Christine's Corner: Changing the Narrative for our Children

It seems that when children are young, they have an over abundance of confidence. They are confident in what they wear as they choose their mis-matched outfits. They are confident in their values as they stick up for themselves and others. They are confident when they tell us they can do it all by themselves.

But as they grow and mature, sometimes our children begin to loose their confidence. As parents and caregivers, we may become concerned with our child/children's lack of confidence and not know how to help. In an article 4 Signs Your Kid Is Losing Confidence, the author, Leah Jennings, describes warning signs that can clue us in to whether or not our children are struggling with confidence and in a way, their identity.

If you feel like this is your child, then maybe changing your narrative, and ultimately their narrative, from the negative to the positive is the key. Weed out those negative thoughts that come to their mind about who they are and plant positive images of the true person God has made them to be. In the article 8 Confidence-Building Truths Every Kid Should Hear From Their Parents, the author refers to different situations in her child's life where she began to look outside of herself and realize that the world did not revolve around the perfect and brilliant child that she was. And this was crushing and created a lack in self confidence in the child. But it was through these 8 Confidence-Building truths that the author describes that helped her begin the process of rebuilding her child's confidence, one step at a time.

At one time or another, we have all felt a lack of confidence in ourselves, and so it is only natural for our children to experience that as well. But it is our job to create a safe space for them to wrestle with these feelings, explore their situations, and eventually come to a place where they can once again live into the truth that they are remarkable human beings. If we help our children feel confident, then they will grow up to be courageous adults, making a difference in this world.

(A great devotional book to help your older elementary build confidence that will last is

Press Play by Carlos Whittaker.)