Building children's courage and fostering their decision-making skills are essential aspects of their development. Parents often find themselves navigating the challenges of instilling courage and helping their children make wise choices.
To address these concerns, the webinar "Raise Resilient Children with 5Cs" was held as part of the Singapore Parenting Festivals 2023. Alvina Chin, a Family Life Educator at Mums For Life, shared her expertise and insights on building children's courage and decision-making abilities. Throughout the webinar, she provided practical guidance and answered questions raised by parents, offering valuable strategies for correcting children and promoting their growth.
How to Build Up Courage in Your Child
How to support a child to have courage in public speaking?
A helpful first step is to find out from your child what public speaking is a challenge to him/her. Then, you will have a better idea about the kind of support they need from you. It may involve emotional support, addressing big issues like failure, normalizing mistake-making, providing opportunities to develop the necessary skills to build confidence (e.g. ordering food at a restaurant, asking for items at a supermarket), practicing together. It is also important to notice their small steps forward and affirm their efforts.
My boy hardly speaks up when the teacher asks him to show and tell in front of the class, but he is very talkative after class. I am not sure if he does not have the courage to speak or refuse to speak in front of the class, like to hear some comments or advice.
If you're not sure of the reason, ask your son. For all you know, he may simply not be interested in Show and Tell. If he is afraid to speak in front of the class, find out why so. Then, you will have a better idea about the kind of support they need from you. It may involve emotional support, addressing big issues like failure, normalizing mistake-making, providing opportunities to develop the necessary skills to build confidence (e.g. ordering food at a restaurant, asking for items at a supermarket), practicing together. It is also important to notice their small steps forward and affirm their efforts.
My girl is extremely afraid of all pets and even flies or moths to the point it is over ridiculous. What can I do to build her courage?
It is quite common for young children to be wary or nervous around animals, and they tend to grow out of it or learn how to manage it better as they get older. It becomes more concerning if their fear of animals seriously affects their day-to-day activities such as going to the playground for example. As a starting point, it would be helpful to find out what about the experience frightens her so you may understand what the specific issue is. Some children may benefit from understanding a bit more about animals before encountering them physically. Incremental exposure and opportunities for the child to experiment with her comfort levels will also be helpful. Remember to acknowledge any brave efforts to encourage her.
My son is afraid of slides for no reason. I tried to reassure that everything will be fine if he just tries to go down the slide with me, as I demonstrated to him before. But he refuses. He was fine before. I have validated and acknowledged his feelings. What else can I do?
Well done on trying to reassure your son by showing him that the slide is safe. Did you slide down together with him? For children, the slide may seem physically challenging as it involves height and speed. It may not be that your son has no reason for his fear but that he is unable to express what frightens him or he may feel embarrassed to admit it. Whatever the case, continue to provide him with as many opportunities to enjoy the other structures in the playground while he builds his courage and confidence to attempt the slide when he is ready.
Where do we find sources of courage? If parents need help, who can we look for? Do Mums for Life/Dads for Life have such courses to help parents?
Do visit the website at fathers.com.sg to find out more about programmes and how they may benefit you in your parenting journey.
How to Deal with Bullying
In scenarios when a child is bullied, how can we as parents foster courage in them?
Bullying is a matter that should always be taken seriously. Our children's safety remains a priority so it is vital that parents know the details and extent of the bullying. As a parent, we need to provide the emotional support our children require in such situations and when appropriate, involve them in discussions on how to handle the problem. By involving our children, we nurture a sense of control and create opportunities to develop their problem-solving skills.
My kid (Primary 1) has a secret bully. She’s solving it and doesn’t seem to be affected. Should I talk to her about it?
It's great that your P1 daughter seems to be handling it well. If the school is aware of the situation, you may get an update from the teacher. When similar situations are presented in stories or a children's TV programme, you may use the opportunity to talk about it and hear her thoughts. Regardless, you should maintain regular casual conversations with your daughter about school and friends.
How to Teach Children Independence and Decision Making
How old should we let the child make their own decision?
Decision-making is a crucial life skill. Whenever our children are presented with choices, they are learning to make decisions such as which toys to play with, who to make friends with, or what food items to buy from the school canteen. Know your child - this requires providing them with many opportunities to make decisions early on; that includes toddlers. Start with simple ones. Model your decision-making process. For certain situations, you may want to assess the risks and benefits resulting from the decision to be made (both positive and negative outcomes), and decide on the level of parental involvement necessary. [Do take note that safety remains a priority and situations that hold potentially tragic consequences should be avoided.] Developmentally, it is important that we also recognise that the part of the brain (prefrontal cortex) that controls reasoning continues to develop well into early adulthood. Therefore, throughout childhood and adolescence, our children will benefit from our guidance and support.
For the past two years, I used to plan a weekly sport for my eight-year-old son to build his resilience, discipline and fitness, such as cycling, tennis and rollerblading. He was very receptive back then, but now he refuses to be trained for any sport. How can I encourage him to do more outdoor activities? In a way, I’m also trying to reduce his screen time limit as well.
As our children grow, their desire for some control and independence naturally increases. It is worthwhile to find out which sport or outdoor activities your son is actually interested in. Children also benefit from downtime where they get to choose how they would like to unwind at the end of the week. Nurturing a sense of control in our children helps them to develop their decision-making and problem-solving skills.
How Parents Should Provide Support
When do we know it's time for us parents to step in to help our kids? What are the tell tale signs? I don't want my child to feel that I'm letting them face it all by themselves.
When we empower our children to solve problems and face challenges, we remain available. If you are concerned that your child may feel alone in their struggles, assure them that while you have confidence in their abilities, you are ready to help whenever they need your support. You may also want to follow up on a specific matter to show interest in their lives and have a sense of how things are going.
If the kid’s decision is bad, do we just let them fail for them to learn the lesson themselves? What if they don’t learn and repeat the same mistake?
Building courage often involves dealing with fear, uncertainty and risk of failure. In raising our children to be competent and resilient adults, they will need a lot of practice making choices, and learning from the natural consequences of poor decisions. In guiding our children, based on how well we know our children, we may assess the risks and benefits resulting from the decision to be made (both positive and negative outcomes), and decide the level of parental involvement necessary. [Do take note that safety remains a priority and situations that hold potentially tragic consequences should be avoided.]
How to correct a child emotionally?
You may benefit from our MUMs for Life's 'Calm over Chaos' workshop series that looks into the emotional aspect of motherhood.
Will sharing personal experiences cause our children to pinpoint our weaknesses and prey on them?
Wanting to present our best selves to our children is normal. However, it is not sustainable. Making mistakes and experiencing failure should not be perceived as weaknesses. It is a natural part of life. When we normalize mistake-making, we diminish the significance of failure and allow ourselves to reframe our experiences as opportunities to learn and grow. In sharing our personal stories (we can be selective about the details), we are modelling our courage, resilience and growth. Inviting our children to these parts of our lives builds trust within the parent-child relationship and creates openness for our children to feel safe being vulnerable with us as well. Yes, this may mean that they point out our weaknesses, but it also gives us room to address theirs.
How much validation should we do? Will kids be over-reliant on seeking validation next time that they become less independent (i.e they always have to talk about their feelings with someone instead of trying to get over it themselves).
Validating our children's emotions helps them to better understand their feelings and how to work through them. By validating their emotions, we are modeling it for them so they may access it for themselves next time as they practice self-regulation. Healthy emotional regulation involves experiencing the emotions as it happens and effectively managing it.
About the Expert:
Alvina Chin is a compassionate and experienced Family Life Educator at Mums for Life who is dedicated to helping families thrive.