How Parents Can Empower Their Child’s Confidence Through Caring for Their Health

Parents often face a dilemma as their children grow up: when is it time to stop coddling them and let them become more independent? Particularly when it comes to important decisions around topics like their health, the team behind the nutritional supplement TruHeight says that confidence is vital for children in terms of both their personal and physical growth.

Helping your children build confidence

One of the main steps parents should take to help their children build confidence is to help them learn how to create and achieve goals. This is the parents’ opportunity to work with their children and guide them through challenges without imposing on them. 

“Take the time to understand what your child wants to achieve and how you can help them achieve it,” the TruHeight team explains. “This will help them establish reachable goals you can guide them to accomplish.

Goals are essential to children’s confidence because feeling accomplished and achieving goals is a clear path to developing self-worth. As such, the role of the parent is to work with their children to help them learn how to set healthy, attainable goals. One great way to do this is through modeling. “If your children see you setting and achieving your goals, they will be inspired to do the same in their lives,” the TruHeight team says.

Understanding the power of choice for your children

It is crucial that parents introduce the concept of choice to their children at a certain age. Although there are some things that parents obviously can’t let their children choose for themselves — such as having to take essential, life-saving medicine — in other cases, it’s better to leave other decisions up to their discretion and let them learn and grow from their mistakes. 

“Of course, you can’t let your child make decisions that will cause them irreparable harm,” the team at TruHeight explains. “However, begin to introduce choice in small ways, like what they pack for their school lunch or the flavor of their vitamins, before allowing them to make more significant choices as they grow up.”

The role of any parent is to inform and guide their child as they grow older, not to force them. Provide them with the options they have and the information they need to make a reasonable decision, and let them use it to make their own choice. Sometimes, they will make the wrong choice, but — just as they will in their adult life — they must be able to learn from the consequences of their choice.

Even so, parents must still support their children when they make the wrong choices. “Be prepared for your kids to make mistakes, just as you did when you were young and still occasionally do as an adult,” asserts the team at TruHeight. “However, be sure to use failure as a learning opportunity rather than a punishment. Don’t linger on what they did wrong, but calmly describe what they could have done differently and reassure them that they will have more opportunities to improve in the future.”

Praising children can help them grow

As parents learn different ways to help build their children’s confidence, they must also take care to understand how the ways they praise their children can directly affect their confidence. This is one reason why it’s crucial to praise them for making independent decisions. 

“If your child decides to eat something healthy for lunch without your insistence, commend them for their decision,” the team at TruHeight says. “Making them feel gratified and rewarded for making the right choices about their health will encourage them to continue making those decisions.”

When it comes to praise, one approach that has proven effective is focusing less on results and more on the qualities that will allow them to achieve their goals, such as effort or bravery. This way, even if a child doesn’t accomplish their goal, the parent can still applaud them for trying their hardest and praise them for their effort. Doing so will encourage children to recover quickly from failure and continue trying until they succeed.

Identifying and highlighting children’s strengths

In addition to praise, parents can help their children build confidence by working with them to identify their core strengths. People naturally tend to put more weight on negative criticism than positive criticism, and children are no exception to this standard. No one can be perfect at everything, but everyone can become great at something. Parents should remind their children of the things they excel in and encourage them to focus their efforts on continued growth using those strengths.

When they learn how to appreciate the areas in which they are strongest, children will become more passionate and confident with their strengths, rather than resent their weaknesses. Understanding their strengths also allows children to reflect on what made them strong in those areas so they can overcome challenges in areas where they are weaker, then strive to improve upon them.

“Without this confidence being taught to them while they are still young, children will not be able to make important decisions regarding their health when they grow up,” the team at TruHeight asserts. “If you let them begin to take responsibility for aspects of their health while you are still there to help guide them, they will be much more comfortable and informed to make these decisions on their own when they are adults.”