Fun, Low-Prep Confidence-Building Activities to Try With Your 7-Year-Old Niece
The door to my apartment clicked shut behind my sister last month, and 7-year-old Lila squeezed my hand so tight her knuckles went white. She was staying with me for four days while my sister attended a work conference out of state, and while she’d visited a dozen times, she still defaulted to hanging back, nodding when I asked what she wanted to do, mumbling “whatever” when I offered snack options. My sister had texted me a week before: “She’s been so scared to raise her hand in class, even when she knows the answer. Any fun stuff you can do that might help her feel a little surer of herself?” I’d promised I’d think of something, but all the “confidence building activities” I found online felt like either expensive camp or forced awkwardness, like making her order food by herself when she’s clearly not ready.
On our second afternoon, after we’d already binged one too many Bluey episodes and eaten too many goldfish crackers, I remembered a silly little game my old roommate used to play with her niece. It’s a reverse scavenger hunt: instead of you giving the kid a list of things to find, the kid gives you a list, and they’re the boss of the whole game. I grabbed a notebook and a pencil from my junk drawer and handed them to Lila. “You have 10 minutes to write down five things you can find somewhere in my apartment. Then I have to find them, and you get to mark me wrong if I get it wrong.” At first she stared at the page like I’d asked her to solve a third grade math problem. No one had ever let her make the rules for a game before.
Slowly she started scribbling, adding little doodles next to each item. Her list was: 1. A pen that doesn’t work. 2. A sock with a hole in it. 3. A photo of a dog. 4. A cookie that has chocolate in the middle. 5. A blanket that’s softer than mine. I pretended I couldn’t find the dead pen for three whole minutes, and she laughed so hard she snort-laughed, leaning over the couch to point right at the junk drawer where I keep them. When I brought her the holey sock I keep for cleaning glass, she declared me a 3/5, which meant she won the game. That night when I texted my sister, I realized what made that game work: it was low stakes. There was no wrong way to make the list. She got to be in charge for once, instead of following what everyone else wanted. Most small kids don’t get that a lot. Adults are always telling them where to go, what to do, what the right answer is. This was just 20 minutes where her call was final.
After dinner that night, we did another thing I thought up on the spot: she tells me a story, I type it up word for word, no corrections. She’s obsessed with unicorns right now, so her story was about a unicorn named Lila who wouldn’t join the other unicorns at pony camp because she thought her horn was too curly. At the end, her curly horn glowed bright enough to lead the whole camp out of a dark storm, and all the other unicorns told her it was the best horn they’d ever seen. I didn’t correct her when she said the storm was made of rainbow jelly, I just typed it. We printed it out on my printer, drew a crayon cover, and taped it to my fridge next to my grocery list. When I offered to fold it up and put it in her backpack to take home, she shook her head. “Leave it here so everyone who comes to your house can see it.” That’s the small thing I didn’t expect: writing down her ideas word for word, no edits, makes them feel real, makes her feel seen. It’s better than just saying “that’s a great story” because she can touch it, see it, show it off. You don’t have to be a good writer to do this, you just have to listen.
I did mess up once, though. I tried one of those fancy obstacle courses I saw on Pinterest, jumping over couch cushions, limbo under a broomstick. Lila stood at the start line and crossed her arms and said she didn’t want to do it, she was bad at jumping and she’d fall. I immediately scrapped the whole thing, and asked her to make an obstacle course for me instead. She spent 20 minutes rearranging all my pillows and moving my coffee table to make “the hardest obstacle course ever made.” I tripped over the extra pillow she’d put right at the start, and she cheered like I’d just lost the world championship. I didn’t have to win to make her feel good. She got to design the whole thing, so she was already winning before I even started.
Most of the time, when people talk about building confidence in kids, they talk about big stuff: getting them on sports teams, making them talk to new people, forcing them to order their own food at a restaurant. For a kid who’s already shy, that just feels like pressure. All the things that worked with Lila are small, they’re behind closed doors, there’s no audience, no pressure to be good. You don’t need any fancy supplies, just whatever you already have in your house. The unwritten rule for all of them is simple: the kid calls the shots, no corrections, no “better” ways to do it. Let them be the judge, let them make the rules, let their ideas be the whole point.
When my sister came to pick her up four days later, Lila dragged her straight to the fridge to show off her story. Last weekend, we went out for ice cream, and when the cashier asked her what flavor she wanted, she didn’t mumble “whatever” this time. She looked right at the menu and said “chocolate with sprinkles, please.” She still hides behind my sister’s leg when we run into people she doesn’t know at the grocery store. She still won’t raise her hand to read out loud at school, at least not most days. But small changes add up. Next weekend she’s coming back to stay, and she already told me she’s going to make a second story to tape next to the first one. I still have the notebook with her scavenger hunt list sitting on my coffee table. I’m not rushing anything. We’re just having fun, and that’s enough.
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