In today’s age where children are exposed to social media influences peddling lifestyle messages, cyber-bullies, targeted advertising and rapidly changing social expectations it can be harder than ever to ensure that they grow up with a positive view of themselves.

By putting the time and energy into helping your children nail positive approaches to self-esteem and self-confidence early on you can ensure that they become the happy, well-rounded individuals they were meant to be!

There are lots of help out there for parents looking to raise their children with a strong sense of self-esteem, ranging from self-esteem tests and activities to books and programs that teach kids and teenagers about the importance of valuing themselves and what they bring to the world.

Top 7 Tips For Boosting Self Confidence

#1 Success Jar:

Success Jars also known by many other names, are an awesome way to regularly remind your child of all their past glories, from the small to the spectacular and to make sure that a bad day or week doesn’t change all the things they’ve achieved!

Super simple to make, all you need is a big, clear container – think goldfish bowl or mason jars – and some slips of paper. Take some time to sit with your child and ask them about times they’ve felt proud of themselves, when they’ve done something on their own or as part of a team or even just done something nice for someone else.You can give them prompts as well but try to make sure that the majority of successes come from themselves.

Whack all the slips in the jar and on a bad day, get them to pick some slips out, read them aloud and really remember how they felt when the achieved whatever is on the paper. Also make sure to add extra slips every time they’re feeling great about something they’ve done!

#2 Group ‘I Like’ Sessions:

Whether you do this with friends or just with family, this is a great way to help children see all the great aspects that others see in them. Sometimes it’s easy for children to feel down about themselves and forget that everyone has admirable qualities. Realising this can be a great self-esteem boosting activity.

Sitting around a table or just as a group, each individual writes something that they really admire about each person on the table on a slip of paper. Make sure to mark each slip with the name of the person that it’s about on the back.

Once everyone’s written all of their slips, put them into a bowl to help make the anonymous and then distribute the slips to the correct person. You can either let each person read them out loud or just let them enjoy them on their own.

#3 Bucket Lists and Goal-setting:

Teaching your child to be resilient is a huge part of building their self-esteem and self-confidence. For a child, being able to tell themselves that they won’t give up until they’ve set out to achieve what they were aiming for and following through on this can be incredibly powerful. They start to see themselves as individuals who control their own fate.

A great way to teach perseverance is to create a bucket list with your child covering some major things they’d like to achieve. These can be as big or as small as your child feels comfortable with, the idea being here that you break something fairly substantial down into small, achievable targets on the way to the end goal.

Having the bucket list somewhere big and visible is a great way to regularly remind your child (and you) what they set out to achieve and keep it at the forefront of their mind.

Learning that mountainous tasks can be made achievable through commitment and small steps is a great way to develop a can-do attitude in kids which ultimately boosts their ability to self-actualize and feel great about themselves.

#4 Responsibility and Decision-making:

Giving your children responsibility for tasks, projects or just for making decisions can be one of the best ways to teach them their own power and help children with low self-esteem.

This can be something as small as making sure they’ve ticked off all their chores, that they’ve fed and/or walked any family pets or that they’ve chosen and helped to prepare a meal for the family for some evenings.

Whilst this might seem like a tiny thing to adults who are used to making seemingly thousands of decisions a day, for many children their decision making power is extremely limited. Showing that you trust them with responsibility is hugely important as they will start to believe in themselves too. Small, regular steps will soon build up to big changes in self-esteem and self-belief.

#5 Creating Leadership Opportunities:

Leadership opportunities can come in many different forms and can be incorporated in to the previous point on responsibility and decision making.

Try creating projects or group situations in which your child is forced to act as the leader, whether that means that they make the final decisions on what happens, or that to get further instructions on what happens next, only the child selected as leader can communicate with the adult overseeing the project. This means that everyone else involved will have to defer to the lead child.

There are also some amazing programs for developing leadership skills in children and adolescents. Institutions such as Scouts or one of the Cadet programs set up by the armed forces offer excellent opportunities for children to engage in exciting activities, take charge of situations and really push themselves, all under the watchful eye of trained instructors and most importantly, role models. You can read more about these in the Best Child Self-esteem Boosters of 2018, below.

#6 Sports:

Getting your child involved in sports is without doubt one of the most impact strategies for improving their self-esteem and self-confidence. Whether it be a team or solo sport, finding a great coach and applying some of the other advice in this guide can be a sure fire way to show children just how much they can do when they set their mind to it.

Sports teaches children the value of perseverance, discipline, training and that feel-good feeling of having a hobby that they love and can share with others. Sports, as with many hobbies, can help to give children a strong sense of identity, which is vital for improving self-esteem.

#7 Positive Self-Talk:

Possibly the most important factor on this list is nurturing positive self-talk in your children. Teaching kids that none of us are perfect, but that we all have intrinsic value and that we should all be proud of who we are is vital to raising children with a great sense of self-esteem.

There are a number of approaches to this, from ensuring that you encourage a growth mindset; teaching children that they can improve at anything they put their mind to, practicing the use of positive vocabulary like ‘excited’ rather than ‘nervous’ or ‘challenging’ rather than ‘difficult’, and most importantly leading by example.

Teaching children to see the opportunity in failure and regularly using affirmations all lead to a deeply positive self-talk. When nurtured consistently, this can be a powerful way to teach children self-confidence and grow their self-esteem.