How to raise a confident girl – free 10-step guide for Mental Health Awareness Week
| 18th May 2023
Did you know girls’ confidence falls by 30% between the ages of eight to 14 whereas boys’ confidence is higher by 27%[i].
So how can parents and guardians raise their daughters to be confident, happy and secure as Mental Health Awareness Week starts on March 15.
VIVA caught up with child psychiatrist Dr Ruth Talbot and Questa Kids founder Laura Curtis, who have launched their ten steps to combat it is free to download from www.questakids.com.
Said Dr Ruth: “Girl’s lack of confidence means they don’t fully engage with the world, try new things or meet different people, and they do feel safer and that tends to confirm that the strategies are the right ones.
“Coping in new situations takes practice, learning that little setbacks don’t matter, that most things which appear to go wrong can be sorted and often laughed about later. If a girl always plays it safe, opportunities to find out that you can cope and learn how to manage are missed and young women enter adulthood believing that this is the best way to get by.”
“This means the loss of confidence in girls who mature into women can stay with them and hold them back from realising their true potential or on a more fundamental level, being happy.”
The duo’s 10-step guide will help to combat what’s been dubbed the ‘confidence gap’’ between the sexes in children and raise girls to be confident women.
[i] “The Confidence Code for Girls,” worked with Ypulse, a polling firm that focuses on tweens and teens, to survey more than 1,300 girls from ages 8 to 18 and their parents. Between the ages of 8 and 14, girls’ confidence levels fall by 30 percent. At 14, when girls are hitting their low, boys’ confidence is still 27 percent higher.
The steps give advice and strategies to halt and rebuild confidence and how to spot a toxic mindset in girls.
They are:
- How to recognise your girl is losing her confidence
- How to start a plan to help her
- Biological reasons why girls lose confidence
- Societal reasons why tween girls doubt themselves
- What impact does her lack of confidence have?
- Risk.Fail.Recovery strategy
- Redressing the lack of women role models
- Share your own confidence issues
- How to spot a toxic mindset
- Teach her to challenge stereotypes
Questa Kids founder Laura Curtis, is a digital learning designer who specialises in creating compelling teaching tools, advising both universities and big business and is joined by Dr Ruth Talbot a child psychiatrist.
They have launched the new educational game, Questa Kids, aimed at seven to 12-year-olds from a female perspective with content covering gender roles as well as research, mapping, cultural and historical activities, and does not shy away from covering contentious issues with sensitive subject matter (SSM) warnings to allow children to learn more about complex issue.
It is based on two characters, Questa and Zeke, the latter a grumpy alien iguana. They travel and collect tokens learning the cultures and values of different countries, meeting a host of powerful women role models.
Questa Kids is curriculum compliant (KS1 and 2) and uses a pedagogical method that combines a mixture of approaches, including the 7Cs, which emphasise both effective learning and soft skills development, while ensuring that the child’s experience remains at its heart.
Easy to navigate, Questa Kids can be used online, with a 30-day free trial and is then priced at £9.99 per month on subscription or a one-off payment of £99.99, giving 12 months for the price of 10.
For further information visit www.questakids.com or follow questakids.com on Instagram., Facebook and TikTok and podcast ‘Let’s Talk About Parenting’ available on all platforms.
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[1] “The Confidence Code for Girls,” worked with Ypulse, a polling firm that focuses on tweens and teens, to survey more than 1,300 girls from ages 8 to 18 and their parents. Between the ages of 8 and 14, girls’ confidence levels fall by 30 percent. At 14, when girls are hitting their low, boys’ confidence is still 27 percent higher.