Building Confidence In K-6 Students: Tips For Parents And Teachers
Building Confidence From A Young Age
From a very young age, my parents allowed me to entertain self-guided and unsupervised ideas every day of my childhood. I would rearrange my room often, bake in the kitchen, babysit any children in the neighbourhood, help senior citizens with their yardwork, and walk neighbours’ dogs for their daily exercise.
My first paid job was a paper route, from the ages of 10-13, that I applied for myself and earned enough to buy myself my own TV for my room and start a savings account that happens to be the same one I have today.
Had my parents disallowed such self-guided, unsupervised ideas in my childhood, I believe I would not have built my confidence so readily. Either they viewed me as a mini adult capable of making both good and poor decisions, or they were too busy with their own lives to constantly interfere with mine.
Reflecting on my childhood upbringing and my personal temperament, this was the absolute best setup for me growing up, and I am very grateful for the opportunities they have given me.
Cultivating A Sense Of Autonomy In Children
No one appreciates being nagged or coerced into doing something. Most individuals prefer to develop a sense of autonomy while creating their identity and independence.
The more parents try to advise or help their child, the more the child tends to internalize the subliminal message that they are not capable of whatever task they are receiving advice or help with.
Learning from one’s mistakes is an invaluable way to build confidence and resilience. Children benefit from developing a mindset that failure is not failure; it is learning, growing, maturing, and building a solid foundation of problem-solving and critical thinking skills.
When used in tandem with the next trial of a task or a new method of execution of a previous task, and success eventually results, this internally builds confidence.
Unsolicited advice and direction interfere with a child’s sense of autonomy, conveying a lack of faith in their competence, and it also undermines your parent-child connection.
Less parental worry and more child independence will allow this generation of children to practice critical thinking on a daily basis. This may seem overwhelming so at Education Rocks we offer a way to streamline this process.
How We’re Here To Help Build Confidence In K-6 Students
The unit and lesson plans in our K-6 Learning Library can help your K-6 child or students develop critical thinking skills and build confidence in their abilities. The best part is that you can edit these resources so that your child or students can focus on what they can do right now and build on it, rather than internalize that they are not performing at grade level.
All of our resources include engaging instructional videos, audio functions, and high-definition images. These resources can be used both digitally and non-digitally at home or at school.
If you want to fully preview all unit and lesson plans, you can do so on our Teachers Pay Teachers page!
If you have any questions about any of our products, then you can email me at hello@educationrocks.ca.
Thank you for reading this blog post on building confidence in K-6 students. I wish you and your child(ren) or students all the best in this upcoming school year!