by Amanda Roberts

Created on: February 07, 2010

Is your child the timid one in their class? Does your child consult you excessively and look to you for approval before acting? These are signs of a child's lack of confidence. While children can be successful with low self confidence, actively working toward increasing your child's confidence will make them feel better both about themselves and their abilities. So how do you increase your child's confidence?

1. Give your child responsibility. Regardless of age, your child is capable of accepting some level of responsibility. The key to this is finding a task that your child can do on a semi-regular basis. For example, a three year old can stack books in their bookshelf pretty easily and can do it every day. Similarly, a seven year old can clean out their lunch pail each school day with little effort. Finding these tasks for your child and making sure that they do them is the first step to establishing your child's confidence.

2. Praise your child for their efforts. Even if your child fails at a task, praise them for the things that they did correctly, help them to rectify the situation, and then engage in a task they can do easily. For example, one child I worked with was learning to make a sandwich by herself. She had already handled the cheese and mustard on her sandwich but dropped the turkey slices on the floor. She was incredibly upset, so I congratulated her on getting most of the sandwich finished and on the plate, helped her to finish the sandwich and then had her put a handful of pretzels on the plate (a simple task she had done many times before). Showing your child that their failures are not the end of the world and that mistakes are easily fixed are two very simple ways to raise your child's confidence. 

3. Have your child tell you what to do. This tip goes against what many people think of as the traditional parent/child relationship but is a simple way to increase your child's confidence. How this works is you engage in an activity with your child and have them make up the rules. Games are an easy way to do this. Have your child make up the game and tell you the rules. Don't correct them, and only intervene if the game is harmful (e.x. if your child wants to play with knives). Put up with the changes they make throughout the game and let them be in charge. The first few times, your child might be timid to do this, but after a while your child will be more confidence and very happy.

4. Finally, try to relax. Children are very sensitive to criticism. So try to hold back if you hear yourself correcting something that isn't very important. For example, if your child puts on one red sock and one blue sock to go to daycare, does it really matter? So many of us are quick to jump and try to get our children to do things our way, but we must give them some leeway if at all possible.

Follow these tips and you should see a very quick turn around in your child. This process might be uncomfortable in the beginning, but in the end your child will be better off, and isn't that what you really want?

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