How to help your child feel brave and competent, according to an expert

A child psychologist shares tips on building your child's confidence. Suggests taking a break from structured activities and using small steps.

Tania Johnson, co-founder of the Institute of Child Psychology, joined CTV Morning Live’s Kent Morrison to answer parenting questions from viewers.

This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Kent Morrison: Nicole sent us this question: Her daughter’s five years old. She signs up her daughter for fun activities and asks her daughter for input on what to register for, but when they show up, (her daughter) doesn’t participate. Nicole says she gets angry about the waste of time and money and she doesn’t want her daughter to miss out on childhood. She asks, “Can you please help me?”

Tania Johnson: This is a hard one. The first thing is that this little one is five, so she’s still really little. She might be feeling overwhelmed. So her head is saying, “Yes. I want to do this,” but her heart and her body are saying, “Maybe it’s too much.” What I would recommend to Mom is that we just hit the pause button, have a reset, step back from all of those structured activities and while we take this reset, we focus on helping to build her (daughter’s) brave muscle.

When our kids are anxious, they often step away from new things instead of toward new things. We want to help her move toward new things. Little things like: let her check out her own library books, let her order her food, let her say hi to a friend at the park, and all of these little moments say to her, “I am brave, I am competent and I can do this.”

Then when the family’s ready, we can enroll her in something that’s small. Not with a lot of kids, but where we really set her up for success. Just small steps like, “Let’s go meet the teacher. Let’s go watch a class.” Mom can sit in the first class. With all of this, mom and her need to be moving toward, “I am brave, I am competent, and I can do hard things, even when I feel scared.”

Kent: Do you have any advice for the frustration part? Because you don’t want to hinder things, but it can be frustrating.

Tania: In those moments, we just want to take that step back, and take those deep breaths. Don’t let her know that you’re frustrated, because then it becomes almost like a power struggle. And then she becomes scared, because now Mom is scared.

When we’re ready, we want to sit down, and we want to be really careful that we don’t offer too many accommodations, because then that says to the kid, “I’m not actually sure you can do this either.” Mom needs to figure out, “How can we help her feel brave?” Then when we’re ready to sign up for that ballet class, we need to move forward with lots of confidence, so she goes, “Mom totally believes that I can do this, so that means that I can actually do this, but I totally get mom’s frustrations.”

Kent: This text says, “Registration is now open. My son was born late in the year. I could wait and send him next fall. I think he could keep up now, but I’m worried about an emotional gap in the future. How do I know what the right choice is?”

Tania: We get this question a lot. It’s a big one for many parents. The difference between a kiddo that’s just turned five and a child that is five years and nine months is huge. Then we throw them all into this kindergarten class and we forget about these developmental discrepancies. So for instance, we know that children who are younger in a class are more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD than children who are older. Every kid is going to be different. Every family and their situation is going to be different, but if we can swing it, I often suggest that we just stay away from that structured academic classroom for another year. If we can, we give the kid a lot of space for free play, unstructured time in an environment where the ratio of adults per child is less than 30:1, as it would be in a kindergarten class.

Send your questions for Tania and Tammy via text message to 10-400.