Fun Confidence-Building Activities for 7-Year-Old Girls: What I Tried With My Niece That Actually Worked
Last month, I pulled up to my sister’s house to pick up my 7-year-old niece Lila for our monthly weekend outing, and Lila climbed into the backseat without her usual running commentary on her new hamster or the bad juice they serve at school. She tucked her neon purple fanny pack tight under her arm and stared out the window, and my sister mouthed to me from the porch: Dance recital. Messed up her solo. Won’t talk about it.
I’d planned to take her to the new arcade downtown, which she’d been begging for for weeks. When I asked if she still wanted to go, she mumbled “I’ll just mess up the basketball game. I always miss the hoop.” I didn’t push. I turned onto the side road that leads to my house instead of the highway, and said “Okay, new plan. I don’t feel like going anywhere I have to be good at stuff either. What if we just mess around?”
We started with a walk on the wooded trail near my house, and I offhandedly suggested a bad idea scavenger hunt. I explained the rules (or lack thereof): we each get 10 minutes, you get points for finding the most ridiculous thing you can. Ugly rock, leaf that looks like a booger, cloud that looks like a pizza with too much pepperoni. And since it was her bad day, she got to be the head judge—whatever she said counted, no arguments from me.
She perked up immediately. Ten minutes later, she came trotting back holding a lumpy gray rock that looked exactly like a rotten banana, and held it up like it was a Olympic gold medal. She found a two-headed dandelion she named “monster dandelion” and gave herself 15 extra points for it. At the end, she declared herself the winner by a mile, and I didn’t argue. I’d never thought of it that way before, but most kid activities are all about following rules and getting the right answer. Even when we let kids win, they can usually tell we’re going easy on them. But when you let them make the rules? There’s no way to lose. They get to call the shots for once, and no one can tell them they did it wrong. I didn’t have to gush about how great she was to build her confidence—she already knew she was the best at finding ridiculous things.
Back at my house, we split a bag of goldfish crackers and drank too-sweet lemonade, and Lila started talking about her recital costume. The dance teacher had picked out a big frilly tulle skirt, and Lila said it was so full she couldn’t see her feet— that’s why she tripped. We had a stack of plain paper grocery bags by the recycling bin, a pack of dried-out markers, and a half roll of ribbon left from Christmas wrapping. I said why don’t you make your own perfect tap costume?
She spent 45 minutes cutting and gluing and coloring. She cut the bag into a swing skirt, glued ribbon for straps, colored the whole thing neon pink, and cut a big pocket in the front for her fruit snacks. She even drew little tap shoes on the bottom of the bag for the “foot part.” When it was done, we pulled up her recital song on my phone, and she did the whole routine in my living room. When she got to the spot she’d tripped on the real stage, she stumbled on purpose, took a deep bow, and laughed so hard she snort-laughed. This isn’t rocket science, but it stuck with me. I used to think we needed fancy craft kits or expensive outings to do something meaningful, but this was all stuff I already had lying around. The point wasn’t to make a good costume—it was to let her fix something that felt wrong to her. She got to make it exactly how she wanted it, no notes from a teacher, no adjusting it to fit someone else’s idea of what a recital costume should be. That small sense of control matters more than any compliment.
After that, I remembered Lila watches 20 minutes of slime tutorials every night before bed, so I told her I’ve tried to make slime three times and it’s always either too runny or turns into a hard brick. Can you teach me how to do it right? She lit up like I’d asked her to solve a world problem. She lined up all the supplies on my coffee table, walked me through every step, corrected me when I poured too much glue, and told me the secret pro trick is to add extra glitter no matter what the recipe says. When we finished, we had a lumpy glittery slime that was actually pretty good, and she put it in a little jar to take home for her hamster to “play with.”
This is the trick I’ll keep going back to, honestly. When kids get to be the expert, that builds way more confidence than any amount of “great job!” from an adult. Praise can feel like you’re just being nice, especially when they just messed up something they cared about. But when you actually need their help, when you let them show you how to do something they know that you don’t? That’s real proof they can do hard things. It doesn’t have to be slime, either. If your kid likes Roblox, ask them to teach you how to build a house. If they like drawing, ask them to teach you how to draw a unicorn that looks like the ones they draw. It’s low effort, it’s silly, and it doesn’t feel like a “confidence building exercise” to them—it just feels like fun.
Before she left that night, Lila pulled her actual tap shoes out of her neon fanny pack—she’d snuck them in, and I don’t think she even planned to take them out. She put them on and did her whole solo for my sister and me in the living room, and when she got to the trip spot, she nailed it. She still says she doesn’t want to do a solo next year, and that’s fine. She already asked if we can do the bad idea scavenger hunt again next weekend, because she wants to find a rock that looks like a rotten egg this time. It didn’t magically make all her insecurity go away, and it’s not a permanent fix. But it gave her a couple hours to stop worrying about messing up, and that’s more than enough for right now.
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