Sunday, June 24, 2007

Ensure Your Child Has the Self Confidence to Succeed

Self confidence is an excellent attribute that can help a child succeed from an early age. Instilling self confidence at an early age will enforce the importance of possessing the necessity of this attribute and ensure your child will experience success early on is his or her life.

Low self confidence can be exhibited in many ways depending on your child. There are many cues to look for that can tell if you child is beginning to lose or experiencing low self confidence. These cues can by extreme shyness, hesitance to begin projects, negative attitudes towards him or herself, overt frustration at having to try new things, and inability or fear when it comes to making even the simplest decision.

Parents can begin teaching self confidence immediately after their child is born. Provide endless encouragement when your child is developing new skills or trying new things. Young children especially need encouragement since they are continuing to develop new skills on a daily basis.

Whether physical or mental, these important developmental times can range from your child taking his or her first steps to learning to read. Each step in your child’s development is exceedingly important and, in order to be completed as soon as possible, should be thoroughly reinforced in a positive manner. This positive reinforcement will encourage your child to work harder in completing the task at hand.

Teachers can teach self confidence from the moment a child enters the classroom. Carefully monitor each child’s progress in each subject and skill covered in your curriculum to ensure your students are accomplishing their academic goals and not falling behind with any aspect of your teaching. This is invaluable to teachers of all subjects and all ages of children.

Create ways to praise or reward your students when classroom or individual goals are accomplished. This will encourage children to strive to meet these goals and reinforce their self confidence. Take great care not to use negative measures to reproach or criticize your students. Correcting issues using a positive demeanor can enable the child to understand your point more clearly while retaining their self confidence. Negative tones or attitudes taken towards your students can do considerable harm to both their mental and emotional development and well-being.

Create situations where your child can work on his or her self confidence. Enroll your child in a sports program or other activity to allow him or her to express interests and develop new goals. A child who participates in activities such as athletics, dance, scouts, or music has more opportunities to try new things and develop new skills. These opportunities will allow children to further develop their self confidence while gaining new friends and experiences in these activities.

Take great care to support your child in any activity he or she decides to undertake. Your child may not be the next great baseball player or a world famous piano prodigy, so be aware of the varying levels of success that can be accomplished. A child can succeed by maintaining a positive attitude and attacking each hurdle with enthusiasm and enjoyment.

Do not necessarily associate success in the activity with the overall success of the experience. Even though your child may not be able to dunk a ball with professional precision, he or she will have gained a phenomenal experience and self confidence during the duration of the activity.

When working with children of any age, you must lead by example. If your child shows that you possess a great amount of self confidence, he or she will develop a great amount of self confidence as well. Conversely, if you lack self confidence and show your child this by being negative, hesitant, or meek, he or she will not understand or appreciate the necessity of having high self confidence.

Thursday, June 7, 2007

Encouraging Self Esteem in Girls

Children, adolescents, and teenagers generally experience some sort of self esteem issues during one part of the advancement to adulthood. This problem seems to be magnified in girls rather than boys. There are many possible reasons why this seems to be the case, including developmental hormones, different social relationships in girls, and certain other gender differences that add to the problem. If you are a parent of a young girl, you may want to consider her quality of self esteem and work towards reinforcing or boosting your child’s self esteem early on in her development.

There are many resources available to you when looking in to boosting your child’s self esteem. Access the World Wide Web and search different websites that contain information about the development of young girls and how possessing low self esteem can potentially be detrimental to their development. Also, you will be able to contact different parents or guardians in the same situations as yourself.

Consider trading tips or stories with these other virtual friends who share your same goal concerning their own female child. Also, your local library is an excellent resource for information on this topic.

Check out the sections devoted to parenting, development, and the social situations with girls to gain a better understanding of this problem and how not providing a potential solution can be extremely negative to your child. Furthermore, your local bookstore has a phenomenal selection of books that are sure to answer all your questions about the impact of your daughter’s self esteem.

If necessary, you may want to join a discussion or support group regarding in order to speak with other parents about how they are tackling this issue. To find a group that is suitable to your specific needs, you may want to contact your local Department of Parks and Recreation.

Often, city and county parks departments offer parenting classes and can be able to provide you the name and number of a specific group that fits your interest. Also, your local library usually has a list of clubs, groups, and organizations within your community.

By far the best way to better instill the importance of high self esteem in girls is to lead by example. If your daughter sees you suffering from low self esteem or constantly causing another individual to suffer from low self esteem, any lessons you may be able to provide will be lost.

Most importantly, be sure to never berate, insult, or intimidate your daughter, which can potentially cause serious developmental problems that can surface later on in her life. Many girls who suffer mental anguish, teasing, hazing, or bullying have remarkably low levels of self esteem and are often timid, unsure, and hesitant when dealing with other individuals. This problem can pass on into adulthood as the scars of childhood issues make a lasting impact on their self esteem.
Consider speaking with other parents of your daughter’s friends or classmates in order to come up with clever ways to impact the children’s self esteem. Include discussions about self esteem in your daily life.

Encourage your children to read books that put a positive light on growing up and whose main characters are strong and capable girls. Encourage your daughter in all aspects of her life, scholastic, athletic, social, and extracurricular. Sit down with your daughter and write down a set of goals for both you and her to accomplish. When one of these goals is accomplished, be sure to celebrate this marker, no matter how small.

Whatever you decide to do with your daughter, your participation in her life is sure to positively affect her self esteem, in addition to many other factors.