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Weekly One | Self-Trust | Email #2
Each Sunday, I send the Daring Dyslexic community an email with actionable strategies to boost your child's confidence, mindset, and self-esteem. Join my supportive community and receive practical, step-by-step tools delivered straight to your inbox – because your child's success story starts with just one small action each week.
Building self-trust is a crucial element in our children's growth and development. Trusting yourself helps develop a strong sense of self, make independent decisions, and confidently navigate challenges. When our children can trust themselves, they persevere, bounce back from failures, and take greater responsibility for their efforts.
So how do we build self-trust in our Daring Dyslexics, who lack confidence, fear more failure, have difficulty making decisions and often hold themselves to unrealistic expectations?
Today, I want to discuss a simple strategy I have been using for some time with great success.
Keep a Promise to Yourself
The first step is to help your child make and keep a promise to themselves. This is not about setting a big audacious goal and does not need to be related to their learning outcomes.
Have them choose something they want to improve in their lives. It could be eating less sugar, drinking more water, spending more time on art, or practising their favourite sport. Whatever the goal, the outcome should only rely on them showing up for themselves.
Each time they show up and do the thing, celebrate them, their effort and their commitment to themselves. Using phrases like
'You should be proud of yourself.'
'Wow, it must feel good to accomplish X.'
'Does it feel good for gifting yourself that.'
Again, ensure the feedback is about them and the feeling of showing up for themselves, not specific to the outcome.
I want to offer a real-life example. When I started this process with my son at 5 (he is now 10), we started small. I had noted his need for a bit of independence, and he had expressed interest in being able to make his own breakfast. Was I concerned about spilt milk and our dog eating a plethora of cereal off the floor each morning? Absolutely! But he wanted to do it, and I wanted him to trust that he could.
Over the years, this has grown from making his breakfast to setting more significant goals and seeing them through. He is currently training for cross country, where he gets up early two mornings a week to run. It is entirely self-driven, and you can see the pride on his face every time he shows up for himself and his goal. This is the essence of building authentic confidence, trusting that they can and will reach their goals, both in and out of the classroom.
Give it a try this week, start small, set them up for success, and most of all, celebrate what it means to show up for yourself, and that goes for you too, mums & dads ;)
You've got this!
B 💜
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