Why doing science experiments with your daughter can boost her confidence


Parenting, ey? Some days you love it, some days you hate it, but you wouldn’t change it for the world. After all, you are literally in charge of a tiny human, and that is your awesome job for the rest of your life. You get to share incredible experiences with your son and daughter, you get to shape their lives, and your life is dramatically changed in the process. I mean, there is nothing like it! Because most children spend much of their childhood at school, most parents think that they don’t need to teach their kids when they get home from school – but that just isn’t the case. In fact, doing science experiments with your daughter can actually boost her confidence…

Pushing them into a corner

In schools across the globe and within society as a whole, young children are pushed into a corner based on their gender. Girls are expected to focus on subjects such as English, history, and art, while boys are expected to focus of math, science, and technology. This is a genuine problem for our children as this is stopping both girls and boys the chance to show off their skills outside of these subjects. Because of this, more and more schools are trying to introduce STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) to all of their students – but especially the young women of their generation. Yet, it seems as though this doesn’t just come down to schools and teachers, because parents can also bring this passion into their home.

Why doing science experiments with your daughter can boost her confidence

An important study

In fact, an impressive study that was published in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology has noted that learning about STEM at home is a great way to boost your daughter’s confidence. This is especially true if you get involved with science experiments. This study involved 96 6-year-olds that were divided into three groups that were a mixture of girls and boys.

The children in the first group were told to program a robot, a task that was then followed by a sequence of question. The children in the second group were asked to play a storytelling card game and then were asked the same questions. In the third and final group, the children were just asked the questions. The psychologists discovered that the young women who programmed the robots were much more confident about answering the questions, as well as their own abilities when it comes to robotics and programming. Those who didn’t play with the robot were extremely unconfident and struggled to answer the questions.

Why doing science experiments with your daughter can boost her confidence

An equal chance

Another interesting discovery that came from the experiment was that the researchers found that the level of excitement for the robots was just as high in the girls as it was for the boys. This shows that there really is no difference when it comes to children’s’ ability to understand and enjoy STEM subjects. These study has proved that girl’s need to be given an equal chance to partake in these subjects, and that doing science experiments at home can drastically improve the confidence levels of your daughter.

These experiments do not need to be difficult or dangerous, but just need to be interesting enough to spark an interest in their minds. It’s also a great way to bond with your daughter – so what could be better than that? Making these experiments fun and entertaining is the best way to show that the stereotypes they live with are not correct. If girls want to be scientists, they can be scientists!

Have you ever thought about doing science experiments with your daughter? Well, it seems as though you’ve got your plans sorted for this weekend…

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