Imagine daily life from your child’s point of view. I mean really put yourself in your child’s shoes. How many times in one day is your child’s ability stretched and how many incidences of perceived failure does your child experience every single day in play or at school or at home?
The sheer number of challenges your child faces each and every day would exhaust an adult completely. We would be so discouraged if every day we existed on such a steep learning curve as our children deal with daily.
It is a series of ‘learning experiences’ and ‘personal challenges’. Can you imagine yourself experiencing even one day like your child’s? No wonder so many children have such low self-esteem.
What kind of a loving and understanding support are you to your child? How does your child view you? Are you the ‘safe haven’, the ‘sanctuary’, where he/she is safe and valued and ‘restored’ to feeling confident?
Or are you the main source of your child’s feelings of failure and discouragement? Unintentionally, of course!
Couldn’t we as parents decided INTENTIONALLY to be the source of children’s COURAGE!!! The source of their CONFIDENCE!
We could consciously work with our children to help them develop self-confidence. And what might this do for the way we view ourselves as parents? Might we then feel less conflicted and more confident ourselves? I believe so, because when you help your child develop confidence, you gain a more communicative, cooperative, helpful, happy and peaceful child who has problem-solving skills and you know you helped make the difference. I think parents suffer a lot of unnecessary guilt in relation to their children’s emotional needs, brought on by modern lifestyles and the pace of life, generally.
The solution lies in embedding the parenting activities that you are already doing with a philosophy that if your actions as a parent encourage your child, then your child will develop confidence. No need to add complicated systems and routines to your already busy day. Simply learn to think differently about how to do the things you are already doing with your children.
If a parent were to come from a place of ‘How can I make sure that every interaction I have with my child leads to him/her building self-confidence?’ Then children would begin to blossom and family life would be a lot easier for parents as a result, too.
So, from now on why not evaluate your interactions with your child in terms of
• Did I just build my child’s confidence?
• Did I just destroy my child’s confidence?
Imagine the effect that would that have on our parenting? Doesn’t this simplify things for moms and dads without adding anything to their endless lists of things that have to be done.
Talk back to me. Let me know what you think? Post a comment.
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