Has your child ever experienced this lack of confidence:
Accompany the three-year-old child to class, the teacher distributes teaching aids, the child just does not dare to take it himself, not to pull the father together;
Five-year-old children watch a group of three- or four-year-old children play football, and they are stunned to come forward for half a day, because they are "afraid of playing badly";
In elementary school, usually park sports running and jumping are good, once to the school sports day, each project does not dare to sign up, the reason is that others are too powerful.
Obviously did not encounter any setbacks, why did you directly choose to "lie flat"?
In the face of children's unconfidence again and again, making people anxious and afraid of their children's future, how can they cultivate children's self-confidence?
Think back to when the child first learned to climb and walk, no matter how many times he fell and cried a few times, he would continue to move forward; when the child was two years old and could speak the Tao and be self-centered, he wanted to come by himself no matter what he wanted, just like the world did not have anything I would not do; when he knew the truth and could understand the feelings, why did he start to be unconfident?
Tracing the root cause is actually the change in parents' attitude towards their children, which affects the development of children's self-confidence.
Don't always say that children are not confident
It is the cornerstone of a child's self-confidence
1. "Basic attribution bias" makes parents anxious and also becomes a stumbling block to children's self-confidence
There is a well-known psychological concept, basic attribution bias, about observers who like to use internal attribution, that is, the reasons for behavior are attributed to the individual's temperament, ability, and traits to explain the behavior of others.
Because attributing the behavior of others to their acquired disposition is an almost automated process, it takes a lot of thinking to understand the behavior of others with external attribution, that is, external factors such as the environment. However, for actors, they will prefer to attribute their behavior to external factors such as the environment [1].
This explains that when parents perceive that their children are not confident, the first thing that comes to mind is the child's personality or ability, rather than the factors of the external environment. Such attribution bias makes it easy for parents to amplify their children's own problems and generate excess anxiety.
For example, children who like ukulele play very smoothly in class alone, but more than one child will forget the score, resulting in not being able to play without reading the score, and parents attribute all these mistakes to the child's timidity and introversion.
Because the reason for not daring to play is not correct, such things will continue to happen, and a series of continuous parents will begin to worry about the problem of their children's lack of confidence and become anxious.
In the face of anxious parents, the child instinctively attributes this matter to practicing the ukulele, because the child will feel that it is the ukulele that makes him cursed and criticized.
In this way, the child's unconfident label has taken root in the parents' hearts, and the unpleasant experience of the musical instrument has also torn a crack in the child's heart, and the confidence on the child's instrument has been submerged.
2, not confident, is the child's inner self-protection
Adler, the founder of individual psychology, once said that inferiority is a normal universal phenomenon of human beings, which people have at the beginning of their lives, and it is not a bad thing, but the driving force behind everyone's personal achievements.
The entire culture of mankind is based on a sense of inferiority, and the rise of science is due to people's feelings of ignorance and desire for the future[2].
For self-confidence, many parents are actually too anxious, always feel that children are not confident, inferiority is difficult to achieve. But the child's inferiority is not a problem, it is just a kind of self-awareness of the child's growth path, and what makes it a problem is actually the emotion we deal with the child's inferiority at the moment.
For example, children who have just learned to play basketball, when they see players and opponents taller than themselves on the court, they cowardly dare not run and carry the ball, which is actually a kind of self-protection of children's natural instincts. As parents, we must see the root cause of our child's lack of self-confidence, not just attribute it to their child's weakness and lack of self-confidence.
Only by seeing the root causes of children's lack of self-confidence can we know how to help children build self-confidence. For example, if you are not confident on the field, then practice the basic movements on the sidelines, and when the movements are skilled to a certain extent, the child will naturally regain self-confidence to break through.
These two pitfalls of cultivating self-confidence
A lot of parents are guessing
Myth 1: Let children be confident, but stay away from negative evaluations?
NO！ The attitude of parents is the best shield!
In the documentary "Little Boy", the ten-year-old insect teenager is obsessed with insects, and in the face of various doubts from his classmates around him, he just said lightly, "They don't understand it, they don't understand it, there is nothing to spend, do their own thing." ”
Screenshot of the video of the documentary "Little Boy"
But don't you care? No, he just has the best shield against these rumors – parental support.
When confronted with gossip, his parents have always supported his hobby. There were no other bug buddies, and Mom was his best bug buddy, listening carefully to him talk about the bug world.
When Yin Ran went through twists and turns to find rare insects, his father was even more excited than Yin Ran.
When Yin Ran first received an invitation from the school to give an open class to her classmates, she took the initiative to prepare a golden butterfly chrysalis for her classmates as a gift.
What is even more surprising is that he also considered that other students do not like butterfly pupae will feel disgusting, and specially prepared a ballpoint pen to make gifts for students who do not like bugs.
For a ten-year-old this is actually very rare. In the face of prejudice and doubt around him, he is psychologically strong and confident and inclusive. These are all because the parents have support from the heart, maintaining the hidden self-confidence and gentleness.
Myth 2: Only praising and not criticizing can easily cause children to be narcissistic
No, no praise and criticism are more likely to exacerbate the child's lack of self-confidence
Psychologist Martin M. Seligman has a classic psychological theory - the learned helplessness theory. In this theory, children who are not discouraged after failure and believe that effort will make them successful are classified as "excellence orientation", and children who give up immediately after failure and believe that effort cannot change are classified as "learned helpless orientation".
This can also be observed in the process of interacting with children. For example, the child is building blocks, half of them collapse, and then they are no longer willing to build again. No matter how we invited, he felt that "useless, the building blocks will definitely fall again," and such behavior is more inclined to the "learned helplessness" orientation.
And some children, although the building blocks have collapsed, but after the guidance of parents, willing to try again, and pay more efforts, their behavior is more inclined to the "excellence" orientation type.
Based on further research, Dweck also found that praising results when a child succeeds and blaming the ability to blame when failing can easily foster a child's learned helplessness orientation, leading to self-doubt and values [3].
That is to say, praise for achievements and criticism when things are not completed, such a way will only hit the child's affirmation of self-ability, and eventually lead to the lack of self-confidence of the child. Only when the child succeeds, the parents praise the efforts he has made to solve the problem, and when he fails, he only emphasizes the lack of his efforts, which will make the child confident and strong.
Develop your child's self-confidence
Only one principle is needed
This principle refers to the "SIS Principle", that is:
S TOP ;
independent;
show
First, STOP means that adults should stop over-interfering and interfering with children's behavior.
In the face of children, parents are always easy to do more. Unfortunately, our kindness of all kinds of help may be a resistance to children's confident exploration.
For example, the first time a child peels an egg, it takes half a day to finish it, peel the egg to a pothole, and carry a lot of egg white on the shell. At this time, you may impatiently accuse the child and take the egg away, telling the child that it is too wasteful to peel it like this, and you must do it like your mother.
After that, you will find that your child is no longer willing to peel the eggs himself. Because he felt that it was too difficult to peel eggs, and he was easily blamed, it was better to wait for others to peel them to eat. His confident exploration was forced to end in this experience.
Secondly, independent represents the need for children to constantly have the experience of accomplishing a thing independently.
In life, we often have these scenarios:
a.“ This bag is too heavy, you can't hold it, I'll take it."
b.“ I hold you, you walk tired";
c. "I'll feed you, you don't have to eat it yourself";
d. "Wipe the table you can't wipe clean, I'll just wipe it";
e.“ This dress is troublesome to wear, I'll help you wear it";
……
In these images, the parents repeatedly prevent the child from exploring his or her own abilities. Because of love, we do a lot for our children, but we can't help him explore his own abilities.
To know that self-confidence comes from the affirmation of their own ability, children need to explore the boundaries of ability every time to find the boundaries of their ability and obtain their own self-confidence.
You feel that the child's table is not clean, you come to wipe; the clothes are worn slowly, you come to help wear, then the child can not experience the successful completion of a thing, nor can it experience "do your best to complete a thing", how to gain self-confidence? Accomplishing it independently is the experience of gaining confidence.
Finally, show stands for giving children the opportunity to show themselves.
The child is actually very fond of showing his various things. For example, the handicrafts made in kindergarten, the newly purchased toys, the newly built Lego, when he shows all kinds of wonderful displays, his eyes shine with confidence.
But as the child grows up, we become less willing to cooperate and less willing to understand the child's likes. Adults always think that self-confidence should come from more useful things, such as grades, instrument playing, etc., but this is not the case.
Confidence, the most likely to appear in the things we love, like an NBA fan, his most confident moment is not when he talks about work, when he shares basketball with his family who doesn't know how to play, when he talks about Kobe Bryant's 81-point dragon slaying night.
Moreover, self-confidence is a highly conductive force. Sometimes the confidence of one thing can give us the motivation to do other things, such as playing ultraman cards, which can make an introverted child dare to take the initiative to make new card companions and break the social insecurity.
So in the face of children, we should invite him to show his hobbies, such as how the lego he just built was completed, what this cartoon is about, and so on. And self-confidence will slowly sprout from these interests.
Giving children the opportunity to show is equivalent to giving self-confidence nourishment, allowing self-confidence to grow slowly, and helping children break through the difficulties of other things.
Finally, I would like to emphasize once again that children's self-confidence is contained in every small daily thing, from washing their hands to facing unfamiliar environments independently.
As parents, what we can do is to give our children the opportunity to do things independently, and see every little thing in their children's lives with an appreciative eye, so that their children's self-confidence will naturally sprout and no additional training is required.