As a parent, I bet that raising a confident kid is pretty high on your parenting list. And it should be.

Raising kids who are confident and able to navigate the challenges that life brings is an important and noteworthy skill.

We have all confronted uncomfortable or difficult situations. I would wager that we haven’t always approached them with the utmost confidence. And that is painful! Because of this we want to somehow shield our children from experiencing this discomfort.

Is Shielding Our Children from Pain Beneficial?

As a teacher and coordinator in a busy middle school, I am given a unique perspective. I work with many children and their parents and I see how the actions of well-intentioned parents affect their children.

There are many parents who understandably wish to shield their children from experiencing pain. They want to ensure that their children don’t experience painful comments from other children or discomfort because of a grade.

It is certainly painful for a parent to see their child unhappy and distraught. But interestingly enough,  when parents allow their children to experience the consequences of their actions, they actually benefit. Unpleasant consequences (within reason) actually increase the confidence of the child!

This never means that we endanger our children in any way or put them in situations that they are not mature enough to navigate. However, if a child plays instead of studying for a test or doesn’t put his clothes in the hamper, we allow him to experience the pain or consequence that comes from his decision.

What this means is; If you think back to the experiences in your life that helped you to gain confidence, you might remember a painful experience. Although it was painful at the time, you gained important knowledge and growth as a result of the hardship.

I read the other day that Max Lerner, a famous journalist, once said:  “the turning point in the process of growing up is when you find the core of strength inside of yourself that survives all hurt.”

In other words in order to grow up, we have to experience pain and grow from it. This gives us the strength to stand up to future challenges.

Why Being Confident is Important

Why is being confident so important? Being confident allows us to do what we believe is right. A person may believe that something is correct but refrain from doing it because he lacks the confidence to carry through.

In addition, a child who is not confident may be reluctant to express him/herself when necessary. A person who is confident is more likely to accomplish goals and push through difficulties with resilience.

So how does one become confident and how do we as parents help our children become more confident?

Some parents make the mistake of intervening too much for their children. They try to protect their kids from all harm and consequences. If a child fails a test, the parents may feel that the teacher is responsible for the failure. If a child says something not nice or calls his/her child a name, the parents may call it bullying.

Social Interaction is not always bullying

We can understand a parent’s wish to overprotect his/her children. However, this does not produce confident children, but rather children who are continually dependent on a parent’s protection. It produces children who cannot accept the consequences of their actions and cannot fend for themselves. This is not what we want for our children!

Beneficial Involvement

So, should a parent refrain from any involvement in their children’s lives? Of course not! Our kids do need us to advocate for them and we need to be there to support them.

However being there for our children does not mean shielding them from life. We can help our children by supporting them and standing at their side. With sensitivity and love, we can help them to dissect painful incidents and replay scenes in order to help our kids understand where they went wrong. We can help our kids make a plan to do better next time.

Let’s say our child doesn’t do well on a test. Rather than chastising the child for not doing well we can say, “Ok you didn’t do well. It happens to everyone. Let’s see what went wrong.” We can ask our children if they studied. How long did they study? Did they understand the material? If not, did they ask for assistance?

If your child skipped some of the above steps, help your child understand those that were inadvertently left out. Then together with your child, decide what to do the next time s/he has a test. Here is where you do have to stand by your child and help him/her to follow through.

Ask your child’s teacher to let you know the next time your child has a test, or make sure that your child shares this information with you. Now, make sure that your child can access the plan (it should be written and easily accessible). Check in with your child from time to time to see if s/he is following the plan

If the results are good .. fantastic! If they could still be better – then help to tweak the plan.

Social Interactions

And the same is true when your child is having difficulty socially at school. And let’s be clear – I am not talking about bullying – bullying is a separate topic that should not be ignored and that I will address in another post. I am talking about normal social interactions when a child can sometimes be mean to another kid.

I have seen parents inflate negative interactions and verbally attack the parents of the offending child. Parents will demand that the perceived offender be thrown out of school, be sent to therapy and the list goes on.

We forget that kids often don’t tell parents the full story or what they said before the offending child responded.

Children who know that their parents will rush in to defend them for every injustice, never learn to develop the thick skin that is needed to interact effectively with the world.

Much more effective is having a conversation with your child or perhaps role-playing with him or her, to see how the situation could have played out differently.

If you do suspect bullying or just want to know the difference, here is a great book that really explains in detail the difference between bullying and normal social interaction. Carrie Goldman, the author, spoke at my school and has an extremely comprehensive understanding of the subject and what to do about it.

Experience Helps Us Grow

It is painful for parents to watch their kids experience failure and hurt. However, these experiences help us gain skills and grow into adults.

When parents are able to truly support their children and help them to understand their ability to learn from and correct their mistakes – they help their children to be confident and secure. Jumping in to protect children from all pain actually does the opposite, which is to encourage dependent children who lack the resilience to learn from their mistakes.

By standing by our children and helping them to understand the difficult situations that they may face, we do what is required to produce healthy and confident children.

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