Confidence is something we all
aspire to. The confidence to speak our
mind, the confidence to take the risk, the confidence to trust our
instinct. But what exactly is confidence?
According to Dr Becky Kennedy,
Clinical Psychologist, confidence is self-trust. Confidence is the ability to
trust ourselves, trust our instincts, trust that we are making the right
decisions. When we don’t understand
something to trust that that is OK and put our hand up, when something doesn’t
feel right to trust our instinct and take the relevant action.
This is what we want for
ourselves and this is what we want for our children. But how do we get there and how do we support
our children to get there.
We start with small moments. When our child comes homes from school in
tears and explains to us that they feel sad because they were picked last for
the football team what is our default -
to immediately make them feel better. We
often do this by minimising their feeling – “you don’t feel that bad”, “I think you might be over-reacting a little
bit” Does this sound familiar? It does to me. We find it hard (and sometimes
frustrating) to see our kids struggling and we want to move them through the
emotion as quickly as possible.
Sometimes we even believe that if we stay with the emotion, we will make
it worse by paying attention to it.
Here's the dilemma – we want to
build confidence and we recognise that confidence is underpinned by a high
level of self-trust – and yet when our kids come home with real sadness about
being left out or real frustration about not being picked for the team – we
essentially tell them that they are overreacting. When this happens every now and then (because
we are human) it doesn’t matter but when this happens over and over again we
erode their trust in their own feelings.
“I think I am feeling sad but my
parents are telling me that I’m fine and there is nothing to be sad about. So maybe I am not sad and maybe there is
nothing to be sad about”
Over time our children will learn
not to trust their feelings or their instincts.
And maybe sometime in the future they will be in a situation that
doesn’t feel safe but when this feeling shows up they will dismiss it because
their feelings have been wrong so many times in the past so why would they feel
confident trusting themselves.
Start small. The next time our kid come home from school
and tells us they are feeling angry about something that has happened, believe
them. Each time that you validate their
feelings you are building their self-trust which is where their confidence comes
from.
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