Parenting delimma: to Let Go And to Push

In your opinion, what is the best way to build a strong sense of self or self confidence in a child?

The best way to build a strong sense of self and self-confidence in a child is through accompanied exploration of the child to different experiences and interactions with people.

Accompany and exploration are the two key ingredients in my proposal. Exploration is easy to understand and has been proposed by many: the child’s active role in exploring of possibilities for himself/herself in the social environment and different settings. He/she can experiment with the approaches as to how to understand, process, and react to a variable of situations.

Accompanied exploration has a special significance in this exploration by the child. A caring adult, best to be the caretaker or the parent, is the resourceful and knowledgeable person to be by the side of the child in his or her exploration, and can offer help when the situation calls for it or when the child asks for it. The child, with the strong and caring backup, and a security base, can be free to explore and bold to explore the environment. To the child, he/she can then build up his/her autonomy in a safe environment.

The success and the art of this rest on when the accompanying adult give a freehand to the child, observe while not intervene, or when to provide hint and assistance, and when he or she does not offer help even when asked to and yet give encouragement, so when the child can finally accomplish the task, he or she can take all of the credit and build on his or her autonomy and self-confidence. In addition, it also depends on when the adult should intervene even when not invited by the child.

The key lies in the assessment of the accompanying adult about the ability and the zones of proximal development of the child. Adult in this scheme should also learn to trust that the child can explore and accomplish himself/herself if something is within his or her zone of proximal development, and yet he or she has not yet accomplish it. Many researches have shown that children, if given minimal cues, can breakthrough into new accomplishment if it is something within his/her zone of proximal ability. For example, children who have not yet accomplished conservation according to Piaget’s theory, can be easily overcome the difficulty by some hint. So adults should also learn to let go of their control or eagerness to have their children to breakthrough, and give a bit more patience and thoughts to what hints to give, as the adults should not take away the opportunity to learn themselves without being told. Children can see for themselves what they can do on their own, and have more confidence of their potential and abilities, and also be able to feel their own limitations. This is because having a clear sense of one’s limitations, strengths, and potential are crucial to the development of self-confidence in children.

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