Raising Confident Kids
What your kids need
Raising confident kids is something that most parents aspire to. I’ve recently been reflecting on what it means for a child to be confident because I’m updating my course on this topic. If your child is confident, what do you actually see?
What does a confident child look like?
The first thing that comes to mind for me, is that as they get older, they’ll become more and more “comfortable in their own skin”. They’ll be willing to be themselves and be honest about their feelings, likes, and dislikes, (while still being considerate of others’ feelings), regardless of popular opinion amongst their peers or society at large.
Notice I’ve used future tense here. Confidence is often built over time, so even if your child is tentative when younger, they can grow to be confident as they get older with some support. And of course, no one is confident all the time.
In a confident child, you might see a tendency toward saying, “I can” instead of “I can’t”. Also, the word “authenticity” comes to mind. For myself, raising a child who was confident enough to live authentically from his heart was a key motivating factor in all the decisions I made about how to raise my son.
One of the key characteristics of someone who is confident, or gaining confidence, is a growing ability to make an accurate appraisal of themselves and their skills and competencies. This is often harder than it sounds, and takes time to develop. It’s a middle road between having an inflated or overconfident sense of self vs being too apprehensive to use the skills they’ve developed. It includes developing realistic expectations of themselves more so than perfectionistic. Kids find the middle of the road through their experiences, and they may zig zag back and forth between being either overconfident or apprehensive as they find their way. That’s common.
All of these attributes need time and support to grow. They’re part of a child’s development; they don’t happen overnight. Contrary to popular belief, these attributes also don’t develop from praising your child.
Copying other kids is sometimes part of the journey
Sometimes parents worry when their child copies another child, but that doesn’t necessarily mean your child won’t grow up to follow their heart authentically. I remember when my son was in grade 2, and he came home from school one day with a drawing he’d made. The students had been asked to draw their favorite activity. He drew himself playing hockey. He’d never played hockey, but it was his best friend’s favorite sport. I smiled inwardly, but also had a bit of anxiety because instead of sharing his own favorite activity, he’d copied his friend. I worried that he might not be confident enough to be himself.
As it turns out, kids often try on different stories about who they are and what they believe about themselves. The process of developing a sense of “self” often happens with trial and error, and may include ”trying on” different images of self–and keeping them or discarding them depending on how they feel. That continues through the teen years and early adulthood.
What are some of the conditions and attributes needed to stay true to themselves?
They include, but aren’t limited to:
- Awareness of self — knowing how they feel
- Acceptance of themselves (their whole self) by their tribe. The tribe is their family when they’re young, and transitions to their peer group when they’re older. If they’ve experienced a lot of acceptance for all of themselves (not just the well-behaved parts), they’ll be more likely to stand up for themselves and remain true to themselves. That doesn’t mean not setting limits or condoning bad behavior; acceptance means accepting their experience and understanding their struggle.
- The ability to try on different images of themselves and be fully accepted during that process.
Connection to their feelings and the ability to know how they feel–that’s how they can tell whether something resonates for them.
At the end of the day, one of the most important conditions for supporting your child to be confident is that you accept them for who they are.
What does a confident child look like to you? And what are your deepest desires in terms of nurturing confidence and authenticity in your child?
If you feel inspired to share, I’d love to hear from you in the comments. ❤️
