Giving your children confidence by focussing outside of school

So I mentioned a while back that Curly Headed boy wasn’t happy at school and had lost confidence.  I’m going to summarise all the steps I took to help him out next week.  But first I want to talk about the final option in a bit more detail.

Now I’m not a ‘pushy’ mum, as I don’t panic about not starting Curly Headed Boy in piano immediately because he is 5, or that he must be able to speak Japanese by the time he is 6.  But maybe I was a bit wrong to not give him something extra outside of school.  My thinking was that he was already absolutely shattered. But when it became clear that he wasn’t settling into Reception, one of the things I decided to do was try some classes.

My aim was to give him confidence.  Also, I was really affected by the story of a 4yr old boy who couldn’t be saved because he couldn’t swim, so I did have a slight ulterior motive!  I checked out football, street dance, art classes, stage coach/perform, swimming and gymnastics.

I pinned it down to swimming and gymnastics.  He is a great little actor already, so he doesn’t need lots of help there, and the only classes were on saturday mornings.  We aren’t good with a schedule every weekend, so it wasn’t ideal.  Football is OK, and he has good eye to ball coordination, but I thought that could be saved for Daddy at the weekend.  His mate had just stopped street dance and started gymnastics.  So as he is particularly agile I decided to go for either swimming or gymnastics.

Remember the main aim was for him to gain confidence and find something that he was really good at.  His confidence had been knocked by children at school telling him that he was writing or saying things wrong, and he needed to appreciate what he was good at.  Plus some good old fashioned fun!  There was no space on the gym class that his friend had started on, and Max was really only keen to do something new with a mate as he was still very low on confidence.  So we booked the swimming.

BUT then the gym people phoned and said there was a space after all, so we ended up with both; thats the way the world works hey!

So this is why I now have a marathon of a Tues & Wed, to get food into Curly Headed Boy in the car on the way and the way back from class, and try to get everything done in time for bed at 6.30 (the best bed time for him).  Tuesdays I spend an hour on a gallery, trying to occupy Little Dimples and get some food into her.  Mind you, she has a very cute little admirer, so that helps!  On Wednesdays when I have energy we all go swimming for 30mins, then I get Little Dimples dressed while he has his class.  When I’m shattered, I hold a very grumpy Little Dimples while the lesson is going on, because I can’t face washing all our hair after (I’m officially a wimp, but for some reason the family changing rooms exhaust me!).

And Curly Headed Boy?  He is in seventh heaven.  He gets to see the older gymnasts do amazing things and work hard core for an hour at all sorts of gymnastic stuff.  Meanwhile the swimming girl totally understood what I was aiming for, so she keeps telling him how fab he is, and he enjoys it no end.  He now has tonnes of things to tell hims friends, and the confidence he has gained in the classes seems to have really rubbed off at school as he is playing with all the boys at break time now.

So if your child is struggling with their confidence in school, I really recommend you find something out of school that you know they will easily do well at.  It’s amazing how it has affected his general confidence every where, including school.

Mind you , we’ve created a bit of a monster, who wants to climb, jump on, or jump over everything at home … arrrggggh!