5 Fun Low-Pressure Confidence-Building Activities To Do With Your 7-Year-Old Niece
The second Lila climbed into my minivan last Saturday, I knew it was one of those days. She twisted the sequin strap of her unicorn backpack so hard I thought it would snap, wouldn’t meet my eye, and mumbled that she’d flunked her spelling test and messed up the new step in ballet that everyone else already got. My sister had texted me on the way over saying she’d been hiding in her room after school lately, saying she “doesn’t want to do anything she’ll mess up.” I’d promised I’d take her for the day to give her mom a break, and I’d gone into it thinking we’d just get ice cream and watch a movie. But by the time we pulled onto the highway, I was brainstorming stuff that didn’t feel like cheering her up (which she hates) or trying to “fix” her confidence (which feels weird and forced).
We stopped at the grocery store for cookie mix and chocolate chips, and on the way in I suggested our first activity: the mistake bake off. “We make one batch of good cookies, and each of us has to purposefully mess up one thing in the second batch,” I said. She stopped twisting her backpack strap and stared. “We’re allowed to do that?” We got home, I added three extra tablespoons of salt to my mess up, and she dumped half a bottle of vanilla into hers. We left her messed up tray in the oven 15 minutes longer than we should have, just because we forgot when we were debating what to do next. The end result was a good batch that tasted fine, and a charred, salty weird batch that we broke up for the squirrels on the back fence. I didn’t say anything about how mistakes are okay. She just said, halfway through feeding squirrels, “that was way more fun than when my mom makes me bake for the school bake sale.”
After that we walked around the block for our second activity, the backwards scavenger hunt. Most scavenger hunts ask you to find stuff, this one asks you to give stuff away. I wrote the list on a scrap of paper: give a flower to someone, give a cookie to someone who’s working, leave a silly note for a neighbor, draw a picture for someone you don’t know very well. She hesitated when we saw the mail carrier pulling up to the house down the street, and hid behind my back for a second. I just said “we can go if you don’t want to, but I think he’d like the cookie.” She walked up, held it out, and when he said “wow, thank you kiddo, that’s the best thing I’ve gotten all day” she beamed so hard her cheeks turned pink. By the end of the walk, she was running ahead to leave a daisy on Mrs. Henderson’s porch without me asking. I’ve learned that confidence for 7 year olds doesn’t usually come from winning something. It comes from feeling like you have something to give that other people want. A lot of the time, kids this age are just on the receiving end of instructions and help, so getting to be the one who gives something small is huge. It doesn’t take any special gear, just a piece of paper and whatever you have lying around the house.
It started spitting rain halfway through the walk, so we ran back inside and dried off. For our third activity, I asked her what she’s an expert at that I don’t know anything about. She didn’t even hesitate: Pokémon. She dragged all her stuffed animals onto the coffee table to be the audience, got a piece of paper to draw her evolution diagrams, and gave me a whole 25 minute lesson on how to get every Eevee form. I made sure to ask lots of basic questions, like “which one is the strongest again?” and “can you get a water Eevee in the old games?” She answered every single one, no hesitation, even corrected me when I mispronounced Jolteon. I used to think generic praise like “you’re so smart” helps confidence, but this is way different. When you let them lead, when you actually listen to what they care about instead of just patting them on the head, they start believing they actually know something. It’s concrete. I didn’t have to tell her she was great; she could tell by the fact that I was asking her for help.
With 45 minutes left before my sister arrived, we pulled out my old costume bin from the guest closet for the bad outfit fashion show, our fourth activity. The only rule is you have to make the silliest, worst looking outfit you can, then model it down the hallway. She put my rain boots on her hands, tied a checkered scarf around her head like a hat, and wore my old college homecoming t-shirt as a dress. I wore a prom dress backwards and a baseball catcher’s mask. We walked to the end of the hallway, struck a pose, and cheered for each other. She used to refuse to let me take pictures of her because she said she “looked weird” in them, but this time she asked me to take a dozen to send to her mom.
When my sister pulled up, Lila ran out to the car chattering, clutching the charred cookie she’d saved to show her mom and the photo of her bad outfit pulled up on my phone. She still gets nervous. The next day she had her spelling retest, and she texted me (with her mom’s help) that she still thought she’d mess up. But she added that if she did, we could do another mistake bake off next weekend. These things don’t fix shyness or nervousness overnight, and I don’t expect them to. They’re just small, fun things that don’t feel like work, that let a kid who’s feeling like she’s bad at everything remember that messing up isn’t scary, and that she has lots of stuff to offer. Last night I got a photo of her spelling test: she got a B. She drew a lumpy, lopsided bad cookie on the bottom of the paper.
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