How to Raise Self Confident Children

In most of my articles I mentioned that lack of self confidence is usually rooted to early childhood. Children are born without any idea about themselves or their own worth and that's why the data they collect at this early stage shapes their self worth to a great extent.

If a child was raised believing that he is worthy and if he was encouraged to develop his skills and abilities he would become a confident adult while if he was neglected, abused or taught to fear life he will lack self confidence as an adult.

In this article I will tell you about the right things you should do in order to build self confidence in children.

How to raise self confident children:

Since I always deal with clients who want to become confident and who always tell me about the root causes for their lack of self confidence I came to realize that there is a list of common incorrect actions that parents do which prevents children from becoming confident. Here they are:

• Lying to the child: Not only lying to the child will let him develop fear of trusting people but it will also let him question his own worth. After all, from the child's point of view, why would someone tell him something else other the truth if he was really worthy?
• Treating the child as a child: The child doesn't know that he is a child. Treating him as a child will let him believe that he is worthless. For example not taking his opinion, interrupting him while taking and giving him false promises are all examples of ways of treatment that can reduce a child's Self confidence. In order for your child to develop self confidence treat him as a small man and not a child
• Scolding him in front of people: I really wonder why we do things to children that we would never do to adults. If you scold your child in front of people this will let him experience shame and self doubts which will be transformed into lack of self confidence over time
• Comparing the child to other children: One of the biggest mistakes parents make when raising children is comparing them to each other. "Can't you be a good boy like Sam?" This kind of treatment makes the child become aware of his flaws and may result in letting him feel inferior as a grown up. Each child is unique and he must understand this fact in order to become a confident adult
• Over protection: Over protecting a child wont do any good in protecting him as a grown up but instead the child will learn that the outer world is unsafe and will never develop confidence in his abilities
• Calling him dumb or using other names: If you kept telling a child that he is dumb or stupid he might believe your suggestions and grow up feeling inferior. In addition, the child will learn that doing mistakes is shameful and will strive for perfectionism as an adult, but because no one can be perfect the child will face lots of disappointments and end up lacking confidence
• Ignoring the child: Ignoring the child won't only let him feel distant from you but it will let him believe that he is not worth being taken care of and so his self confidence will become very low
• Not encouraging him to take risks: Self confidence is all about trusting one's abilities but if a child never had a chance to try his abilities then he will never succeed in building self confidence.
• Compliment his achievements: The child needs to be complimented in order to learn how to think highly of himself and to build self confidence
• Being overly critical: If you kept criticizing your child all the time he will learn how to criticize himself in the form of self talk and he will keep putting himself down until he will lose his self confidence.

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By Mohamed Farouk