Terry Aizen – Director of Kornmehl

Seven Ways to Encourage your Child to Try New Things

Fear is a typical response to new challenges or experiences. These situations make children feel uncertain, vulnerable, powerless and anxious. They strip away a child’s sense of security and control. As a result, many children avoid the unfamiliar. They prefer NOT to risk attempting something new, leading to missed opportunities, and setting a negative pattern that can persist into adult life.

Here are seven strategies and activities we can use to raise children who aren’t afraid to tackle new situations, skills, or obstacles with confidence:

Be Supportive of Effort, Progress and the Process

Kids may fear trying new things for several reasons, including environment, upbringing, past experiences and temperament. It is important to praise effort, progress and the process rather than only praising successful outcomes. The praising process is also important because it shows your child there’s more than one way to do something. Show your child that “success” isn’t necessarily dependant on outcomes. Success can mean a willingness to try, put forth your best effort and show gradual improvement.

Make an “I can” Can

Print out strips of paper with the sentence starter “I can,” written on them. Then, allow your child to fill in the blanks. Help them brainstorm, while enabling them to come up with suggestions of their own as well. Put the strips in a can and have your child add more strips whenever they learn a new skill or conquer a new challenge.

Keep an “Adventure Diary”

If your child can view new challenges as exciting rather than intimidating, they’ll have the courage to pursue their full potential.Help them shift their perspective by keeping an adventure diary. In the diary, you’ll detail all the adventures you’ve had as a result of trying new things. Write about all the times your child was brave and attempted something new and update the diary regularly. If possible, you can add pictures, drawings or small mementoes for decoration. Also include details about how well your child did or how much fun you and your child had when he/she tried this new activity.
The next time your child is afraid to try something new, take out the adventure diary, and talk about the great times you had because your child was brave enough to try.

Ask the Right Questions

You can ask your child questions like, “Is there anything that used to be difficult or a little scary for you that’s now much easier?” Remind your child that all the abilities they have now were new at one point. They weren’t born with them; they had to learn, practise and persist. To put your child’s fears in perspective, ask questions like: What’s the worst thing that could happen? What makes you say that?, What is more likely to happen?, What would you tell a friend who felt this way?

When you talk to your child about trying new things, make it a discussion rather than a lecture. Listen to your child’s worries and help them talk through and confront these fears.

Incorporate Brain Breaks

While you should encourage your child to take risks, you should avoid pushing too hard. You want your child’s experiences with trying something new to be positive so that they won’t become even more risk averse.

Incorporate short activities that disrupt the monotony of a child’s current task. You can suggest a quick game of rock-paper-scissors, challenge your child to ‘reinvent’ a random object for other uses or provide a story starter for your child to complete.

Because these brain breaks are a bit silly, they’ll brighten your child’s mood, take their mind off their fears and help them face the task at hand with renewed energy. Plus, the fun memories you create will show your child that trying new things isn’t so bad after all.

Conduct Dress Rehearsals

If your child is nervous about meeting their teacher for the first time, you can pretend to be the teacher and let your child practice how they will greet her. Practise conversations, greetings and other interactions that make your child feel nervous.

These dress rehearsals will familiarise your child with new situations, making them feel less unfamiliar and scary. You can even practice how to handle these situations if the “worst-case scenario” were to occur. As your child begins to feel confident and prepared, their worries about new social situations will dissipate.

Make a “Bravery Ladder”

To create a bravery ladder, help your child identify steps that will help them gradually achieve a new skill or conquer fear. Think of it like learning to ride a bike starting with training wheels.

Source:
Big Life Journal (2022). 7 Ways to Encourage Your Child to Try New Things. Retrieved from   https://biglifejournal.com/blogs/blog/encourage-child-to-try-new-things. To read the article in its entirety click here.

Excursions

The Seashells visited Calmsley Farm this week. The build up to the excursion consisted of discussions, sharing of ideas and thoughts about what we might see and do as well as involvement in imaginative farm play and creative art works. 

The children and teachers travelled on the Emanuel School bus an exciting part of the trip.

Our excursion to the farm began with a tour of the farm nursery, where the children got to pat and look at lots of different baby farm animals. Afterwards we all had a go at milking a cow. We learnt about different kinds of cows, such as Brahman, Jersey and Highland. We visited the sleepy pigs and went on a very bumpy tractor ride around the farm. Other animals we saw were a camel, donkey, lamas, koalas, wallaby, wombat, turkeys, ducks, and chickens. After lunch, we had a stockwhip demonstration, followed by a working dog show, that herded all the sheep into an area and a sheep shearing show. Wow – so much in one day! It was a beautiful day and the Seashell children were engaged, enthusiastic and involved.

Thank you to all our fabulous parent helpers who accompanied us on the excursion.

Next week – on Tuesday and Thursday – the Starfish and Dolphins will visit Calmsley Farm.

Happy Birthday

We wish a very special and happy birthday to Aimee Schnapp (4), Joe Kummerfeld (4), Raphael Lopis (4), James Samway (4), Noah Eisman (5) and Joshua Goldstein (5). We also wish a very happy birthday to our two educators Lindi Bloch and Amanda Fraser. We hope you all had a very special birthday.