Sensible and smart parenting ways can help build better confidence in little ones. Not all children have the same traits and most times, parents have to deal with different characters even among their own children. If your child seems to lack confidence or seems too shy, this piece is for you.
1. Criticising never works
Your child needs to know that you can be depended upon for support and understanding when she’s feeling insecure, so criticising her will not help at all. Don’t label her either, for it will not help if you keep declaring to others that she’s shy.
2. Encourage happiness
There must be something that your shy toddler likes to do. Be it a certain kind of game, or dance you do together at home, or even colouring, scribbling or drawing. Try involving her in an enrichment program that she enjoys. That way, she’ll meet other children with similar interests and she may be able to forget or ignore her own shyness and focus on the activity instead.
3. Your child hs a right to make mistakes
There is a big difference between rudeness and shyness and since you already know your kid is shy, you do not need to keep apologising if she does not respond when she is spoken to. Constant apologising and making excuses for her behavior only serves to degrade her and focus everyone’s attention on her shyness, which does little to help her overcome it.
4. Don’t rush to correct
With a little tact and lots of encouragement from you, your child may be coaxed out of her shell. Try to discover what’s making her feel shy and from there, you may, with your innate maternal instinct, help her work it out.
5. Keep it interesting
Tell her a story, either a true one or a made-up one, of a time in your life when you too lived with extreme feelings of shyness. Create if you must, examples of situations much like what she’s experiencing now. Work your story up to how you overcame your shyness and how everything changed for the better for you. This will reassure her that she’s not that abnormal and that this shyness can be overcome.
6. Be a role model
If you’re an exceptionally shy person yourself, you’ll have to work on it for you are your child’s greatest role model! Try your best to overcome this tendency to be super-shy, if not for yourself, then for your kid who’s watching and learning from you. As much as you can, do model confident, outgoing behaviour for your child to follow.
7. Ease her worries
The last thing a shy kid need is a whole lot of attention on her. So, start by dressing her in a way that she will blend right in instead of standing out among a group of friends. This way, she will feel more at ease to participate in play and other activities.
