Children learn new skills at a fantastic rate from birth while also gaining enough confidence to use them in different settings. Over time, this confidence becomes as important as the learning itself. To develop, children need to trust their abilities and know that they can sustain the failures, mistakes, and failures that they will experience while they advance in life. How do you help them increase their self-confidence?
- Don’t interfere
Kid learning for the exam on digital tablet and laptop
The trust we have in children is the seed of their own autonomy Getty Images.
Lara Terradas Campanario, psychologist, body therapist, and Gestalt therapist is clear that the first step is to trust them so that they trust them, as well as avoid getting in the way when we are not necessary: ”The trust we have in creatures is the seed of their self-confidence, that is, of their self-esteem. In the name of helping, sometimes we do anything but help. Adults often mistake help for interference. We interfere when we fail to respect the rhythm of learning and the natural development of girls and boys. When we go-ahead to put the sleeve of the jacket to them when they have not even considered that they could do it “, he assures
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Educate yourself and learn about their exact needs at each stage.
To avoid ending up doing what they can do for them and thus undermining their confidence, parents must inform themselves and learn the exact needs of each evolutionary stage. “Allowing the exploration of their bodies in the genital phase is a real need, for example,” says Terradas Campanario, who adds: “If we do not know, we will castrate this game and, with it, their expansion as future adults. We interfere when instead of educating, we domesticate, cutting off the natural impulses of human offspring to ‘civilize’ them,” she emphasizes.
- Let them get dirty and experiment.
I am a smiling little muddy girl looking at the camera and showing my palms to a photographer.
Sometimes it helps to allow children to experiment and be spontaneous. Getty Images
The jacket example would be a clear example of an overprotective parenting style. But neither do we help our children to trust themselves when we go from being authoritarian: “When we do for them what they could do for themselves, and we are very lax in the limits, we become overprotective. When we exaggerate limits, we become authoritarian. In both cases, we do not allow them to experiment (get dirty, fall) and learn by “trial and error,” cutting off their spontaneity, “explains this psychologist.
Self-confidence is a concept that we believe to be self-evident; But many feelings, thoughts, and behaviors are installed in us and seem to be part of our personality, to such an extent that we consider them as something of our own, natural … and it is not like that, trust in oneself, is an achievement, something that we can all achieve and have, or on the contrary, we can lose self-confidence, little by little, day after day.
Do you feel identified with any of these behaviors, emotions, or thoughts? With how many of them?
I feel insecure in new social situations because I don't know what is expected of me.
I tend to magnify my mistakes and minimize my successes.
I am afraid of making mistakes that others might see.
I do not know what I am capable of since I avoid doing things out of fear or think I will not be able to do them.
I often compare myself to others.
In my decisions, I care about the opinion of others more than my wishes.
I get discouraged easily.
I feel like my life is more challenging and more complex than anyone else's and that things happen to me more often than I can't resolve.
I tend to avoid any situation if I anticipate it to be uncomfortable.
I need what I show and what I do to look perfect.
Criticism, disapproval, or rejection affect me and last a long time.What weakens our self-confidence?
Do not carry out new activities and allow us to develop our capacities.
Not accept us.
Fear the opinion of others.
Be uncompromising with our mistakes.
Letting ourselves be carried away by fear and not moving forward.
I am not looking for solutions to what happens to us, believing that it does not depend on us.In a world where more and more things demand us, improving self-confidence is a substantial pending issue.
Having deficits in this regard causes emotional pain and predisposes us to act like people who do not trust themselves. And that, in addition to Being a source of trouble, makes others treat us like we need help with anything.
Tips for building your self-confidence
Against this destructive dynamic, here are some starting points to improve your levels of self-confidence and self-esteem and make your image of yourself work in your favor.
Coldly consider your options
Distancing yourself from your person and analyzing the things you do as an external observer will help you recognize those situations and habits in which you self-sabotage yourself. If you have had low self-esteem for a long time, you have likely entered a vicious cycle of anxiety and poor self-image from which it is difficult to get out without trying. Therefore, taking a third-person point of view will help you see this vicious cycle in total and it will be easier to take action on the matter.
How to do this? Very easy. When you notice that something creates anguish and undermines your self-confidence, stop and think about the different options with which you can face this situation and choose the one that you think will benefit you in the medium or long term.
The key: overcome the tendency to stay in your bubble.
Make sure that your conception of what is “best” in the long term is not influenced by your desire to choose the comfortable solution. If you want to do things differently than you usually do, you will have to get out of your comfort zone. For example, suppose you think one of your academic papers has received a lower score than expected. In that case, the easiest option may be to do nothing, but if you go to the correction review so that the person who has corrected it, you Explain where you have failed, you are likely to learn things, although facing your mistakes can be somewhat uncomfortable.
