Parenting: Building Confidence in Younger Children – as part of the expert series by GeoBeats. My name is Jennifer Kolari and I am a family therapist. I think confidence comes in the same way that nurturing, and empathy, and compassion, and a child’s feeling deeply listening to it is hugely important. The other is giving them messages of confidence. Telling them ‘I believe you can do this’, ‘I think you can handle this’, ‘I think you are going to be great’. Quiet often we rescue, and we fix, and we solve problems, and we kind of get over-involved sometimes in some of the struggles that our kids have. I am not saying to leave them to defend for themselves, but sometimes we fix every single problem. We are giving them the message that they can’t fix their own problems, and there is something to be said for a little bit of healthy adversity and kids learn that they can face things that are not so easy and come out the other end and they will be strong and be OK. So I think the message of confidence, not rescuing too quickly, giving them the message that you think they have everything they need to handle the problem that is in front of them. It is the best thing you could do for self confidence.
