Building Trust and Self Confidence
Nurturing trust, self-confidence and healthy self esteem in kids. Storyberries offers free children's books and parenting tips to encourage kids to become more confident and self assured.
Nurturing trust, self-confidence and healthy self esteem in kidsÂ
To trust oneself is to believe in oneself, and to be sure of one’s abilities. Confidence is the basis for the development of healthy self-esteem and psychological well-being. The self-confident person has the courage to face challenges, and to achieve goals, without fear of failure.Â
Why is trust in children important?
Self-confidence has a really stimulating effect on children: it gives them the energy and courage to live life fully; to learn, make friends, and gradually gain autonomy. Faced with difficulty in achieving a goal, a child who has confidence will bet on their chances of success and will say they can do it.
How can I help my kids be self-confident and trust themselves?
There are lots of ways we can help our kids become confident and self assured. Storyberries provides free children’s books and parenting tips, to help kids trust their own worthiness and become more self confident.
Building trust through realistic compliments
Giving realistic compliments: this is an infallible method for building and strengthening trust. It tells a child they are on the right track and that they have chosen the right strategy to succeed.Â
Praise efforts and achievements
Focus praise on the effort and the goal accomplished, not the person. Instead of constantly repeating how handsome or smart a child is, it is much better to say the drawing they have made is fantastic, and we are proud of them.
Provide fair feedback:
Criticism is also helpful, provided it is fair. If a child performs an inappropriate action, mention should be made of their mistake, not to insult or negatively label, but to offer a different way forward. The opinions of adults in early childhood form the basis of children’s trust.
Expressing confidence in our kids
If children sense we believe in them, they will believe in themselves, and are more likely to be adventurous and to try new things. If they feel we are on their side, they won’t mind making mistakes, will feel more self-confident and be more likely to succeed. Help kids to see that learning from mistakes and failures is an important part of learning.
Setting healthy challenges
Allowing children to face and overcome challenges, allows them to build confidence in their own skills. Start with small challenges and gradually letting them face more difficult ones, remembering to avoid setting very high goals that just lead to frustration.
Build resilience
Encouraging children to keep trying. Not giving up is key to achieving goals. We can offer our encouragement by showing love and unconditional support.
Acceptance and understanding
Avoid making comparisons with other children: this often feels bad for kids, especially if they are not very confident.
It can be hard for older children and teens to maintain their self confidence in competitive school and social media environments, so we can expect that confidence will at certain times be low.
Some Free Books About Nurturing Confidence and Self Trust in Kids At Storyberries
Rafiki’s Style
Rafiki faces peer pressure from the Cool Cat Crew to change his hair so it looks like theirs. Read this super story to find out what Rafiki decides to do.
A Friend for Poochi
Poochi feels sad because no-one seems to want to be his friend. All the other insects seem to reject him because he looks and behaves differently. Eventually he finds his true friends and his self-confidence soars.
More of Me to Love
“Being happy is not a size or a shape. There are so many things about a person to love.” In this delightful and beautifully illustrated story, a young girl feels good about being herself, and so brims with self-confidence and love.
Article by Luzmery M. Romero Gamboa and Fleur Rodgers
Luzmery works in the area of clinical psychology as a psychotherapist for children, adolescents and families. Since 2016, she has run a Psychological Center in Venezuela called Psicoluz. She offers workshop facilitations to parents, is involved in recreational activities for children, and has been working as a freelancer since 2017 performing online psychotherapy.Â
Fleur is a meditation teacher in France and uses a compassion and loving-kindness based approach to meditation and slow-minded living. Fleur posts regularly to Instagram @rodgers.fleur . She has two children, is a qualified teacher in adult education and is the founder of Timeouttobreathe.comÂ