Confidence Building Role Play Activities

Confidence is an ability of a person when he/she is sure of being able to handle any situation that life may present before him/her. Confidence is built over a period of time and the amount of confidence that you possess as an adult has its roots in your actions during your childhood. Kids who are growing up also encounter many situations and those that they are able to handle help them build their confidence. However, to complete the holistic confidence building of the kids, we need to present them with real-life situations. Role play activities play an important role to this regard. These activities encourage kids to take cognizance of the situation, put themselves in it, think like how another person would and act/speak/provide solutions as the person they are impersonating.

 The steps to create perfect confidence building role playing activities are:

1.                   Identify the situation for e.g. think of a situation like setting up an emergency room in the hospital.

2.                   Provide the small details. For e.g. provide a bed, first aid box, medicines and resources available with the doctor, escalation numbers etc.

3.                   Assign the roles like that of the Senior Doctor, the Resident Doctor, Nurse, Helper, Patient, relatives of the patient and so on.

4.                   Act the Role Play: All the students act according to their assigned roles and probe each other through interrogation, argument, conflict redressal and problem solving so as to create a complex situation.

5.                   Discussion: The post role play discussion is important to understand the learning that the exercise brought about. The more students talk about it, the more confidence and adept they will feel in a similar situation in the future.

Confidence building as a result of role play is the most common feeling that the students will experience. A plethora of role-play based fun activities for kids will lead them to believe in their ability to handle difficult situations and come out as a winner. Apart from just the know-how of the situation, role playing activities are known to be beneficial in perspective building, anxiety control and language development also. Some ideas for confidence building role playing activities are listed as under:

• ·         Turning down an invitation of a close friend’s party
  
• ·         Redressal  of non-payment of bills in a local Court
  
• ·         Altercation with a traffic policeman
  
• ·         Job interview
  
• ·         Stock Exchange Situation
  
• ·         Handling an accident/Emergency
  

Many psychologists have stated that role-play based kids learning games help in building positive self esteem and self image. These are the virtues that are needed to handle situations in the adult life also. Finding the right words to speak and an expression to your thoughts is the most exhilarating feeling and this itself builds a great amount of confidence in an individual. Pretend play is the easier version of role play and subconscious engagement in pretend play starts in early years of our life. As toddlers and thereafter young children, if the parents encourage the children to engage in challenging role play, they are providing them with an extremely conducive learning atmosphere.