Why confidence is imperative for your child’s success!

“I’m not smart enough.” “I am dumb!” “I can’t do it.” “I give up!”

No parent wants to hear these heart-breaking words, come out of the mouth of their child whilst learning. But there is support.

Children all struggle from time to time in their learning

A common way that children communicate about their learning difficulties is through their behaviour. Children are unable to put their struggles and concerns into words, particularly at a young age.

Another way that you might hear about your child’s challenges is through their teacher. You might hear disheartening phrases, such as, “they could do better”, “needs a better attitude” or even worse “not trying” and “giving up”.

However, you as the parent know that your child has the most amazing potential, but at this stage in their learning their potential is not being realised and their confidence is taking a huge hit.

You know the key ingredient to helping your child achieve is confidence! But how?

Confidence is vital when learning. When a child is confident in their ability to do something, it enhances their actual ability to do it.

Zones of Growth

This is why at Seeds of Knowledge we created the Zones of Growth. These Zones help parents, just like you, to understand what your child is experiencing and how you can help them be the confident child that you know they can be!

The Zones of Growth are not vertical or lineal and children enter the Zones at different times and for different reasons. It is important to understand that children move through the zones, sometimes fluently and at other times they become ‘stuck’ and lose confidence, either in a zone or between the zones.

It is essential that children learn to go backwards and forwards through the zones to develop confidence and become truly confident learners. The ultimate goal is for a child to progress smoothly to the Learning and Confident Zones. For the purpose of this blog, and for clarity, I will discuss each zone independently for you to gain a deeper understanding and appreciation of the way that we develop confidence. Confidence is not an academic skill to be learnt, it can only be learnt through experiences!

So, let’s explore the ‘Zones of Growth’ together to understand:

• why it is imperative to develop the skills of confidence
• understand what your child is experiencing when they struggle
• and gain helpful strategies to support your child to move through the zones…and ultimately be confident!

Comfort Zone

Safe, relaxed and in control are all good qualities that will be felt in this zone. It is awesome to be in this zone for a period because it is comfortable.

In this zone, a child will feel confident because they are experiencing what they know well and what they have already learnt. However, in the long-term being in this zone will not build and generate a child’s confidence to a level that will create long-standing learning advancement.

The process to support your child out of the comfort zone is to:

1. accept a challenge that is manageable for your child
2. understand a challenge or problem
3. explain the challenge using precise language
4. support your child to start the challenge (be careful not to over support your child, therefore, ultimately doing it for them or making it too easy and not challenging enough).
5. encourage your child to move through the challenge independently to confidence.

The Challenge Zone is a pivotal zone to develop confidence. The Challenge Zone comes with a lot of emotion because it is difficult and uncomfortable.

Some children stay in the Challenge Zone for longer periods of time, while others may embrace challenges and swiftly move through to the other zones.

The children who do stay in the Challenge Zone for a longer period of time need a lot of strength and energy to move from this zone into the next zone.

The biggest challenge that our children encounter is learning and feeling confident. This is why at Seeds of Knowledge we acknowledge the difficulty of the Challenge Zone. We understand that this is where people, even adults, get stuck when learning becomes too difficult.

At Seeds of Knowledge, we support children’s understanding of this essential zone through a visual representation of the behaviours and emotions that children are experiencing in the Challenge Zone – we refer to it as the Learning Pit.

Understanding and acknowledging the Learning Pit is the first essential part of embracing challenges and ultimately becoming confident.

There is a range of strategies that can help your child build their confidence in this ‘tricky zone’ which include:

• Nurturing your child through understanding and normalising challenges.
• Reading children’s Growth Mindset books such as The Fantastic Elastic Brain, They Magical Yet, and Giraffes Can’t Dance to name a few.
• Explicitly teaching your child the language of the Learning Pit – “Are you in the Learning Pit?”, “Have you entered the Learning Pit?”
• Engaging in supportive conversations with your child and their teachers
• Praising and acknowledging your child when they have accepted a challenge or made small steps to move through the challenge.

For some children, the Challenge Zone is so challenging it is like they have their feet stuck in the mud and they require support to exit and build their confidence.

Support Zone

The Support Zone is dynamic, as it is individualised for each child. Every child is unique, and they require different levels of support to feel confident.

In the Support Zone there are a range of strategies that can be utilised to help a child navigate from the Challenge Zone through to the Support Zone, into the Learning Zone. These strategies are well known to classroom teachers and Seeds of Knowledge. At Seeds of Knowledge, we teach our parents to use the strategies in the Zones of Growth diagram, for their child to become a confident learner.

Seeds of Knowledge is honoured to help children to reach their full potential and have the confidence to thrive at school and in life.

We achieve this by supporting our students from the outer cusp of the Challenge Zone and the inner part of the Support Zone. This ensures we are challenging children yet providing them with the vital support, guidance and lessons they require to develop confidence.

To develop confidence, children return to the Challenge Zone when they learn new skills. They will dip into and out of the Support Zone and into the Challenge Zone, then back to the Support Zone. The ideal is that from the Support Zone they progress into the Learning Zone smoothly and effectively.

Children love support. It gives them a sense of confidence and connection to propel their learning and develop a lifelong love of learning.

Support is vital for children to gain confidence. Supporting children at home or in tutoring ensures that children are getting the timely support that they need for school to be even more successful.

The strategies to support your child at home are to:

• Individualise the learning to suit your child’s needs – for example, when doing homework with your child note where they are struggling and where they need to be supported to do the task successfully to build their confidence.
• Scaffold and guide the learning – a way of building confidence is to bridge the learning from what the child does know and then providing them with new knowledge, or a new way of explaining the concept.
• Research – this is an important part of understanding your child’s struggles and lack of confidence. As parents we often feel helpless when we don’t know how to help our child. Through researching you will find your child’s community to help them develop the confidence that is imperative for their success.

The ultimate support to build confidence in a child is by explicitly teaching the skills of how to learn, the importance of learning and the strategies and tools required to learn effectively and reach the Learning and Confident Zone.

The Learning to Learn program, taught by Seeds of Knowledge, supports your child to develop the confidence to reach their full potential.

Learning Zone and C.O.N.F.I.D.E.N.T Zone

These Zones are the active zones and the most exciting zones to be in.

Our minds are active, and we are continuously processing new information and knowledge and truly value learning.

In these zones the children have learnt about confidence and feel a level of confidence that enables them to see themselves as learners.

In these zones, the children are able to apply their confidence within their learning. They have learnt the skills to successfully get out of the Learning Pit and know what to do when they re-enter the Challenge Zone. This is true confidence!

It is imperative that we celebrate every big or minute success when you see your child being confident.

Children will naturally have a lot of learning experiences throughout their life. It is these experiences that children will have the opportunity to reflect on and develop their personal awareness about confidence. They will be able to use the language of confidence with confidence.

This is the ultimate goal and, in the Learning to Learn Program children are explicitly taught the skills of confidence. The key concepts of the program are vital components to understand the learning process, and include:

• Accepting and embracing learning challenges
• Exploring positive thinking strategies and breathing patterns
• Supporting awareness of energy in the body to enhance learning
• Understanding why our brain is so important in the learning process
• Discovering how to get “unstuck” and out of the Learning Pit
• Realising the importance of effort, practice, feedback and goals
• Learning to set and achieve goals for learning confidence
• Understanding Growth Mindset and “the Power of Yet”
• Embracing your learning strengths and unique “Learning Superpowers”
• Developing and building confidence to take risks when learning
• Celebrating success and the ultimate goal of CONFIDENCE!

For your child to develop the skills of confidence, be successful and love learning enrol your child now in the Learning to Learn Program! Make an enquiry today as places are limited.