demanding and needs careful navigation.

First of all, it is important to encourage our child to participate in new and constructive activities.

Then, and this in my opinion is the hardest part of the journey, be prepared to “run” next to them to help them start. Because, as soon as they take their first step, they may realize that it is not as difficult as they thought it would be. We need to be calm to manage unexpected reactions that we could not have foreseen.

Finally, if the child has successfully managed their new effort, we reward them and tell them how well they did. This boosts their self-confidence and self-esteem. If again things did not turn out as smoothly as they had expected, we calm them with love and acceptance.
We follow their pace, reward the positive points of the effort, and afterwards we ask if they need more help.

This will make our child feel comfortable with themselves and try again, having the experience of the first attempt.