At the age of seven, it is important to instill social confidence in your child. How do you teach a 7-year-old to be more confident though?
Social confidence can be generated through providing opportunities for your 7-year-old to experience social situations, allowing your 7-year-old to make decisions for themselves, and celebrating the effort that they put into something rather than striving for perfection.
It’s difficult to express the importance of being able to properly express yourself to others to a 7-year-old. But the earlier that skill is developed the better off your child will be.
So, here are some ways that you can use to bolster your child’s confidence and push them out of their shy exterior.
Provide Opportunities For Growth
I was home-schooled until I was 7 years old. The reason my parents placed me in the public school system was to provide more opportunities to interact with and socialize with kids my age.
This especially important for me as I had a speech impediment that wasn’t going away from the interactions I had with my family.
The result was speech therapy and my entry to the public school system. My parents knew what they were doing here. I needed the opportunities which
Public school is not the only way to provide this for your children if that doesn’t work for your children than try some other program that will boost their interactions and play with children of there age.
Whether that be cub scouts, a church program, extracurricular activities, or sports the more chances your 7-year-old has to interact the more your 7-year-old will interact.
When providing these opportunities it is important to allow your 7-year-old to experience the social
If they are too reliant on you for their social connections they are not much better than they were without socializing. They need to make connections on their own.
Help Your 7-Year-Old Set goals
One of best ways for you to help build your child’s confidence is to help them build goals. Maybe this starts off by you selecting goals for them, but start to let your 7-year-old have more and more input as you continue this planning process with them.
If your child starts to treat these goals as something that they need to achieve you’ll see progress in them, but if they are also selecting the goals then they will learn to respect the goals that they have set for themselves.
If a child is able to be accountable to themselves then they will be able to progress at a much faster rate as they will only need themselves to want to continue forward.
When setting goals it is important that you emphasize that reaching the goal is not as important as putting in an effort to reach the goal. You can emphasize the long-term reaching of a goal with an incentive of some kind.
Maybe they get to go out to eat or get extra time on electronic devices but emphasizing the importance of trying to reach a goal is something you’ll need to provide child through your actions.
This can be as simple as words of affirmation to your child’s efforts:
“I like how hard you are working towards your goal.”
“Good job so far! Keep on going.”
Don’t diminish the reward of success, but be a constant element of support towards reaching that goal.
Finally, don’t push for perfection. If a goal wasn’t reached than try to figure out what went wrong this time. See if maybe the goal was too much. Ask your child how they feel about their goal and how close they were to it.
Get their input, but make sure they understand that failure is okay. Getting up and trying again is just as important as reaching their end goal. Eventually, they’ll get there they just have to keep trying.
Fantasize About the Future
Along with setting goals, it is important to allow your children to dream about the future. For 7-year-olds, they are–whether they are just entering school or have been in school for about a year now.
Because of that, they going to start to be influenced by their peers and teachers. Being able to provide a forward perspective to their lives helps them see a purpose for working hard.
When talking about the future it is okay to let your children set unrealistic goals. They will grow more realistic as they grow older but the important part of this process is the act of looking to the future.
Looking to the future gives children a purpose. Having purpose adds meaning to life.
Looking to the future gives children a purpose.
Having purpose adds meaning to life.
With established goals and visions of the future, your 7-year-old will start to see the benefits of the activities that they participate in. You can further this process by demonstrating how things that they are doing, or can be doing will be helpful with them along their goals.
I remember talking to my English teacher in high school.
She had convinced her son, whose future fantasy was to become a Jedi, that a Jedi had to be physically fit to wield their lightsabers. She said he still complained after that would actually eat his vegetables.
You can see how this can be applied to other scenarios so personalize it to your kid. Maybe they aren’t interacting with their peers by having a goal of being a doctor you can explain how important it is to talk with your patients.
By having a purpose you can better guide your 7-year-old into doing what they will need later in their lives.
Be a Guide (Not a Guard)
We all want to protect our kids, but the more that you protect them the less able they will be able to protect themselves. So you’ll have to let your kids take care of themselves. Take that first step by stepping away.
The next time your kid has a problem instead of providing an answer for them tell them that its “something to google” or have a discussion about the question rather than quickly answering the question right off the bat.
By instilling this independence in your child at an early age they be more capable of facing problems without your help later in their lives. This is what they need. We all want to be there for our kids but the reality is we won’t always be there.
The more they can do on their own the better off they’ll be when facing these situations, and the more practice they have at that the more prepared they will be to head out on their own.
Allow Them to do Things by Themselves
I’m one of those people that prefers to be in control. If I see someone doing something wrong I have to fight the urge to just take over for them. If you are like me know that you can’t do this for your 7-year-old.
It is necessary for your 7-year-old to develop on their own in a lot of ways. While it is sometimes necessary for you to intervene, and it is never bad to help when your child asks for it sometimes it is best to just their minds work.
Seven-year-olds can be incredibly imaginative and creative. The influence of others, be that their parent’s or their peers can lead to a dampening of that creativity and expression.
Furthermore, the activities that a child does on their own can often have more meaning to them than group activities. This can be especially significant to children that are more introverted than they are extroverted.
By spending time by themselves working on something you can see what interests them, as well as where they may go when they are facing problems.
My mother could tell I was stressed when I just wanted to read books and get away from the world. This wasn’t a bad thing, it was just a way for me to pass the time without stressing my 7-year-old brain out.
Your 7-year-old may act similarly. See that they are doing something constructive, but otherwise okay to sometimes leave them alone if they want to be.
Don’t be Afraid to Face Feelings
Emotions lead to the greatest and most conflict-filled times of our lives. They can often lead to actions that would be other incomprehensible or just against our personalities in a normal circumstance.
Emotions are at the heart of the problems of adults not just children, but the earlier one learns to deal with them the better off they will be for the rest of their lives.
Which is why you as a parent can’t be afraid to face feelings.
Whether those feelings are your own or your child’s it doesn’t matter, by facing these emotions your child will have an example to look to in the future.
So talk through what is going on in your head and how you are able to look at the situation logically despite all the emotions flying through your head.
By providing this for your child they’ll be better set to deal with these issues themselves. That’s the goal. Keep providing ways for your child to be able to provide for themselves that way they’ll only need you when they encounter a situation that they aren’t sure how to deal with.
Often in those situations, it can help to have a second person thinking about the situation.
Which is another benefit of being willing to face feelings
Demonstrating to your child that it is okay to get an outsider’s perspective on an issue provides an example of humility that they can use to seek help when they are facing an issue that is too big for them to handle.
As parents, we often don’t want to show weakness to our kids but by never showing the human side of ourselves to our children we force them to alienate their perspectives of us. Which results in the golden views people sometimes have of their parents.
This can be difficult for a child though as they’ll want to be like their parents but see them as faultless people. Don’t do this show them you’re human, that you’re just like them.
Build confidence in your child by allowing them to recognize who they are. Inhibiting this recognition is negative so allow them to realize that they are like you and they can start figuring out that the world is full of people just like them.
Show Your Love
When sharing your emotions make sure that they aren’t all negative show the positive side of things too. In the manner, show how much you love them.
We all love our children but the way that we show that love can be different, in some ways our children may not understand that. Which can lead to frustration and a lack of feeling
Avoid this by being open about your love and the way that you love. Children need to see you express your care for them, but this shouldn’t be uncomfortable for you so find a middle ground that shows how much you care for them while also making it natural and earnest.
I have an uncle that will text me explaining openly that he cares for me. I found this really weird at first as it seemed to by an awkwardly forward way of showing his affections, but as I thought about it in my relationships I was being incredibly reserved in sharing my appreciation of others.
It is really difficult to find the right time to praise someone but it always feels good to be praised. There is an amazing warmth in your chest when you hear those words of respect coming from another.
So share that experience with your children. Admit when your proud and make sure they can recognize the care that you hold specifically for them.
Be a Model of Confidence
If there is one overarching concept that you can use to provide for each of these suggestions it is that you can and should model the behavior you want your children to have.
If they need to be more social, then you need to be more social.
It is hard to break the characters that we have created for ourselves. It becomes harder and harder to do that as we grow older. So for the sake of your children be the example that they need to see to grow into the socially confident people they can be.
Parenting takes a lot of effort but it is often the simple actions that you do every day that will be the most influential on your kids. In the same way that kids will use the words that you do they will use the actions that you do.
Watch what you are doing the example that you provide is a powerful one to your children.
I remember that on one Th
It was something that each of us noticed and had become more of a habit for him than anything else. But my brother saw it as an act of love, and that is also what it was.
My Father reflecting on it admitted that he couldn’t remember the last time he had decided to do that. He didn’t mean he hadn’t done it in a while just that he hadn’t consciously put the effort into kissing my mom.
It was commonplace for him to do, but for my brother it was important. Simple actions, in the eyes of your 7-year-old, can have big consequences.
So be aware of your actions, and be aware that there is someone watching you. They’ll have their own struggle to deal with in life but having a strong foundation at 7-years old and a great example to look back on, will be a solid shove on their journey of life.
Related Questions
How to help a shy 7-year-old socialize? Helping a shy child socialize requires that you spend time helping that child develop their social skills.
This can be done by having a conversation with them at home, or by having people over at your house to show how others socialize. You’ll want to have them listen to other’s conversation at the same time that you are listening to their conversation.
How shy is “too shy” in 7-year-olds? Since 7-year-olds have entered school it is easiest to test their shyness in that environment. if they are unwilling to go to school, or they are struggling to make friends at
You’ll want to try to emphasize socializing and figure out why your child doesn’t like socializing. Hopefully, in your conversation, you can find what is inhibiting there socialization.
