How to Raise Confident
and Empathetic Kids
As parents, our dreams for our children are astronomical—we want them to be successful, be happy, be independent, smart, and so much more. The list goes on and on. But more than anything, we likely want them to be kind, confident, and empathetic people who are making the world a better place!
It’s our job as parents to help them get there, provide them with the tools they need to become those people and support them in their journey—but how exactly do we go about doing that? We’re not going to be around for every second of child’s life—how can we make sure we’re doing everything we can to help them become compassionate, confident, and all-around good people?
The bad news? There are no one-size-fits-all answers. The good news? There are so many helpful things you can do for your child to encourage them on their journey to become good people. We searched the web, did some digging, and found some of the best tips out there for raising confident, culturally aware, and independent children.
Check them out!
Encourage Gratitude in Your Child’s Attitude
Research shows that people who understand and engage in habits of gratitude end up being more helpful, compassionate, and forgiving people in the long run. It makes sense, doesn’t it? If people are grateful, their moods are shifting, making room for happiness, compassion, and empathy—resulting in a loving, positive attitude overall.
If you’re taking the time to encourage your child to be grateful and showing them by example what it means to have a grateful attitude, they’ll pick it up in a snap. Why? Because kids are known for learning by their parent’s examples! If you practice a grateful, gracious attitude, you can bet your kiddos will follow suit, too!
Spend Quality Time with Them
This one probably goes without saying, because we bet you’re always spending quality time with your kiddo! But, it’s worth mentioning that children who spend lots of time with their parents or guardians tend to feel loved, understand human emotion, and feel connected better! Above all, your kiddos want to feel connected to you, and they want to learn from you, too! Use your quality time with them to be an example of all those qualities you want them to learn—kindness, compassion, empathy, and confidence!
Expose Your Child to New Cultures
People typically become more empathetic when they are exposed to diverse cultures, circles, and experiences. It makes sense that kids would work this way, too. If you take the time to show your child all the cool, fun, and exciting differences within this big world of ours, they’re likely going to be able to accept new ideas, enjoy new possibilities, and understand how wonderful our world truly is!
One of the best ways to help your child become exposed to new cultures? Teach them a new language! Using fun things like bilingual toys can help show your child new cultures, new languages, and new experiences, opening up their minds and allowing them to experience empathy for all sorts of cultures!
Teach Them How to Solve Problems
When you take the time to teach your child—and encourage them—to be analytical and use their brain to solve problems, you’re giving them one of the greatest gifts of all! By showing your children how to solve problems, you’re showing them that you believe in them, which, in turn, will encourage them to believe in themselves, too!
Teaching your child to solve problems can lead to all sorts of creative solutions—you can be hands-on with them and lead by example, you can let them figure it out on their own and then step in to help along the way, or some kind of hybrid of those strategies. This kind of lesson is super important for your kiddo because it shows them that they can accomplish anything if they work hard and put their mind to it—they can tackle anything that comes their way in life! Believe in them and help them learn how to tackle their own problems so that they can start believing in themselves. Trust and confidence are key!
But Sometimes Let Them Fail
In that same vein, it’s important to let your child fail, too—even though it’s probably one of the hardest things you’ll have to do as a parent! Letting your child struggle, challenge themselves, and even fail sometimes is a huge lesson that every kiddo should learn.
We don’t mean that you should root for your child to fail so that you can teach them a lesson, just that it’s important to put full trust in them to handle their problems so they can figure it out along the way. Think about it this way—if you know your kiddo didn’t finish an assignment for school but don’t say anything to your child so that they can learn a valuable lesson, that’s going to benefit them in the long run.
Why? Because they’ll realize that deadlines exist and that they have to get work done on time! A little bit of failure can go a long way to helping your child become a successful, confident person!
Grow Your Child’s Brain
You can do this in so many ways, but a great way to go about this is by including books and language-learning into their everyday lives. When you read to your child, or read together, you’re not only entertaining them, you’re also teaching them a huge variety of words, literally growing their brain (the more you read the more the neurons in the brain grow!), and teaching them to behave and pay attention, too. All of these skills are incredibly valuable and help put your child on the right track!
Learning new languages does something very similar to a child’s brain! You give them the chance to learn a bunch of new words in a few different languages, exercise their brain muscles, and definitely help with their attention span, ability to multitask, and increase their focus. Teaching your child a new language can be fun, too—you can use fun bilingual toys, TV shows, songs, and reading all to incorporate a new language into your child’s life!
Raising smart, kind, and empathetic little people is something all parents want—and at Wordy Toys, we can help! We design fun, exciting, educational toys that little ones will love to play with. You’ll love that they’re bilingual toys that help your child learn something new every single day. Check them out here!
Happy Parenting!
-The Wordy Team
"We're not trying to reinvent the wheel.
We just want to write wheel on the wheel."
