Background, I have one 8 year old boy (no other kids) and over the years of tutoring him, helping with his homework, participating in activities and coaching his youth sports teams we have observed a steadily increasing level of anxiousness and self-consciousness in him. All kids get this way at some point but my son is standing out amongst his peers as particularly bad in this respect. My son gets very discouraged and quits whenever there’s adversity or when there is a perceived spotlight on him (for good or bad reasons). He seems very afraid to fail or look bad at home or in public. Some examples are when we are helping him with his homework and he makes a mistake and we gently correct him he gets very discouraged and sometimes totally disengages, in sports if he does something positive he will run away from accolades and conversely if he thinks he might fail or not perform in a game or match then he’ll freeze up and do nothing. We live in a relatively small to mid-sized town so my son has been going to school with and doing sports with a lot of the same kids since he was a toddler. When I’ve coached some of his teams I’ve observed how all of his peers have evolved in different situations and unfortunately my son is behind the curve in terms of anxiousness/self-consciousness. Some kids are totally unfazed by failure/setbacks, some kids will cry and get upset but then get back “on the horse” for the next play or match, but my kid is one of those who implodes and just disengages completely.
My wife and I are always positive and encouraging. We make it clear we don’t care about winning or losing, we just want him to try hard and have fun. Our only rule is that if he commits to a team then he has to finish the season but he doesn’t have to sign up again the following season if he doesn’t want to. We tell him daily we love him no matter what and that its okay to be afraid or not win at everything. As we all know image and self-consciousness become a major challenge when kids hit the pre-teen and high school years. If my son is like this at 8 years old then I’m very concerned he will really struggle later.
Have any other parents had similar challenges with their young kids and found anything to help build resilience/confidence and reduce anxiety/self-consciousness in the form of helpful advice, books, counselors, techniques, camps, programs, or whatever? Thanks in advance.