These are some ideas on how to help your children build confidence and self-esteem:

Make them feel good and valued:

1. Provide them with opportunities to feel good and happy, surrounded by people with whom they feel safe and happy.

2. Tell them you always love them (even when you don´t like what they do).

3. Show interest in the topics and activities that interest them.

4. Ask for their views on different topics (TV series, new decoration for a room) which will show them their opinion is important

5. Nurture and support their interests.

6. Spend “special time” with each of your children. They will have your undivided attention during that time, and will not have to compete with their siblings for attention. It will also show them how special they are.

7. When you need to address your children’s behavior, never label them. Focus on the behavior and not your child. Say “what you did wasn’t ok” instead of “you were bad”.

Make them feel competent

8. Provide them with opportunities to experience success. Don´t do everything for them. If they need help, provide it, but let them finish things on their own

9. Regularly praise their achievements, effort and progress

10. Teach them a new skill.

11. Enroll them in a new activity that will expand their set of skills (and interest them).

12. Let them show you how something works (like a new app, a computer program they use at school).

Foster their Independence

13. Assign them their own age-appropriate responsibilities (or activities appropriate to their developmental stage). As a special needs parent, we try to provide opportunities aligned with our child´s capabilities.

14. Provide them with opportunities to make choices on some activities.

Let them know how the real world works so that they don´t have unrealistic expectations and build resilience

15. Let them know about people´s reality. Help them understand that everybody has happy and unhappy times, achievements and failures.

16. Emphasize how we all have strengths and weaknesses.

17. Share your mistakes, and model positive responses to them.

18. Help them understand how we learn from mistakes. When something doesn´t work the way they expected, discuss with them how they could have done it differently and what they learned from the experience.

19. Teach them how hard work helps us achieve our objectives.

Teach Social Skills

It may be interesting to help your child improve a range of social skills, for example:

20. How to request somebody to stop a behavior (Assertiveness)

21. Problem-solving in social situations.

22. Conversational skills.

Work on the cognitive dimension of self-esteem

23. Help them reframe negative thinking that may lead to low self-esteem.

Teach them skills that will make them more “academically competent”

24. Teach them study techniques (time management, setting priorities, making a summary, looking for key ideas in a text)