5 Confidence Boosting Activities to Do With Your Daughter

Self-esteem and confidence develops in children at a very young age. Parents and guardians play a critical role in building up their confidence and teaching them about positive language. Often, in order to help build their confidence, parents revert to encouraging compliments like ‘good job’ and ‘you did great!’ and even though these are important words of encouragement, they don't always sink in. In addition to the great work that you’re probably already doing with your kids, try out one of these five confidence boosting activities together.

1. Self-Reflecting With Your Daughter 

For the following activity you will need four pieces of paper and pencils or pens. Label two of the pages with the word ‘Me’, and label the other ones with ‘Parent’ or ‘Daughter’. You will each get one paper that says ‘Me’ and one paper that is not representative of yourself (i.e. daughter gets the ‘Parent’ paper and you get the ‘Daughter’ paper). You will then each write positive things about yourselves on the paper that says ‘Me’ and positive things about the other person on the other paper. At the end of this activity you will exchange the papers that you made for each other. 

This activity is beneficial for your child’s confidence and self-esteem as you are 

requiring them to look within themselves and create a list of aspects that they love about themselves. Upon swapping papers they will also receive an additional list with traits that they may not have been aware they possessed or that they identified as being 

positive. This activity is also really important in terms of your child’s development as it is an activity done in unison, and it is a positive time that you are spending together. You are also leading by example by working on the same task and working on your confidence. If a child is able to see that the parent is exuding confidence they will want to be like their parents and work on listing positive traits. 

2. Getting Manicures With Your Daughter

Getting a manicure is a simple task that allows you to bond and raise confidence in your child. A manicure experience allows you to enjoy each other's company and chat without any distractions. It is a great time to get to know your child and talk about their interests or insecurities since children are changing all the time. Getting a manicure is also a great way to destress. It may seem a little premature to worry about stress with your child, but it’s never too early to start teaching them about self-care and relaxation. This is especially important if your child is the type to be enrolled in many extracurriculars and is building up a habit of always being busy. Keep in mind that this activity is for all the dads out there too who also deserve a little pampering! 

In regards to being a confidence boost, manicures are a way of self expression. You get to choose the colors that you want, designs, length, and shape of nails. The amount of choices allows you to customize your nails as you wish, showing people a sense of your style and personality. The same goes for the child. Giving children choice and trust in open-ended decisions such as what they want to do with their nails, also shows them that you believe in their ability to make good choices. Encourage them to get whatever they want so that they know that you support their choices and their style. 

Expressing yourself through nail design as one may through the clothes you wear, leads to increased confidence. The manicured nails will not only make you feel more confident through compliments from others, but your child as well. The manicure will also serve as a reminder to them every time they look down at their hands that they are beautiful, and of the time that they spent together with you at the salon. 

3. Collecting Accomplishments

This is a great activity that you can customize and include the rest of the family in, if you’d like. For the activity you will need paper and pencils or pens, as well as a jar or box. The idea behind it is that you will each write out accomplishments big or small on pieces of paper. 

For this activity there are a couple of ways to feel proud of one's accomplishments: 

The first is to save this activity and use it as a New Year’s Eve activity to look on the past year and all of the things you have accomplished. For this method you pull out an accomplishment from the jar, read it out loud, and cheer after each one so that each applishment is celebrated. From all of the pieces of paper you can start a small chart with each person’s top three accomplishments. This can be reviewed year to year so that each year your child will have a saved list of some of their greatest achievements to look back on. 

The second way of doing this activity is by setting up the jar at the beginning of the year and making it a habit to write each accomplishment as it happens throughout the year. By the end of the year the jar should be full and you’ll have lots to share, reflect on, and be proud of. The point of this jar is to really focus on the big and small accomplishments. This can be anywhere from saving a snail on the street, to getting a perfect report card from school. 

The final way of doing this is to follow a similar format to that of the second option and set up the jar at the beginning of the year and contribute accomplishments as they happen. The difference is instead of only reading them out at the end of the year, you may choose to read your accomplishments once a month, quarterly, or even save it for whenever one of you is feeling down and needs a pick me up! This method will help serve as a reminder of all of the things one is capable of during times when you need a bit of a confidence boost.

4. Dancing Around With Your Daughter 

Dance is a great way of giving each other a natural boost of energy and an overall good feeling. Putting on some music and dancing around is a great way of getting your child to feel comfortable in their own skin. Dancing is a great way of giving them control over their bodies and great way to be silly and destress. Even if your child just wants to hop to the music, they’re at least engaging in the activity with you and they will get looser over time as long as they see you doing it too. Through dance, your child will get comfortable being themselves in front of others, and this is especially true if they see you doing it as well. 

5. Listing Positive Traits 

This last activity is a fun one to do any time or place you want. For this activity, have your child recite the alphabet in their head until you say stop. Whatever letter it lands on get the child to list positive things about themselves starting with that letter. This may be difficult, so try to get them to list at least three! If the letter they land on is too hard, get them to name one and work your way through the alphabet. This activity can be played with two or more people. Ideally, the activity should be played often enough that they get better at naming positive traits and recognize great things about themselves. 

The great thing about all of these activities is that you can start them all at a very young age and carry them on for years as you will never be too old to work on your confidence and self esteem! The most important thing to keep in mind during these activities is that you are invested in them and ensure to make these kinds of activities a regular occurance to keep strengthening their confidence.