To play for England and score the goal that wins the World Cup? To be a scientist and save the world? To work with horses? To be a dancer?
Your child’s dreams for tomorrow are dear to their hearts. But do they have the self-confidence to follow them and make things happen?
Confidence is much more complex than what you can see on the outside. Even the most socially confident children are often dealing with feelings of low self-esteem about something inside. It might be worries about school work, friends, exams or home life. Anything could knock their confidence and making them start to doubt themselves.
So how do you identify this and more importantly what can parents do to instill self-belief to stay in the game when the going gets tough – whether that’s on the football pitch, classroom, dance studio or anywhere else in their world?
To start with you need to understand where confidence comes from….
We’re talking about a feeling that a child has about a specific situation. All of those, good or bad, work together to impact how confident they feel towards it.
Let’s use SATs as an example. On the face of it you might have a confident child. One who’s happy in school, easily makes new friends, puts their hand up in class and generally does well. Recently though, focus has shifted to exams and life’s got a bit tougher. They may even have done some past papers and got a couple of questions wrong.
For the first time thoughts creep in that’s it’s too hard, they won’t get the results and their dream job is unachievable. Cue a very real fear towards the exams and a big drop in confidence.
This doesn’t just apply to exams though, we see it in Year 6 before moving to secondary school, in sporting competitions, performances and even when making friends.
Children’s Happiness Coach, Simon Benn, believes the way to build a child’s confidence is to help them manage their thoughts and feelings towards situations, as they happen. So it becomes second nature to deal with a feeling before it can affect them.
“I believe in helping children learn practical ways to build their confidence. Being confident is like riding a bike. You can’t just read a book about it and then hop straight on. You’ve got to try it for yourself and practice!”
“Children learn most when they’re having fun, so I came up with a confidence based workshop for kids called The Juicer – a metaphor for how feelings come from thoughts, like juice comes from fruit.
Playing games about The Juicer mindset tool, like chucking in a confident coconuts, helps them learn how to feel good, change their mood if they’re feeling down and stop negative thoughts upsetting them.
“It may seem too simple to adults but it really works for children. My workshops will boost their confidence and:
In the last 4 years, Simon’s fun and exciting approach to coaching has already helped over 1,000 youngsters aged seven to 11 be happier and more confident. Amazingly at the end of one of his hour long juicer sessions over 95% of children say they can change how they feel more easily and 94% can change their actions more easily too.
JOIN ONE OF SIMON’S WORKSHOPS FOR FREE IN APRIL
Simon will be running a number of his Juicer workshops completely FREE throughout April, for parents and their children to come along to at John Lewis, Leeds.
Spaces are filling fast though, so Mumbler recommends you act quickly to secure a place. For workshop timings and to book click here.
To see more about what Simon offers, visit the Children’s Happiness Coach website here
*Sponsored blog post
