Fun Confidence-Building Activities to Do With Your 7-Year-Old Niece
The rain tapped against my kitchen window Wednesday afternoon when Lila showed up, duffel bag slung over her shoulder, unicorn hood pulled up over her wet hair. My sister was heading to a three-day work conference out of state, and I’d volunteered to host my 7-year-old niece, who’d started coming home from school lately with her drawings crumpled in the bottom of her backpack, saying she “didn’t want to play” when other kids invited her to games at recess. I’d been wracking my brain for things to do that weren’t just mindless tablet time or crowded trips to the fast food playground, and I wanted something that might help her loosen up, not just pass the time.
The first full day, I remembered a trick I’d heard from a first grade teacher friend: let the kid be the teacher. Lila had been raving for weeks about learning braids at summer day camp, so I pulled out my brush and a hair tie and asked her to teach me how to do a fishtail braid. I’m not good at hair stuff on a normal day, so it wasn’t even hard to mess up. I crossed the wrong strands three times in a row, dropped my hair tie twice, and kept saying “wait, slow down, I don’t get it, can you show me again?”
At first she giggled, like she thought I was being silly. But after the second mistake, she leaned in, grabbed the post-it note from my fridge that had my grocery list on it, tore off the blank half, and drew me a little diagram of the strands, labeling them one and two with her sparkly purple pen. When I finally got a halfway decent braid tied off at the end, she clapped her hands so hard her beaded bracelet fell off. That day I realized how often 7-year-olds are on the receiving end of instruction: adults tell them how to hold a pencil, how to line up, what color to use where. Giving her space to be the expert, to lead and correct me, shifted something. She didn’t mumble or look at her feet once the whole 20 minutes we worked on that braid. It’s a tiny thing, but it works way better than telling her “you’re great” over and over.
Later that day, I burned a batch of chocolate chip cookies I’d started while we were doing hair. Instead of tossing them straight in the trash, I suggested we start a mistake gallery. We taped a big piece of bulletin board paper to the empty side of my fridge, and added the burned cookie first. Next to it, we wrote what we learned: “Set a timer even if you think you’ll remember.” Lila immediately pulled that crumpled drawing I’d heard about out of her backpack— the one a boy in her class said was “too messy” because she colored the sky pink instead of blue— and taped it up. She wrote “I like pink skies” next to it in that wobbly 7-year-old handwriting. We added my lopsided braid (a photo I took, anyway) and the lopsided clay mug she’d made at school that she’d hidden in her duffel because the handle fell off once. By the end, the whole board was covered.
What I like about this activity is that it doesn’t require any fancy supplies, and it turns hiding mistakes into a game. 7-year-olds are just starting to care a lot about getting things right, between beginning skills tests and offhand peer comments, and they learn fast to hide anything that’s not perfect. Telling them “mistakes are okay” doesn’t stick half as well as taping a burned cookie to your fridge for everyone to see.
When the rain cleared the next afternoon, we went out front with a box of sidewalk chalk to make a compliment mural. The rule was every part of the mural had to be a compliment to someone we knew. Lila drew a giant purple dinosaur for her best friend Mia, because “Mia shares her gummy bears every snack time.” She drew a sun with a smile for her teacher Ms. Lee, because “Ms. Lee laughs at all my jokes even when they’re not funny.” When we finished all the people we could think of, I asked her where her part was. She hesitated, then drew a tiny flower in the corner. “That’s me,” she said. “I’m okay.” I handed her another piece of chalk and said “okay is good, but what do you like about you?” She thought for a minute, then made the flower three times bigger, covered it in sparkles, and wrote “I’m good at teaching braids” next to it.
This one’s small, but it helps kids practice naming their own good qualities, instead of only waiting for adults or other kids to praise them. Confidence that only comes from other people’s compliments falls apart when someone’s mean, but being able to name what you’re good at sticks with you.
That night, we did backwards dinner: Lila planned the whole thing, and we ate from dessert to appetizer instead of the other way around. We had vanilla ice cream with sprinkles first, then spaghetti, then raw carrot sticks. She even asked for sprinkles on her spaghetti, and I let her. It was as weird as it sounds, but she laughed so hard she snort-laughed, which my sister says only happens when she’s completely relaxed. Letting her make all the choices for a low-stakes silly activity gives her practice trusting her own judgment, instead of always waiting for an adult to say her choice is right. You don’t have to let a 7-year-old pick out a new car or anything, but letting them lead on something silly is easy and low-pressure.
When my sister came to pick Lila up on Sunday, Lila dragged her straight to the fridge to show off the mistake gallery, then outside to see the mural that had only faded a little from the night’s dew. She’s still quiet sometimes, still crumples up her drawings when someone says something offhand about them. These activities didn’t magically turn her into a bold, outgoing kid overnight, and I didn’t expect them to. But what they did do was give her small, low-pressure chances to practice feeling capable, to stop hiding the things that aren’t perfect, and to see her own strengths instead of only looking for other people’s approval.
We’re planning another weekend together next month, and Lila already dictated a text to me through my sister to say she’s gonna teach me how to do a cartwheel. I already know I’m gonna fall on my butt, and that’s exactly the point.
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