Rethinking the Confidence Conversation With Kids

How to nurture real confidence in your child

Source: ©iStock/kali9/Used with permission

We all want our children to feel confident, trust themselves, override anxiety, and step out with a strong stride in life into whatever it is they are pursuing—whether giving their all in a sport, speaking up against a bully, or giving a book report. But what happens when they don’t? How we talk to our kids when that strong stride isn’t the foot they step out with may just matter more than how we praise them when things work out well.

Don’t Let Your Doubt Spill Over to Your Child

Here’s the thing: Our children’s doubt can lead us to doubt them. When we see our kids hesitate, doubt themselves, worry, or struggle, it sets off something. Something in us. A contagion of doubt. Of anxiety. Let’s call it a moment of “doubt-a-deux.” Instead of seeing your child’s self-doubt as a specific, surmountable, and very human experience, our doubt about our kid’s doubt pushes its way from the back of our mind to the front and right out our mouths. If they can’t do this, how will they ever be able to do that later? We do exactly what we tell our kids not to do. We go big, we go all or none. We blurt out the global characterization: “You need to be more confident!” As if this moment represents all moments. The unfortunate irony is, the more that well-meaning parents say this, the faster you see whatever confidence was there drain from a child’s face. Not only are they struggling with whatever is going on in that moment, they have another, bigger problem—they apparently lack confidence!

If We Don’t Want Our Kids to Think All-or-None About Their Abilities, We Can’t Either

This came into clear focus for me recently in a session I had with a young boy struggling with OCD. I’ll call him Tommy. At 11 years old, Tommy, a bright, talented child, was plagued by doubts about micro-decisions in his day. Did he wash his hands enough? Was the expiration date OK? Was it OK to use this fork if it might have touched his phone? As is common with OCD, Tommy would turn to his parents with these questions and ask for reassurance that he was still safe despite these concerns.

Tommy, who is also a little socially anxious, did a great job talking with me through the whole session about how to handle these disruptive and unnecessary roadblocks thrown up by his OCD brain. Translating my ideas into his own terms, he said, “Oh so OCD is like that nudgy kid at school who just gets into your head saying, “Why are you doing that? Why did you do that? You’d be fine with what you were doing, it’s just that kid makes you question yourself.”

“Bingo,” I said.

At the end of this great session, Tommy’s dad joined us for the summary. Feeling great about his work, Tommy explained his plan to override the “doubter” part of his brain. His dad, missing the beat, said to me, “I just wish he could be more confident.” I watched the confidence that was right there in Tommy, two seconds before, drain from his face—the wind out of his sails.

Darn, oh gosh—don’t you just hate those moments?

Now I know OCD is not every child’s issue, but the lesson is the same. Doubt visits everyone and it often grabs the microphone first. But we have to be mindful of our own doubt and fears and put them aside. Confidence and doubt aren’t in a duel to cancel each other out. They peacefully coexist; it’s just a matter of which department gets the microphone. The presence of doubt and fear doesn’t mean that other departments—curiosity, wisdom, and yes, even confidence—disappear or don’t exist, they just aren’t online… yet.

Don’t Let Doubt Define Your Child, Because It Doesn’t

Doubt and curiosity flow back and forth. They don’t have to transform into a confident person. They have what they need. They just need to see the doubt as a first draft of their ability to handle a situation. When parents tell kids they wish they were more confident, kids can feel embarrassed, judged and stuck. They become the poster child for low self-esteem. Kind of like when kids are told they’re shy. It feels like something they are stuck with and can’t change.

What do we do instead? How do we nurture confidence in moments of doubt? There are some easy fixes. Here are some ideas for what to say when your child is struggling:

1. Empathize with your child and normalize what’s happening: “This is hard, I can see that. It’s hard when you don’t know what to do, or aren’t sure you can. I feel that way too sometimes. Some things are hard especially at first.
2. Encourage your child to think in twos: “What is worry/doubt saying to you about the situation? What do you really think about it?”
3. Think small; get specific: “What’s the hardest part of this situation to you? What worries you the most?”
4. Lower the stakes, encourage asking for help when needed: Kids can not know some or all of what to do. That just means they need to find out, it doesn’t mean they’ve failed. You can ask: “What parts do you understand? What feels manageable? What parts don’t you know? What parts do you need help with? What do you want to try?”
5. Encourage self-advocacy: “If this were working better for you, what would be happening? What do you need to get there? Ideas? Encouragement? Practice? Space?”
6. Be patient: Some times what looks to parents like doubt or uncertainty is really kids taking their time to gather their thoughts. (I was that kid and I am that adult.) If there is a pause, just ask—“Do you need time because you’re thinking or would you like my help?”

Your Confidence in Your Child Helps Them Find Theirs

When our children are demonstrating to us what looks like “not confidence,” we can encourage kids in a new way if we can have confidence to think according to a growth mindset and see every moment as part of a larger process of growth, rather than a halting, damaging derailment of their self-esteem. We can pin the problem on the true problem: “I can see there are a lot of doubting thoughts taking over!” or, “You’re not sure what to do and that’s OK, take your time,” or, “Is there another part of you that has an idea of how to handle this?” This helps us to create the very pathways that we want our kids to take when they are feeling unsure. We can point out those pathways, help our kids walk them, and then over time they will be paved shortcuts that kids know to take when inevitably doubt gets there first.

It would save them many rides on the “What’s wrong with me, why can’t I?” loop. And instead, their reasonableness or even-handedness in the challenging moment could actually allow them to learn and potentially perform better because they are not so stressed out thinking they have to prove themselves, or that their entire worth is riding on this very moment when it isn’t.

Recognize Your Child’s Strengths and Consult Them

All kids have areas of immediate confidence and ease. It’s wonderful to see your child who is technically inclined tackling a computer problem that you wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole, or to see your child singing on stage—belting it out—when you wouldn’t dare leave the stands. Psychologist Robert Brooks talks about how every child has “islands of competence,” but they might not value these unless we recognize them and consult their “expertise.” Knowing their strengths helps kids not forget their value when something is hard. They understand that their worth doesn’t just suddenly fall through a trap door when they struggle or even experience failure. Your child’s worth is a constant through these temporary ups and down of frustration. This understanding of how confidence and abilities work builds resilience and self-esteem.

We, as parents, don’t want to promote the idea that confidence is something out there that our kids magically have to get more of. Confidence comes from within. It comes from disconnecting the links to doubt and connecting with the inner departments of wisdom, believing that it is safe to try and knowing they can mess up and learn from it, because life is a process and there’s always room to grow. That goes for parents, too. We can get better at our own doubt management, and that will help our kids do the same. Think of it as “confidence-a-deux.”

Here’s to less worry and more connections to inner confidence, all around.

©2024 Tamar Chansky, Ph.D.