Are you Successful in Building Self-Confidence in your Child?

Your Child and Self-Confidence 

Another way to come to understand the nature of personality traits and how they grow is to pick a very desirable trait and see how it can be destroyed. For this we shall use self-confidence. How many of the dozen questions below would you say are involved? Here you are parents...

• Are you babying the child rather than encouraging him or her to do things on his or her own? 
• Are you making the home climate tense rather than relaxed? 
• Are you expressing more disapproval than praise? 
• Are you pushing the child beyond his abilities rather than realiz­ing his limitations? 
• Are you aloof rather than friendly toward the child? 
• Are you riding the child on weaknesses rather than \rying to correct them? 
• Are you holding up a superior child as an example rather than comparing the child to someone nearer his or her own abilities? 
• Are you demanding perfection rather than showing tolerance? 
• Are·you providing the child with unnecessary worries rather than making the child feel secure? 
• Are you setting an "I can't" example rather than exhibiting self-sufficiency yourself? 
• Are you overprotecting the child rather than teaching him or her responsibility? 
• Are you telling the child to withdraw from situations one should be made to face? 

To illustrate a positive approach, consider how parents can help the child develop self-confidence in problem solving.

• Be sure that the problems are within range of the child's abilities at any particular growth level. 
• It is well to let the child work on only one big problem at a time. 
• Several coming all at once lead to frustration. Be patient; solving problems takes a lot of trial and error. A part of this process involves learning what not to do. 
• Be cautious in judging the child's accomplishments in terms of adult standards. Expect the child to regress in the ability to solve pmblems. 
• Don't get in the habit of solving problems for the child. 
• See that the child receives reinforcement when problems are solved. 

It may be beneficial to remember that practical child psychology deals with essentially all the kinds of problems we face as adults. In biological development, time is on the side of the organism, but in psychological growth time always seems to be running out.