Becoming a parent inspires many different emotions. Amid all the love and joy, it's also natural to feel fearful for your kids. Worrying is normal, but if you let that worry overwhelm you, you can transfer it to them. This can affect their confidence and turn them into fearful kids and, eventually, fearful adults. Bringing up children to be confident can feeling like walking a tightrope, but there are things you can do to increase their resilience while also making sure that they feel supported.
It's important to try to avoid conveying your own worries and fears to your children. As a parent, it can feel almost impossibly hard to let your kids out of your sight. At the same time, your job is to turn them into independent people. When your child wants to do something and you feel anxiety about it, try to explore whether the anxiety is founded.
It's normal if you don't want your nine-year-old to spend the night alone at home, but what about staying overnight at a friend's house when you know and like the friend and the parents? Teaching yourself to understand the difference between your own understandable but possibly unfounded fears and genuine concerns that you should pay attention to can help avoid making your child anxious even when you are.
Certain experiences that kids will have are inherently frightening to some degree, including things like visiting the dentist or doctor. No one particularly likes having their teeth poked and prodded or getting shots. The sounds and smells of medical and dental environments can be unsettling even for adults. These types of things are frightening but ultimately are also safe. They can be great opportunities to teach them about the difference between scary but safe and things they should be afraid of.
The key with kids is to both acknowledge their fears and try to be matter of fact about them. While parents routinely take their children to a pediatrician, it's also helpful to choose a dentist who is experienced with children and who can talk them through the process. You can start by joining them during the examination, but over time, your child may start to feel comfortable going into the appointment on their own while you sit in the waiting room. This gives them the opportunity to do something that is a little bit scary while knowing that you're nearby.
The cost of dental care may cause you to delay visits to the dentist as long as possible, especially since kids will lose their baby teeth, but oral hygiene is important from early on. One option for paying for not just your children's dental care but your own is Cherry Payment Plans. These allow you to get treated now and split up your payments across monthly installments. You can ask your practice for an application link or find the application online. Applying is fast and won't affect your credit score. Taking advantage of these types of payment plans to get your kids started at the dentist when they're toddlers helps make these visits less intimidating.
It often feels easier to keep doing things for your child than teaching them how to do it. You may not love making their lunch every day before school or doing their laundry, but you might also dread the process of showing them what to do. However, these kinds of low stakes chores are a perfect environment for helping build confidence and independence. You can choose age-appropriate experiences and scale up the complexity of tasks you turn over to them as they get older.
Kids should get praise for difficult accomplishments, but they should also be taught that not succeeding is okay. Don't get upset when they make a mistake or try something and fail. Teach them that mistakes and failures are normal during the course of life.
In addition, you can praise them for persevering at something challenging. You should model this for them in your own life, demonstrating by responding with equanimity when you make mistakes as well. Show your kids that you can be bad at something and still enjoy it, whether that's playing a game, taking on a hobby or trying to learn something new.
This goes counter to what many parents feel is exactly what they should be doing for their children, but if you remove every obstacle in their way, they won't learn how to do it themselves. As with creating opportunities for independence, this should be age appropriate. Your ten-year-old can negotiate some types of conflict with a sibling or friend; your five-year-old probably can't. By providing some support but not charging in to fix things at the slightest hint of trouble, your child can build confidence as they solve problems on their own.
