Every adult that comes into contact with children on a regular basis has an opportunity to support them in developing into happy, well rounded young people. With every interaction, there are simple activities that you can carry out with children that will let them know their feelings and well being are important to us. Here are 3 easy ideas that parents, caretakers and educators can start implementing today:

Idea #1: Encourage drawing or writing to express thoughts and feelings.

Give each child a notebook or journal where they can write or draw about 3 events during the day that made them feel good. The fun games on the play ground, receiving a sticker for good behavior, making a new friend or someone sharing with them are all positive experiences that attention should be called to. Feel free to help them with suggestions of things that may have happened during the day if nothing seems to come to mind for them. This is a great way to teach children to always look for and focus on the positive things in life.

Idea #2: Highlight the good in every child

Building self esteem in children depends largely the attitude of parents and the family circle, as children learn what they live. Self esteem, which simply put, is how lovable and capable a person feels within them self, develops throughout a child’s life. We must seize every opportunity to call attention to and praise the good qualities in every child, and help build their confidence in making the right choices in life.

Make talking about a child’s good qualities fun, by having them draw out their hand on a piece of paper, and talk to them about the things you like best about them while these thing are written down in the outlined hand. How do they participate at school or home? What are some of the things they do well? What are their best qualities? When the all of the qualities are include in the hand outline, allow the child to decorate it, then cut it out and have them display it in a place where they can see it and read or talk about it frequently.

Idea #3: Promote self love and acceptance

Parents and teachers sometimes focus so much on the skills, character or behavior to be improved that very little attention is given to the strong positive attributes the child may already have.We must appreciate and celebrate the good we see in every child and what they like to do. Organize fun time by creating a poster with them which celebrates who they are and their best qualities. Have them collect old magazines and pictures they can use for their poster to express the things they like to do, their friends and what they are most proud of. It would be great for adults to participate in this fun time as well by creating a poster of their own to celebrate and share their wonderful qualities with the child. The most effective life lessons children learn are those taught by example.

These 3 ideas are very simple and don’t require much time, energy or material to create fun, memorable activities that contribute to building self esteem in children. Go ahead and try one of these ideas today; Your child will have a wonderful time and so will you.