The teenage years are some of the most emotionally-loaded stages of our lives, and it's your responsibility to make sure that your own teenage child gets through it unscathed. The more recent generations of teenagers have become more independent and seem to be growing up faster than previous generations, so that means you have to take extra care in guiding them down the right path.
Society is riddled with so many problems these days, that it's difficult to be a confident, happy teenager. Many teens these days suffer from low self esteem, and this can affect many aspects of their lives. As a parent, it's your responsibility to do what you can to help them become more confident and sure of themselves. Here are a few things you can do in order to help your teen build self confidence.
1. Listen to them. Helping your child build self-confidence starts with knowing what's going on with them. Encourage them to open up to you, and when they do, listen to what they have to say. Too many parents readily dismiss their teenagers' problems as childish, immature, or shallow, and that destroys their self esteem and makes them feel resentful toward you because you're making them seem trivial. Take what they say seriously, and pay careful attention to their feelings.
2. Treat them with respect. Even though you're the parent, you should also learn to respect your teen's opinions and suggestions when it comes to family matters. They're mature enough to offer up their own recommendations during family decision-making, so allow them to speak up and share their thoughts. This gives teens' self esteem a nice, healthy boost and helps build self-confidence. It shows them that you actually care about their thoughts and feelings and want to give them some control over their lives instead of nagging them to do things.
3. Teach them the value of walking away. Many teenagers these days tend to confront mean people head on, without realizing that sometimes this just tends to make things worse. This is not to say that you should teach your teen to be a quitter - that's ultimately detrimental to your efforts to help them build self-confidence. What this piece of advice means is that that you should teach them how to pick their fights. Sometimes just walking away from a volatile situation will help the other party cool down, and hopefully be more open to discuss a compromise later on.
4. Avoid praising them too much. It's always good to praise your teen for his or her achievements, but overdoing it will do nothing to keep their self esteem at the right levels. Praising your kid for nothing will only puff up their egos and make them arrogant, to the point that they won't really bother putting in much effort into doing their best because they know you'll praise them even if they didn't. To build self-confidence in your teen, you should provide them with a good balance of praise and criticism.
5. Learn to appreciate the things that they like. Sometimes parents make the mistake of criticizing what their children are passionate about. There have been parents who discouraged their sons from getting involved in musical theater, or have prevented their daughters from taking up sports like soccer or basketball just because they don't like those hobbies or feel that it makes the child (or them, the parents) look bad. What you need to understand is that if you want to build self-confidence in your teen, you have to support their passions. Don't force them to quit a hobby just because you don't like it yourself, and don't force them to take up something that they're not interested in!
As your teenager transitions from child to adult, you should always show them that you're there to support them and help them build confidence. With your help, they'll become promising young adults in the future, regardless of how bleak they think the future may be.
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