Not all kids are the same. They have different interests, skills - technical skills and soft skills, like confidence. It’s not clear-cut how to instill confidence in your kids. We’ve worked with a lot of kids over the years, and have found some great ways to help them become more confident; and we’d like to share them. Our programs, not only work on technical and hands on skills, but incorporate team building, public speaking, collaboration, effective communication, conflict resolution and more. For example, our Minecraft program fosters an environment where kids have to share space, work together and communicate responsibly.
- Give Them Leadership and Responsibility
By allowing your child to lead a group project and giving them responsibility over their actions, they will naturally learn how to become more responsible and build leadership qualities. When they learn to be a leader, they will become more confident in their decision-making!
- Create Opportunities for Public Speaking
Public speaking is the number one most common fear -- even above fear of spiders and snakes! If you let your child learn how to talk to a crowd when they’re young, they’ll be more confident and capable as they get older. Just be careful, you can ease into different speaking situations. Start with a small crowd of close family, and slowly branch out.
- Allow Them to Make Their Own Decisions
Nothing empowers kids to feel more confident than allowing them to make their own decisions. Let them choose where you go out to eat, what activities you do over the weekend, or what movie you watch to relax after a long day. Small things can mean a lot to kids. Even something as simple as picking their own outfit can boost their confidence.
- Play with Them
This may seem obvious, but as your child grows it can be easy to get swept up in life and forget to spend time playing with them. Kids learn through play, and when you play with them you can help them learn even more through your own knowledge. Be sure to show affection as well. Skin contact improves relationships and has been shown to increase confidence levels in kids.
- Nurture their interests
Here at MakerKids, we have after school programs that help kids build essential life skills, such as leadership, programming, robotics, and computer science. Our programs are an excellent way to help your kids learn to be more self-confident because we allow them the space to lead a group, speak in front of others, be responsible for their own projects, and play with and meet new friends.These are 5 tips to help your child become more self-confident. We hope they’ve helped; let us know if there’s anything you’ve done that’s worked to bring out the confidence in your child.