Using Swimming to Build Superhero Confidence in Your Child

It’s a tough time to be a kid. Pressure for kids to succeed in school and in extracurricular activities is at an all-time high. This extremely competitive environment can be harming to our child’s development, in particular losing self-confidence at a young age.

A lack of confidence often leads to kids having a negative image of themselves – they will feel unlikable, avoid trying new things and cannot deal well with failure. Kids who are constantly compared with their peers are often not proud of what they have achieved and always thinking they could have done better.

This is not a very happy nor healthy mindset at all for our children, which is why building confidence for your child is so essential.

Confidence is a skill which can be developed

Have you ever wondered why your child enjoys watching those superheroes in the movies? It is the fact that the heroes can seemingly do everything so confidently.

Confidence can make all the difference to a happy and successful childhood:

• Children who are confident and feel good about themselves are more likely to try new things and to give their best efforts
• Confidence helps our children take on the world with more energy and determination, resulting in better relationships with friends, teachers and parents.

And most importantly, confidence is a skill. It is something you can train, sharpen and develop just like how you improve on your skills, strokes and techniques to swim faster in the pool. Even the best athletes, who are often superheroes in a young child’s eye, know they are going to make mistakes from time to time, but because they maintain belief in their abilities, they never give up.

5 tips to help build confidence in your child through swimming

Here are 5 tips to help build self-confidence in your child through swimming and sports in general:

1. Making your child focus on doing their best

   • Do not make the main objective about winning and outperforming. It is important that the desire to win does not cause our child to lose sight of the most important goal – doing their best.
   • There is really no shame in losing if you already gave it your best. Sometimes the opponents is simply better and other times, it is just a matter of bad luck. And although the best do not always win, those who play the hardest often win.
   • So praise your child for their efforts and when success comes their way, make sure to point out that it was a result of their dedication and hard work.

2. Let your child make decisions

   • Building good and decisive decision making skills is a key element of building superhero confidence.
   • Let your child decide what skills they want to practice, what toys they want to bring into the pool and what games they want to play. A parent’s job is to provide them with a limited amount of safe choices and help them think through the steps by asking questions.
   • This builds good decision making habits in our child which in turn builds confidence.

3. Start easy and make progress towards a goal

   • Our child loves mastering a new skill and takes great pride in their personal achievements. Just remember how happy they were when they first learnt how to ride their scooter or bicycle. Therefore, a simple way to improve confidence is to start easy.
   • In swimming, watching yourself improve – whether in distance covered, improved timing, learning a new stroke -helps build momentum for creating confidence. If your child is younger and new to swimming, make sure you help them set attainable but fun goals for them, such as holding their breath underwater for 10 seconds, treading water for 1 minute or swimming from point A to point B.
   • Success always boosts a child’s self-confidence and makes them eager to take on further challenges with good preparation for the rigours of adult life.

4. Practice, practice, practice

   • Confidence is based on evidence and experience, and this comes with practice. Having your child understand that going to swimming class allows them a chance to master their skills is interesting to them.
   • While the nature of training is often dependent on the coach’s decisions, parents can make practice more fun by making swimming more than about swimming lessons.
   • Swimming together as a family activity – play is extremely important for kids and it is a key way to teach them solve problems and keep them interested. And for those kids who already enjoy moving around, it is another way to help them burn off some of that seemingly endless amount of energy!

5. Model confidence yourself

   • Confidence is a skill that is learned over time and takes shape from the experiences and influencers in our lives.
   • While a child’s swimming coach or teacher can be a role model, there are no bigger superheroes in your kid’s life than their mommy and their daddy. Your child learns more from you than you can ever imagine. So model confidence yourself and talk positively in front of your kids, whether it is in or outside of the swimming pool.

Conclusion

In summary, the key to building confidence in kids is patience and support. Along the journey, the decision-making, fun, work ethic and lessons about success and failure gained from swimming