Fun Confidence Building Activities to Do With Your 7-Year-Old Niece: What Worked For Me
The rain was spitting on the windshield when my 7-year-old niece Lila dragged her feet to my car last month, shoulders hunched so far forward her hood swallowed half her face. When I asked how her school art show went, she mumbled that hers was bad and all the other girls’ unicorns had perfect horns. She wouldn’t even let me see the photo my sister sent, just stared at her scuffed sneakers the whole drive to my house. My sister had mentioned a week earlier that Lila had stopped raising her hand in class, even when she knew the answer—she was too scared of getting it wrong in front of everyone. I’d originally planned to stop for ice cream and distract her, but on a whim I pulled into the dollar store parking lot and told her we were ditching the plan.
I gave her a $5 bill and told her to pick the weirdest, cheapest supplies she could find. We ended up with torn neon construction paper, half-dried glitter glue, and a bag of mismatched googly eyes. Back at my house, I spread newspaper over the kitchen table and told her the only rule: we had to make something intentionally bad. No perfect unicorns allowed. She stared at me like I’d grown a second head for 10 seconds, then snickered and scribbled a flower with 12 legs and one giant googly eye. I drew a dog with wings for ears and a banana for a tail. We hung our finished “art” on my fridge and gave each other silly awards: I gave her the “Most Likely to Scare a Houseplant” trophy, she gave me the “Worst Smelling Glue” award. No one won, no one lost, and by the end Lila was laughing so hard she snort-laughed. Ten minutes later, she pulled out her kid-sized phone and showed me her unicorn. The horn was lopsided, sure, but she’d colored the mane with 12 different crayons she’d picked out special. “It’s bad but I like the mane,” she said. I told her I liked it too.
That afternoon made me realize most of the “confidence building” tips I’d seen online were all about praising kids more or pushing them to try new hard things. But Lila didn’t need more praise—she needed to stop caring so much about being perfect. We’ve kept up low-stakes, silly activities since then, and I’ve seen a small but noticeable shift in how she talks about herself.
One of our go-tos now is the $5 garage sale challenge. My neighborhood has a cluster of small garage sales every first Saturday of the month, and I give Lila exactly five dollars, no strings attached. The rule is I don’t get a say in what she buys. The first time we did it, she hovered in front of a box of stuffed animals for 10 minutes, turning a rabbit over and over, and kept asking “do you like this? Is this a good buy?” I just shrugged and said “it’s your money.” She ended up buying a chipped, earless ceramic rabbit for two dollars, and it still sits on my kitchen windowsill. Last month, she bought a box of half-missing LEGOs for three dollars, and we spent an hour building whatever we wanted with no instructions. She designed a rocket hotel for snails and told me exactly where to put the slide. I wanted to shift the angle to make it sturdier, but I didn’t—I did exactly what she said. The thing is, 7-year-olds spend almost all day being told what to do: how to hold their pencil, what color to use, where to sit at lunch. Letting them call the shots on something small and silly, something that doesn’t matter if it’s “right,” teaches them to trust their own choices instead of waiting for an adult to approve them. It’s not about the rabbit or the LEGOs—it’s about her learning that her opinion counts, even when it’s not what someone else would pick.
Another thing we do when she sleeps over is Mistake Tea (it’s actually hot cocoa with extra marshmallows, she just likes calling it tea). We sit on the living room floor and take turns sharing the worst mistake we made that week. I always go first. Last week I told her I accidentally turned in the wrong report to my boss, had to apologize and resend it, and it was awkward but nothing bad happened. The week before that I told her I got lost on a hike and had to ask a teen for directions, even though I swore I knew where I was going. Lila started out only sharing tiny things, like coloring outside the lines on a worksheet, but last week she told me she was scared to try out for the school play because she’d forget her lines. I didn’t jump in to tell her she’d be great or that she shouldn’t be scared. I just said “that makes sense. I get nervous before I have to talk in front of people too.” Kids don’t need you to fix their fear right away. They just need to know it’s normal to mess up, and that people won’t think less of you when you do.
Last Friday, Lila climbed into my car and told me she’d raised her hand in class that day, got the answer wrong, and just shrugged it off. “Everyone else got it wrong too,” she said, like it was no big deal. We stopped at the dollar store on the way home, and she picked out a pack of neon pipe cleaners to make more bad art. She still hides behind my sister when she meets new people, and she still pouts when she loses at Uno. I don’t expect these silly activities to turn her into some outgoing, fearless kid overnight. But it’s working, slow and steady. She’s a little less scared to be wrong, a little more willing to put her ideas out there. That’s more than enough for right now.
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