The secret to raising confident kids
Actions speak louder than words.
How many times have you heard that the secret to success is “believing in yourself”? How many famous people’s stories have ultimately boiled down to their mindset, their belief that they could accomplish anything?
It’s an idea so prevalent it feels like second-nature — that self-esteem is the prerequisite to a successful life.
And it’s an idea that puts a lot of pressure on parents to make their kids feel great about themselves (and avoid anything that might make them feel bad about themselves).
But we’ve got it all backwards.
Kids don’t need to believe in themselves before they can do things. Doing things is what makes them believe in themselves.
Here’s what we mean:
The actions that build self-esteem
So what, exactly, do we recommend kids do to build their self-esteem? What kinds of actions count?
Well, we’re not talking about “doing” in the extraordinary sense. Your child doesn’t need to launch a million-dollar startup or win an Olympic medal to earn high self-esteem. They don’t even need to be the top of the class or be the MVP on their basketball team.
What matters more is that the action they take is real and meaningful. This means that it must involve the real world and lead to a tangible consequence (instead of preparing a pretend snack in a toy kitchen, for example, it’s cutting a real carrot with a real knife and placing it on a real plate… and then eating it).
This is what we refer to as “work” — any action that is both real and meaningful.
So even the everyday, ordinary challenges encountered in daily life are enough to give our children a foundation of self-esteem. Not a million-dollar startup, but one profitable lemonade stand; not an Olympic medal, but one successful cartwheel; or, for a toddler, just the simple (yet complex) act of putting on her own shoes.
This is because, as Montessori wrote, all work is noble. All work (and all effort) builds self-esteem.
We’ve been taught the wrong order of operations — that we must build a child’s self-esteem before they will believe they can overcome challenges. But instead, overcoming challenges is precisely what will help them build their self-esteem.
“We can’t first build the students’ self-esteem and then focus on their work. It is through their own work that their self-esteem will grow,” writes Ron Berger in An Ethic of Excellence.
It’s why a toddler who can take on the challenge of peeling an orange becomes the child who can take on the challenge of reading a new word for the first time, or trying out a confusing math problem, or showing up to a disagreement with her friend. This child knows, from repeated experience, that they can figure things out.
And it’s why the earlier you start giving your children real, meaningful things to do, the better. The sooner a child can witness their own efficacy, the stronger their self-esteem will be.
But this doesn’t mean older children can’t build a foundation, too. The path for them is the same — self-esteem is earned through real, meaningful work.
As Montessori put it, “The consciousness of knowing how to make oneself useful, how to help mankind in many ways, fills the soul with noble confidence[.]”
Don’t do too much for them
The good news is that this new worldview means building your child’s self-esteem is relatively easy. Rather than avoid any situation or person that might make your child feel bad about themselves, all you have to do is give the child plentiful opportunities to do things for themselves. And those things don’t have to be complicated or extraordinary — because there are opportunities every single day, through the simple activities of daily life.
But the bad news is that it’s also all too easy to rob our children of these opportunities, without realizing it. Because when we do things for them, it feels loving. We’re taking care of them.
But if we do too much for our kids, we’re not rescuing them — we’re actually stealing their self-esteem from them.
This means we have to sit through the discomfort of watching our kids struggle with their shoelaces, rather than giving into the desire to swoop in and tie them. It means budgeting extra time (and summoning all our patience) so that we can provide opportunities for our kids to help us prepare dinner.
But in return, we get to witness the pure joy and delight in our child’s eyes when they’ve accomplished something all by themselves. And we get to savor the knowledge that this action, which seems so small to us, is forming the foundation of self-esteem that will carry our child through their entire lives.
It’s definitely worth it.
☀️ This week’s bright spots:
If you have 1 minute…
Learn the 7 things that parents of independent, confident children do.
If you have 5 minutes…
Read our checklist on the signs a school is genuinely Montessori (or not!).
If you have 10 minutes…
Check out the list of “Books I’m Going to Miss Reading to My Kids,” from The New Fatherhood.
