I have a client with a four-year-old daughter who spends the night at her grandmother’s house from time to time, and when she’s at her house, she makes her granddaughter change her own clothes. While the child is changing, the grandmother walks away. The mother, however, does not walk away; instead, she insists that her daughter can’t do this task alone. “She can’t get her shirt over her head,” she pleads.
This child can absolutely get her shirt over her head.
This isn’t a jab at mothers who do this but merely an example of innocent enabling in parenting and how this can unintentionally (of course) inhibit confidence in children. And since confident children can grow up to be confident adults, small lessons like these are important.
I discuss this in my book, Loosen the Grip: Strategies for Raising Independent and Confident Critical Thinkers, specifically in Chapter 2: “Why is Hypervigilance A Problem For My Child?” Here, I’ll take a glimpse at how a lack of independence, confidence, and experience can shape a child’s development in the long and short term. We’ll also look at how we as a society can do our part to encourage independence, confidence, and self-reliance in children.
ICE: Independence, Confidence, and Experience
As I refer to it in my book, ICE stands for independence, confidence, and experience. We, as not just parents but also as a society, systematically do not allow children a lot of independence. We don’t have time, do we? We can’t wait it out, let kids figure things out on their own. We have to get going, get to work, get on the move, get other siblings ready. You know the drill.
When this grandmother waits for her granddaughter to put her shirt on herself, she encourages her, telling her she can do it herself. And when she does, she makes a big deal out of it, letting her know she understood her struggle and knew she could work through it and get there on her own, that she’s proud that she did it all by herself.
Guess what? In turn, her confidence skyrocketed, and now, she can do it herself. It saves her mom time in the end, after all, while setting the groundwork for an independent, self-reliant woman.
Three Approaches to Confidence in Kids
There’s a study out there that looked at three different approaches with kids. One gave kids no accolades. Another one gave them encouragement and praise. Then, the third approach focused on the job they did, telling them, “I know that was hard for you, but you kept moving, and you got there,” or, “I saw you struggling in that step, but I saw how you worked it out.”
Everyone expected the second approach to be the one that saw an uplift in confidence, but it wasn’t! It turns out that the common “You’re so smart, you’re so wonderful, you’re so great” approach isn’t the most effective. Instead, letting kids struggle and figure it out and learn lessons on how they have it in them to fix something themselves is where the confidence goes up.
As a society, we have gotten away from letting our kids experience negative emotions: disappointment, frustration, and struggle. But if they’re playing a game and they get upset, we can’t run to their rescue every single time. The reaction shouldn’t be to rush to intervene and prevent any negativity from occurring; we should allow them to experience struggle, at least to some extent, so they can feel independent and gain confidence. These are lifelong skills they can learn at a young age! Planting the seed of independence now is important so these experiences can build confident and self-reliant adults.
If You Love Them, Set Them Free!
I know this can be a difficult ask for parents, but try it. Give them the freedom to experience struggle and find the strength in themselves to figure things out and be self-reliant. In the long run, their newfound and well-earned confidence will serve them well as they grow and become adolescents, teens, and adults. They’ll know you love them even if you set them free!