How to build confidence in kids who are naturally cautious and careful is a question that leaves a lot of parents feeling like failures. Confidence, pushing the boundaries, facing your fears are all traits that are often celebrated in children, while shyness and cautiousness is seen as a negative trait that parents have fostered to the extreme. Our eldest is constantly wanting to try new things as a pre-teen and that reminded me of a story from a few years ago when he was the complete opposite. Just to put your minds at ease, he was not hurt by his minor fall. Here is our story…
This story is part of our Growing Up series.
How to Build Confidence in Kids When Encouragement Does the Opposite
Mum (8 years parenting)
Sometimes it feels like there is a fine line between encouraging your children to be brave and build confidence and putting them in situations that they will probably remember for life – and not in a good way.
And then there is the moment when they are shouting “they can’t get down” from the top from some kind of bizarre climbing equipment in quite a bizarre play park and you realise that you probably just crossed that line.
Tomos has climbed to the top of some kind of climbing frame. And yes, he wasn’t particularly thrilled once he was about half way up to carry on. So we encouraged him to keep going –
Just going to take a moment here to say that ‘we’ included Dad and he is going to take his fair share of the blame on this one. WE encouraged Tomos to keep going, be brave, try something new, work it out! (Through the shouting of “I can’t”)
But he did it – he made it to the top and for a brief, very very brief moment, we all shared a moment of triumph. And as they can sometimes feel very rare when you parent, so one should be able to savour those seconds.
And then he starts climbing back down. I held my breath as he got closer to the bottom. Just as I was about the exhale, he missed his footing and fell to the ground.
And triumph quickly turned to horror. And quite a lot of dread. Because I hadn’t been planning to spend our afternoon in the Minor Injuries Unit.
“How bad is it?”
“I hurt my foot.” Tomos crossly tells us both as we gather around to comfort him. “And it’s all your fault.”
More Information on How to Build Confidence in Kids
Building confidence in kids by encouraging them to take risks can seem counter intuitive but taking risks comes with some surprising benefits. Read all about it here.
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