I’ve been fighting a battle for years -teaching my kids how to be confident in themselves. It’s been a very slow process teaching the kids not to look at something as simply dangerous, but to evaluate the situation and work out how to deal with it.
My oldest daughter is naturally afraid of a lot of things -spiders, heights, the dentist, etc. yet she has the ability to recognise she is afraid of something, and then sets out to overcome these fears.
She is basically a bookworm at heart, so it was a surprise when she asked to learn how to ride a motorcycle!
Eventually after a few disasters with a road bike (daughter was OK, bike suffered gravel rash, etc), I got her onto an offroad bike and some professional lessons. she very nearly gave up after her first crash and it took an hour of encouragement to get her back on the bike again.
After that, we got her onto the learners track, where she got stuck at a slight incline. the bike was simply stalling because she was so nervous about using the throttle…
From then on she rode around the learners track all day, and several more days after that. She was as slow as a wet week, but was very consistent, and her laptimes slowly got better. She is now quite fast due to sheer repetition and has now got to the point where I struggle to keep up with her, especially if it’s been raining.
I feel that I have finally won the battle for confidence thou.
Last week we went on holiday, and after some discussion we jumped out of a perfectly good plane at 12,000ft. this gives you 40 seconds of freefall before the parachute is deployed. (it was a tandem skydive, where you are attached to a professional skydiver).
This week she went to the dentist with absolutely no hesitation. (Mum used to spend hrs trying to console her about it)
Uncoffined 