To ask how I can build up my daughter’s confidence?

[BusyBusyBea]

She’s nearly five and she is wonderful. Funny and gentle and kind.

She’s anxious and frightened of a lot of things. Being alone. The dark. Water.

She started school this year and by watching her with her new friends I realise that she seems to be very easily led and allows herself to be dominated a lot.

I lack a lot of self confidence and this has dogged me my whole life. I will do almost anything to avoid confrontation and I am plagued by what my boss assures me is imposter syndrome. I don’t want this for my daughter.

What can I do to improve her confidence?

Consistent praise...new challenges constantly. Push her a bit...not so she's upset but try new things. Let her do stuff alone. Even basic household tasks like washing dishes or cooking...constantly telling her she can do it.

Thank you that is so helpful. I’m going to give this some thought

If I had my time again, I would've enrolled my DD in Stagecoach.

Otherwise, continue to tell her that she is absolutely brilliant at whatever she is doing. Could you do a play date with one friend, - may let her be herself?

She does get a lot of praise but I am going to make a really big point of it now.

We do have play dates. She has this one friend in particular who she loves but listening to them recently I feel like this girl is pushing my daughter around a little bit (I mean she’s only 5 so I don’t mean there is malicious intent or anything but it bothered me to hear my daughter being so passive about it, if that makes sense). I am going to try and arrange a play date with a couple of other girls in her class. A wee attempt to show her that there are other potential friends out there, maybe 🤷🏻‍♀️

Get her involved in something skills based such as swimming, another sport, learning a musical instrument etc where consistent practice will lead to improvement and achievements. A sense of accomplishment and the realisation that she can improve with practice has been invaluable for my daughter's confidence.

Also, probably not going to be easy for you but where possible, model being assertive in your own interactions. And if you see incidents happen, talk to her about the different ways she can handle them. Eg. When my 4 year old daughter was playing sport and another child took her coloured dot (position markers) she got super upset. I talked to her about her options and what she could do/say eg choosing another dot or saying "excuse me, that's my dot". The next time it happened a few weeks later, she didn't get upset at all, because she had some clear strategies.

I enrolled my daughter for a Saturday class in ballet, tap, dance, singing and drama from when she was 4. Her confidence has increased massively and she is now 7. She is not afraid of being on stage, she loves it and has made friends outside of school. I'd highly recommend this.

Also regarding praise, it's important to praise the effort rather than the outcome. Otherwise they can become downcast if they don't achieve what they hope or expect of themselves.

I agree with trying something new - horse riding might be good, because you have to be confident to get the horse to do anything speaking from experience.

Drama clubs & sports clubs
Enrol in extra curriculum activities, look for local clubs like gymnastics, athletics etc and look for drama

Dancing club

Sign her up for rainbows and then brownies. Lots of opportunities to try new things and lots of activities around confidence and self esteem in a supportive environment.

I have a slightly different take on this- my view is that you shouldn’t push. Better for her to do things that are easily within her capabilities. The more she succeeds, the more she will be confident in her abilities.

What does she like doing? If it's something like music, sport, cooking etc I would give her as many opportunities as possible to do those things. They will make her feel good, she will begin to make the connection between effort and enjoyment plus it gives you more opportunities to talk about her skills and use targeted praise. Eg. 'I was really impressed with the way you kept going, even when I know you we're finding it tricky.'

Praise has to be specific to be worth anything. So a drawing for example, don't just say "your drawing is fantastic!" Try "I really like the detail on the horse, you've got the colour of x just right "
Also encourage her to do stuff out of her comfort zone, being prepared to challenge yourself is a lifelong gift.

Basically, what Bertrandrussell said!

Definitely praise effort not outcome!
If you like reading:
bounce by Mathew syed talks about this... It's excellent!

Any drama /dance classes are good!

Model being assertive to your daughter. Not being pushed around...

If there is an example when you're out and about (perhaps someone pushed in front of you at a cinema queue?). Talk this through afterwards...
See what mummy did...action ;I said excuse me, we're in a queue. (and the impact/outcome... The quque jumper joined the back of the queue). Then talk through other options... Do nothing... We get upset, or be rude... Other people are rude back/they don't do what you want... Etc

These type of stories are quite useful in showing different ways of acting...

My mum used to do this when I was a kid... It was really helpful.. See what I did then? Or when mummy was on stage... She had butterflies in her tummy, but this is normal, and she still did her sleech/dance whatever....

Just like @nikosmum2010, DD started dancing and musical theatre in Reception, she is in Year 4 now and has no issue performing in front of a crowd, making friends, etc. She is confident in class too, not afraid to ask questions in front of everyone if there is something she doesn't understand, and I am sure at least part of it is down to her dancing experience.

We found a lovely dance school with a very down to earth teacher and she is good friends with the kids there as well.

Other dance schools near us seem to have a lot of pushy parents and keeping-up-with-the-Jones' parents, so we trialled a couple before finding the right one, but she has been going for 4 years now and she absolutely loves it!

There are some great ideas for clubs to try on this thread. I would add that if you take your dd along that you explain in no uncertain terms that if she doesn’t like the activity then she doesn’t have to return

I’ve never quite understood the “this child is anxious and frightened-so give her new frightening things to do” philosophy. It’s different when they are older , and able to have some input and understand what’s going on then certainly. But at 5 you need to just carry on reinforcing and praising and boosting. And modelling.

I did actually enrol my youngest dd in stagecoach. It transformed her into a wonderful amazing confident polite and happy young woman, who now does things like presentations in front of hundreds of people without any confidence issues at all. I'm so thankful I did it.

I think the best thing you can do is stop trying to alter her personality.she will pick up on this. There us genuine praise which I am sure you do anyway, and then there is no stop gushing praise which becomes meaningless. Because her friend takes the lead on games, which your daughter is probably ambivalent about doesn't mean she won't stand a ground if asked yo do something naughty. She will develop her confidence naturally without trying to throw her in the deep end with stuff when probably fill time school is enough for her to be coping with

No one is suggesting changing the child’s personality, they are suggesting opportunities to try new things she may enjoy and be proficient at that will increase her confidence.

Work on you're own self confidence, she'll pick up on you being confident and will emulate it, personally a fake it til you make it approach to confidence worked for me eventually the scales tip and you're not pretending to be confident anymore because you realise that everyone else believes you are and it's easy from there

I would say constant non specific praise undermines confidence and ability to build resistance.
Praise definitely but be specific. You have worked really hard on that picture and it looks just like Father Christmas as opposed to you’re the best little girl in the world. The non specific doesn’t help them understand themselves and just sets them up for s long fall from glory.

More importantly is stepping back and trusting them. Let her forge her playground friendships and learn about who she likes for herself. Don’t rush to intervene and make things better. Acknowledge when things are a bit hard but let her work out solutions.
Let her fail at small things but Let her learn she’ll survive and it’s not important in the bigger picture. Don’t rush to prevent failing or rush to put everything right. An expectation of constant happiness and perfection in friendships is the surest way to breed anxiety.
Agree drama and performing arts are good.
Disagree about not praising genuine achievement- low expectations are as problematic as overly high expectations.

Following with interest.

I would say push her to do things on her own and when she is older, don't do everything for her and make all her decisions for her, step back and allow her to make mistakes. Don't micromanage her life for her when she is almost an adult, let her make her own decisions about which phone provider she should use (as an example!) rather than doing all the research and deciding for her. . Make her make phone calls for life admin stuff rather than doing it for her. Stuff like that.

It's only now that I am realising that the way that my mum was with me, even though she always (and still does have) had my best interests at heart, has probably done me far more damage than good.

I am lucky in that my husband had the opposite sort of upbringing to me so is very independent and confident and will hopefully not allow our kids to go down the same road as me, I'm hoping we will get a happy medium!