Self-esteem activities for children
I’ve just read an article written by Noah Alam. I find it very useful. Now I would like to share it with you. I think it may be helpful not only in our work but with our own children. This man is not only a specialist in psychology but he had been suffering from low self-esteem and low self-confidence in his childhood. So he understands needs of children with low self-esteem better. He was scared and frightened to talk to people and defend himself, was bullied at school, and when he grew up, he was very superficial, didn’t have any friends, he was extremely sensitive. For a very long time, he couldn’t make friends, have a girlfriend, or make his own decisions! Now he knows what we should do exactly in order to solve our self-esteem and self-confidence problems. So in this article he is going to give us what he has tried for himself and what will work for us. He shares with us the most efficient activities to build the self-esteem of children very quickly. There are many techniques we can use, but most of them are going to take a long time and are very demanding. Even worse, they were designed to work with adults. Kids can be easily influenced, and this can be taken advantage of, especially when it comes to self-esteem because if they have high self-esteem from such a young age, they are not going to experience psychological troubles like depression or anxiety when they grow up, in fact, they will feel much happier and ready to face life’s challenges. I find all his advices are very useful.
How to help a child have and build high self-esteem? The first thing is to have high self-esteem yourself. This is the most important part in his opinion for building and helping children increase and improve their self-esteems. We need to start with ourselves first and we need to increase our self-esteem. The second step is smiling at them. Children, especially girls, are very sensitive when it comes to body language, especially the one by influential people in their lives, their parents, grandparents, brothers and let’s not forget it, teachers. By preaching to our children about self-esteem and high morals while being aggressive with them, we are simply going to create passive aggressive kids. The more we smile at children, the more we help them and the more we are nice to them, the more they are going to love us and have strength and confidence in themselves, in other words, they are going to have high self-esteem. The third step is listening to them. Noah’s friend once told him that even though his parents were very rich and spoiled him, he felt miserable because he was lacking the most valuable gift they could give him: attention! And this is what we need to give our children, whether we are parents or teachers: attention. The fourth step is to be real with them. The author gives says that we should also be real with them when it comes to their goals. He asks his children to write down weekly, monthly and yearly goals. He is sure that goal setting will make children strive to improve themselves, it will wake them up from daydreaming and do what is necessary to change their lives for the better. Noah pays attention to raising self-esteem of preschools. He shares with us some of the tips we should apply in order to raise the self-esteem of preschoolers very healthy and quickly. The first tip is to make them feel they are valuable. How can we make preschoolers feel valuable? We need to give them tasks in which they can succeed at! This is all they need. The second tip is to give them unconditional love. We shouldn’t compare one to another, make them understand that you love them all and that you cherish them, not only that, but show them your love when they are talking to you by listening to them and giving them enough time whenever they need you. The next tip is to encourage them and praise them often. In general, genuine encouragements and praise are going to raise self-esteem while false ones and criticism are going to destroy it and lower it a lot. We should try to give them as much praise and hugs as possible, especially when they do something good. The first self-esteem activity for kids is drawing and coloring a superhero. This activity is not going to raise their self-esteem directly, it’s only going to raise their self-confidence and trust in you, and by raising these and giving them a reward, in the form of a smile or a feeling of acceptance, you are going to increase their self-confidence and thus their self-esteem on the long run. The second exercise for kids suggested by Noah is writing their positive traits. It’s going to give them an opportunity to express themselves and tell the world who they really are, if they don’t know what positive traits are, we may write them down and explain them, then simply ask them to write the ones they feel they have. The third self-esteem exercise children can do is choosing superpowers. This is one of the best self-esteem exercises kids can take part in, give them the following print file and ask them to select only five superpowers they would like to have. The fourth self-esteem exercise for kids is coloring their Coat of Arms. The most of these self-esteem activities for kids may sound like foolish and quite stupid, but they are very important for making them express themselves and be positive about their feelings and attitudes towards others. I liked that in this articles it was possible to download some self-esteem building worksheets. It has taken him more than seven years to build and improve, they are the things he uses daily with his clients and children to work on self-esteem issues and even improve self-confidence. I liked the article because it shows that self-esteem influence school performance. He also takes into account dealing with shyness and low self esteem. The author gives many useful in my work activities.