Praise and Children Essay

Explain how to support children and young peoples self confidence and self esteem. We can support children and young people’s self confidence/self esteem and promote this in settings by doing a range of verbal/non verbal things to ensure children have confidence. It is important that we give children encouragement when trying a new activity, we can do this by verbal speech such as ‘can you try to do it’? or non verbal ways such as hand gestures thumbs up or smiling etc. Also after a child has done something positive we must always praise them verbally with a ‘well done’! or thumbs up etc even a sticker chart or team points has the same effect. If we do not give children praise and encouragement they are less likely to join in new activities which will not give them confidence to experience new things and become independant. It is important that children are always praised for doing something good so that they have a high self esteem and will want to demonstrate the behaviour again. We must ensure that children have the confidence to make there own choices by providing chances for them o do this. for eg give them the choice of what toys they want to play with, what activities they would like to do or what snacks they would like. It is important we do this to encourage children to become more independant. If we do not allow children to make there own choices they may become dependant on an adult and not choose vital things later in life that could affect them. We can also promote self confidence by rewarding children with things such as sweets or stickers. This can be a good way of praising children but can also make children ‘go back’ with behaviour or do things to much just to get a reward. For example if a child is rewarded for using the toilet or trying to use the toilet they may just sit on it all day so they get rewarded. We must do regular observations of children to find out there interests and develop activities around these to help children meet milestones. This is important as the child is in control of there own learning and will feel like they matter. For example if a childs interested in trains you could use them in what you are doing. If the child has control of there learning they are more likely to make choices and have confidence in doing so. It is also important that we ensure the children know that they can trust their key worker and can speak to them about anything, so the child has positive relationships with the people in there setting.