Studies have shown children of divorce are not as resilient as we once thought from the impact of divorce. One way children are impacted is their loss of self-confidence. This often results from the child’s belief they caused the divorce. The child falsely believes they did something wrong. Blogger Joe Elvin offers a solution to the parents of children suffering with a loss of self-confidence.
Thousands of children of all ages across the country enjoy participating in extracurricular activities.
It’s good to encourage your kids to find an extracurricular activity they enjoy. Whether they want to get involved with drama lessons, football or tap dancing classes. It’s absolutely brilliant for their confidence. Here are four ways an extracurricular activity can make your child a more confident person.
Extracurricular Activities are Fun!
Childhood is about having as much fun as possible. Many of the fondest childhood memories come from enjoying an outside of school activity. Many kids will continue to pursue these activities well into adulthood. Children who are happy and having fun are more likely to be confident in their decisions in all aspects of life.
It is important not to push your child to take part in an after school activity against their will. Your choice of activity should be based solely on what your child enjoys, not on what you think will help them in the future or what will help them fit in with other kids.
Being pushed into doing something is never fun and if they aren’t very good at it, it could actually be harmful to their overall confidence.
Making New Friends
Your child could find it easy to make some new best friends at an after school activity. After all, they’ll be surrounded by children with similar interests. A larger circle of friends is likely to help anyone be more confident.
The social dynamics at after school activities are different to the classroom. Children are less likely to be teased for excelling at a voluntary fun activity than for excelling in the classroom.
Learning New Skills
Learning new skills is a great way to improve a child’s confidence. A lot of activities (music, swimming, martial arts etc.) will have ranks or certificates to help show a child’s progress. This sense of achievement can be great for child’s sense of self-worth too.
Many dance or drama classes focus on working as a team to create a production. These clubs also encourage a child to boost their creativity and imagination.
Final Productions
It’s a real achievement for any child to be able to show off what they’ve learned in front of an audience. In fact, even some adults would find themselves too nervous to do it! Doing this successfully can do their confidence in social situations the world of good. It also gives kids something to drive them to improve and look forward to.
The key takeaway point for parents is children need to be enjoying any activity they are part of. Yes, sometimes they will be restless and need a bit of extra encouragement to go to their next class, but if they do lose long-term interest then let them find another activity they think they will enjoy more.
This should really help them develop their social skills and parents could soon find their child is confident enough to try a variety of new activities.
UK blogger and brand journalist Joe Elvin contributes this post on behalf of international kids dance school Stagecoach.
