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Encouragement: Building Children’s Confidence

Encouragement is very important for building a young person’s self-confidence and self esteem. It helps children believe in themselves and their abilities. To become more encouraging, adults should try to reduce or eliminate the following attitudes and behaviors:

1. Negative Expectations:Expectations are powerful forces in human relationships and are communicated by the things we say and do. Children can sense these expectations even if we do not say them out loud and behave in the way we expect.
2. Unreasonably High Standards:Adults may set standards, which are impossible for children to meet, or are beyond their ages and abilities. This may be compounded by telling them what they’ve done is not as good as it could have been.
3. Promoting Competition Among Youth:Adults do this verbally by complimenting the successful child and non-verbally by ignoring the other children OR by using gestures or facial expressions, which communicate the same messages.
4. Overambition:Adults may insist that children demonstrate excellence. This attitude may influence the children to avoid anything where they are not certain they will be tops.

1. Accept Children As They Are:Children cannot improve unless they feel good enough about themselves. It is vital to let children know that they are valued as persons no matter how they perform.
2. Ignore Tattling/Give Attention:Children use tattling to make themselves look good or to get even and they do it through adults. When adults allow themselves to be used in this manner, they also invite the “victim” to use them at the next opportunity. So, ignore the negative behavior (unless safety is an issue) and give attention for positive behavior.
3. Have Faith In Children So They May Believe In Themselves:Play down children’s mistakes and communicate confidence. Point out the positive aspects of their efforts.
4. Focus On Contributions, Assets, and Strengths:Identify their talents and suggest ways they might use these talents.
5. Encourage Rather Than Praise:Praise is an attempt to motivate children with external rewards.
6. Use Encouragement to comment on the effort or improvement, however slight:It focuses children’s strengths and does not compare them to others. Instead the adult cares about the children accepting themselves and developing the courage to face difficult tasks. Encouragement is aimed at helping children feel worthy and desirous of doing their best.  Ex. “I’m glad you’re pleased with it” ,“Thanks, that helped a lot!” “I need your help on…”, “I like the way you handled that”, “Knowing you, I’m sure you’ll do fine.” , “You’ll figure it out! ”, or “It looks as if you really worked hard on that.”