Self-Confidence

“I am not smart”, “I always finish last”, “I don’t look as good as ______.” Do these comments sound familiar? These types of comments can be very hard to hear as a parent. We all want our kids to have self-confidence. First of all, if this is your child, it is not your fault, however, as a parent it is our responsibility to help and support our kids. My child struggles with confidence and often compares himself to others. I have done some research into this, and I found a podcast called “Good Inside” by Dr. Becky. One of her episodes (ep170) is about self-confidence. One thing that resonated with me was her definition of self-confidence: “it feels ok to be ourselves as we are with the wide range of feelings inside of us.” In the episode she talks about how as a parent it is not our job to talk our children out of their uncomfortable voices of self-doubt, but to help them get acquainted with all of their voices. By normalizing that we all have many different types of voices, it helps our kids feel seen and heard. We can help our kids understand that the self-doubt voice is just one of the many voices and we can teach them how to recognize when it arises and watch it pass. For example, “I’m thinking that I am not as smart as my friend right now. My self-doubt voice is showing up. This will pass.” By recognizing and giving all feelings a voice, they will start to defuse. If we ignore and repress feelings, they will tend to get bigger and stick around for longer. I have found that this is a process, but validating all of our child’s feelings helps them to feel safe and secure.

Dr. Becky podcast: https://www.goodinside.com/podcast/

Dr. Becky website (link to book and workshops): https://www.goodinside.com/about/

Tips for Raising Confident Kids from the Child Mind Institute: https://childmind.org/article/12-tips-raising-confident-kids/