Michelle Obama once said, “Your success will be determined by your own confidence and fortitude.” I have never once heard anyone say that they did not want to be successful. However, we all know that not everyone becomes successful. Why is that?
While there are many variables that could prevent success in our lives, I believe the biggest roadblock to success in our lives and many of our children’s lives is a lack of confidence in our own abilities.
If you’ve ever observed children, you know they are vivacious, confident, and sure of themselves. They think they can do anything! Then someone in authority over them tells them, “You can’t do that.” The child begins to believe that person who is in authority over them must be right, so they begin to lack the confidence they once had. How sad.
There are many confidence busters that I could talk about here, but here are two that packs a big punch in causing low confidence:
--ongoing criticism of anyone but especially children, breaks a person’s spirit down and eventually, they just stop trying to succeed.
--Akin to ongoing criticism, if a child does not receive nurturing encouragement from the adults in their lives, it can be hard for them to internalize that they actually do have something to offer the world, and again they may shut down andnot ever try to succeed.
As you can see, a child, or anyone for that matter, needs the people in their lives to shower them with positive reinforcements that attest to their competency until that child internalizes this fact for themselves. The truth is that every healthy person comes into the world capable. It takes the negative interactions they experience after they are in the world to cause that lack of confidence.
This is good news for parents because parents can now be proactive in supporting their child’s self-esteem, so the child begins to have the confidence necessary for success. Two ways you can support a child’s self-esteem:
--Do things with your child. Children want the attention and time of their parents, not all of the toys that we sometimes tend to buy to replace our time.
--Focus on your child’s strengths and praise them for it. Don’t let their weaknesses be your main focus.
Parenting, being a caregiver, or having responsibility for children in any way is not easy, but we have every faith in you that you can do it. If you employ just the above strategies, you will be well on your way to raising confident kids.
Let us know what you do to help your child be a more confident kin Comment below.
Pamela Pertillar
