Every day everyone of us have choices to make. Have you ever thought about how you feel about the choices that you are making? Do you feel confident in those choices? Our children go through the same questions and the confidence they show every day in making those choices will be tested.
There will be times when the decisions they have to make will be more important than just what they are wearing or what they will eat. They will be making choices about who their friends are, how hard to work in school, if they will smoke, drink or do drugs. They will have tough choices to make about standing up for what is right or just ignoring what is happening right in front of them.
Our children need to know that we are there to help them and that we want to know what is going on in their life. But we should not assume that they want us to jump in and rescue them from every situation or solve all of their problems. In fact doing so will not teach the problem solving skills or give them the confidence to make the harder choices later in life.
Build Confidence in Choices
There are things that we can do though to help build the confidence our child has. Here is one suggestion. Be aware of the type of self talk going on with your child. Are they putting themselves down, suggesting to themselves that they are not good at anything, or not good at something or not able to make friends.
Help your child change the voice that they hear on the inside with practicing positive statements and seeing themselves solve problems that they now might believe to be unsolvable. Role playing with them and letting them know that you understand the anxiety that they may be feeling will go a long way as they begin to believe the more positive statements.
