How to Build Confidence in Kids Who Struggle

Learn how to build confidence in kids who struggle in school with learning and behavior challenges. Create confidence builders, not breakers.

How to Build Confidence in Kids Who Struggle in School

Change is difficult and can be overwhelming. What was “normal” in recent times is not so today. The current climate in education is faced with ongoing change.

At times we can shelter our kids from this change, but as we’ve all learned, it’s not always possible. Due to the global pandemic, schools across the nation look different this year. Many schools are offering in-person and teacher-delivered online learning.

Changing Climate in Education

As parents and educational professionals navigate the changing climate in education it can be confusing or even frightening, especially for children with learning or behavioral challenges.

Learning how to build confidence in kids has always been important and even more now! For parents of those children, balancing career, family, and other responsibilities becomes tricky. All are important and require a parent’s time and the monitoring of online and in-person learning.

It is natural to feel overwhelmed at times when life seems to spin out of control.

Routines Can Become Difficult

During these unprecedented times, routines become more difficult and stress increases when a child has behavioral challenges like anxiety, inattention, laziness, defiance, or a habit of blaming others. As a parent, when a lack of balance occurs, we begin to feel overwhelmed because we perceive that our resources are limited, or that we lack the skills necessary to manage the stressor.

Many kids feel additional stress as their academic workload increases, and they fall behind. Stress continues to build for kids because they fear an unfavorable outcome from parents and teachers. As behavioral problems begin to accumulate, parents begin to feel additional frustration, worry, and concern. Learning how to build confidence in kids will help them get through the stresses.

Positive Emotions are Essential

The response to stress is multifaceted and complex, but we know that positive emotions are essential to managing it. One thinks, behaves, and responds to a stressful situation by coping. Effective coping strategies help kids alleviate the adverse effects of stress and meet their demands in healthy ways. It is critical that children learn to view stress as a challenge and not a threat.

When kids see a specific situation as a threat, their initial response is either to fight or flee. This response often increases frustration, as it is a gut reaction that may have negative results. Children need to learn how to manage this initial response in a way that properly utilizes their personality and reflects their needs.

Efficacy, optimism, hope, and resiliency are all positive personality traits that influence the coping process. All should be taken into consideration. Without them, children learn to cope in unhealthy ways, pushing them further and further away from the best possible solution.

What’s in your child’s backpack – confidence builders or breakers? 

A backpack full of confident builders will provide kids with the empowerment tools they need to successfully navigate their way through life’s toughest challenges. Vikki Carrel’s newly released book Building Blocks is designed to help parents and educators support kids who struggle with ADHD, organizational skills, test anxiety, bullying, motivation, working memory, unhealthy labels, and low self-esteem. Learning is a step-by-step process. Take it one step at a time—one building block at a time.     

Building Blocks is now available on Amazon!

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