Helping Children Feel Confident With The "What I'm Good At" Exercise

Submitted by Phil Weaver on Thu, 2019-05-30 14:44

Transcript

Phil: So that also brings into the concept of, of what something else we would do called what I'm good at and the idea that that self confidence and self esteem are transferable from one activity to another. And this comes up in Amy Cuddy's book. She talks about having a list of things that a child is good at and then if they come into something that they're not good at, then talking, then going through that list of, of what they're good at to raise confidence. Can you speak about that and raising confidence.

 

Merriam:  Yeah, absolutely. I think that if you, even as an as adults, right, if you can achieve mastery or a sense of agency in one area, it's such an empowering feeling to, to know that, okay, I could do that. It's probably now I have this positive experience that I can transfer to something else. I know what it takes. I know that it's not just going to call them automatically. I have to work hard at it, I have to practice and then eventually I can achieve this thing. so yeah, if they, if you have a child who's never experienced or told that they, you know, either in the learned helplessness child have a sense of agency or in the child is always acting out and being told what they're doing wrong, that they actually do things right, then how can they transfer that across and generalize it to other parts of their life?

 

Get the full interview here.

I think that if you, even as an as adults, right, if you can achieve mastery or a sense of agency in one area, it's such an empowering feeling to, to know that, okay, I could do that
Tweet mentions: 
@ADHDChat ‏
@amyjccuddy ‏
@learningsuccess