4 Ways to Instill Confidence in Your Tween

Being a tween feels extremely challenging in the moment—everything feels overwhelming and like it’s the end of the world. Your teen might start to feel like they’re lacking the confidence they had as a child. This is something that happens when children start growing and thinking about their peers and the world around them.

Luckily, your tween doesn’t have to explore this alone. With your help, they will grow up confidently! Here are a few ways you can help guide them along.

Make sure they know you’re there to help.

Creating an open discussion with your tween is the first step in making sure they feel confident in coming to you with any issues. Discussing your own childhood and tween years is a great way to relate to them. Tell them they aren’t alone in the things they are going through and that even you had struggles finding yourself at their age.

Discuss some of the trials that come with growing up. Some of these include deciding who you are, who you want to be friends with, what you care about, etc. This is a transformative time and they should be excited about all the opportunities ahead of them.

Your job as a parent can be to explain the beauty of growing into your own person. This gives them the excitement of knowing they can be anything! All it takes are some confidence-inspiring words from their trusty parent.

Help them shape their personal style.

Personal style is an exciting thing to watch children navigate. One second they’re wearing overalls, and the next, they want to cut up the overalls and throw paint on them. Changes are rapid, but your tween has all the help they need if you’re there to tell them it’s normal.

Start by making a list of some shops they might be interested in. There are e-commerce shops that have tons of styles of tween girls clothing or tween boys clothing that could be right up their alley. Make this style exploration phase a fun adventure that they have a say in—this helps them take ownership of the clothes they pick out. What better way to teach your tween confidence?

Get them involved in clubs, sports, etc.

The tween years mean not knowing what sport or activity to choose—so why not try them all? Some tweens played a sport while growing up and knew they wanted to go pro with it, but not many do. This could cause them some stress of not knowing where they fit in.

But at least activities for this age group are pretty relaxed and explorative: They can join the play or a team sport where they don’t have to be the best player, which makes this the best time to try something new. They can even think outside of the box with activities like cooking, comedy club, math club, or chess club. These activities are also perfect ways for them to make friends and socialize with their age group.

Sign them up for educational opportunities.

After school activities can be educational if they sign up for math club or anything along those lines, but maybe your tween is craving intellectual stimulation they aren’t getting at school. This can mean weekend trips to museums, art galleries, and other educational activities.

Now that your tween is growing and learning about the world, they might desire a challenge or a higher level of educational experiences. You can take the liberty as a parent to inspire their ability to go to an adult museum and learn just as much as they would at a children’s museum. This is a subtle way to give your tween confidence in their ability to think and process information.