Helping build children’s confidence
In order for young children to develop their own self belief practitioners must create an environment that will help children achieve this.
When working closely with children you may identify children who have lack confidence, you may be automatically drawn to children who are quiet and shy but sometimes the children who are displaying challenging behaviour can also have underlying confidence issues. Children who display challenging behaviour can lack self worth and it vital that early year’s practitioner don’t dismiss this.
As we all know strong attachments play a fundamental part is securing those early foundations on which confidence is built. Therefore in early years setting it is important that the relationship between the child and their key person is strong and effective.
How can early year’s practitioners build children’s confidence?
A key element is to provide an environment in which children feel safe and secure. Children do not like to be pushed into situations that are out of their comfort zone. If children feel pressurized into doing something they don’t want to this can have a detrimental effect on their confidence.
A strong and effective relationship can boost children’s confidence, for some children attachments can be difficult to build this can be due to circumstances in the child’s family life. However some children need these close relationships to help them feel safe and secure.
Observe children in their play and watch how they react to certain things. Children display many types of behaviour for various reasons. Children may display a regressive form of behaviour, this is normal as children need to go through this process in order to show that they are trying to do something and finally they will show a can do attitude.
It is important for early year’s practitioners to support children in this area of learning, there is always temptation to complete a task for a child, but this is doing the child no favours. If you see a child is ready to try something new or re-trying let them take the lead. An adults role in helping build children’s confidence is to sit with them and help them deal with the frustrations, talk to them and portray your confidence in them.
Being able to make mistakes is a huge learning curve for children, mistakes can be as simple as not being about to fit shapes into a shape sorter or falling off a balancing beam. When children master these skills without adult input it is then when children start to build their confidence.
Look at how you are rewarding children, as many practitioners think a sticker is the magical answers to rewarding children, this can however have adverse reactions and undermine children’s confidence. Children are very clever in being able to work out that if they complete a given task they will get a sticker but will this child complete a task off their own back in the future?
Building children’s confidence at an early age is crucial. As there is so much emphasis on children’s Personal, Social and Emotional development within the EYFS it is important that practitioners create a positive learning evvironment for all children to flourish in.