Parent-Child Activities That Promote Self-Confidence

Give your child lots of chances to do “real” jobs

Preparing meals—tossing lettuce into a bowl, pouring milk into cereal, breaking eggs—offers many opportunities for your child to take on responsibility and feel successful. Your toddler can help you with chores like doing laundry and gardening. He can match socks or separate shirts from pants, or water plants in the garden outside.

Encourage friendships

Making and keeping friends nurtures a toddler’s growing self-confidence and self-esteem. Create plenty of opportunities to meet and play with children her age. Always be close by so you can help your child learn to share and work out problems that will surely come up. This will help her feel confident that she can deal with the challenges that are part of building healthy relationships as she grows.

Help your child use words to work through challenges

You tried to pour your own juice. Good for you. Some juice is in the cup. Some spilled. When that happens, you can tell Mommy and ask for help cleaning it up. Then we can do it together. Giving your child the words he needs makes it more likely that he will ask for help. It will also help him understand what happened, and what steps are involved in completing a task successfully.