Confidence impacts on all aspects of life, the success that can come from it and how we experience our failures. Research shows that girls confidence levels drop dramatically before and during puberty, and without strategies to address this, that confidence gap can be hard to recover. This is our article of the week because today’s girls are tomorrow’s leaders, and we want every girl out there to have the best chance of success (and the tips seem pretty good for boys too). We encourage you to read the full article here.
Extract: Tween and teen girls face an added challenge because their confidence is already plummeting during those years. Of course, puberty is a turbulent time for confidence in both genders. But girls experience a much more significant, dramatic drop…
Between the ages of 8 and 14, girls’ confidence levels fall by 30 percent. At 14, when girls are hitting their low, boys’ confidence is still 27 percent higher. And the effects can be long lasting. So how can you spot the signs of this confidence plunge in your daughter? She may grow more unwilling to take risks, to try something new, to fail. It might be a reluctance to speak up in class, to try out for a new sport or put herself out there with an unfamiliar classmate. Overthinking, people-pleasing and perfectionism typically kick in, effectively grinding her confidence to a halt.