There is one critical predictor of success (in anything).
That one thing made the difference between those who struggled their whole lives and those who seemed to succeed easily.
And that one thing is confidence.
So don't take confidence-building lightly. It may well be the most important thing you can do for your child.
Because without confidence you end up doing very little in life. Lack of confidence will hold a child back more than anything else.
Confidence is critical.
And if your child suffered from a learning difficulty then it is highly probable that confidence is a big issue.
Incidentally.
Confidence problems in children reveal themselves as one or more of the following:
Avoidance - Procrastination
Low effort - Taking too long
Shutting down - Going blank
Anxiety - Crying - Tantrums - Stubbornness
Frustration - Discouragement
Easily Distracted - Fidgety - Hyperactive
Feeling Stupid - Afraid of failing
Solve the confidence issue and you are a long ways towards solving the above issues.
So how do we build confidence?
I like to use the Dan Sullivan model of confidence (you can google him).
It goes like this:
Commitment
Courage
Capability
Confidence
Step 1 - So first a child has to make a commitment to do something. This something is slightly outside of their comfort zone.
Step 2 - They then have to have the courage to follow through with it.
Step 3 - Then from doing the thing they have developed a new capability.
Step 4 - From developing a new capability they have now increased confidence. Even if it was only a tiny bit.
If a child stumbles in the first part of the cycle, confidence will be diminished.
No Courage, No Breakthroughs, Diminished Confidence.
But if a child makes it through the cycle then confidence grows.
That is why it is critical to make the steps small. If there is a failure, it will result in going backward.
So better to make tiny steps forward than risk a big step backward.
That's why we make the steps in the Learning Success System so small. Bigger steps lead to failure. Small steps lead to success.
There's one other reason big steps lead to failure. As a matter of fact, there is an entire philosophy designed to avoid this failure.
It's called Kaizen.
Kaizen is the art of creating big changes through small steps.
The reason it works is that the brain automatically rejects big changes. So instead, make tiny changes.
This is why New Year's resolutions don't work. They are too big. The brain automatically sabotages them.
But small steps, they don't trigger anxiety and fear. And enough small steps add up to big changes.
If a child is trying to learn to be a better student. It's likely that the steps presented are too big.
Reading, writing, math, spelling, and all academics are complex. So break them down to their tiniest components.
Skills like Auditory discrimination, visual discrimination, visual tracking.
Skills that are simply not taught in school.
And if a person is missing those skills the steps to learn academics are simply too big.
And will always lead to failure.
No matter how much they practice them.
As a matter of fact, more practice might make things worse.