Speaker 1Oh, listen to me being bossy there. You must. I would encourage you to do at the end. Hello and welcome to the How Not to Screw Up Your Kids podcast. So, pour yourself a cuppa, find a comfy seat and enjoy the conversation. In today's episode, I'm going to share a framework to transfer your child's confidence in just 10 days. Yep, you've heard me correctly. In 10 days, you can dramatically transform your child or your teen's confidence levels. Now, I will be honest, we can't go from rock bottom to tip top. We can, however, dramatically change their beliefs about their capabilities. If you follow my simple guide, and I have made it, genuinely, as straightforward and simple to follow as possible. And I've got lots of kind of tips to sort of help you be able to sort of navigate it. So, the way that I've set this up, and I keep changing my mind as to whether it's a challenge or an intention, so I might use both words, so excuse me. But in essence, what it is, it's 10 days. And what you're going to basically do is on each day, there is going to be one central focus. So, I'm not having you trying to in your head and thinking about lots of tips and strategies that you're trying to juggle in each day. But in essence, I'm going to give you one focus for the day so that you can set a very clear intention for that day to be able to work on it that way. But what I've also done is I've factored in so much flexibility. So, it is 10 days. Day 1 and Day 10 should happen on Day 1 and Day 10. And most importantly, you don't have to do them sequentially as in for 10 days straight. You could start, do two or three days. Two weeks later, you then do two or three more. And then a week later, you do some more. So, you don't have to. This is not regimented. I genuinely designed it so that it couldn't be any more straightforward for you to be able to use it. And with that absolute secure what I ask you to do, if you focus on the things that I ask you exclusively on those days and really set that intention, you don't have to have got it right 100% on those days, but just that you set that intention that that is going to be your singular focus, then you will see massive, huge differences in your child's belief about their capabilities and therefore their confidence. Now, I think it's probably helpful to start before I do the 10 days and I'll talk to you about those We will make this available in the free resource library so that you're not having to scribble lots and lots of notes. It will definitely be worth re-listening to this episode as you're going through it. If you make that commitment that you want to see those 10 days through, I think you'll probably just find it helpful to re-listen, but we will give you what you're meant to be doing on each of the days so that you've got that clarity of focus. And we will also share the seven C's, are setting some context to, in lots of ways, I talk about reverse engineering and we are raising resilient adults and that resilient adult, the end product, will have these seven core competencies. So I just want us to be thinking about that because they tie in beautifully to the 10 days. So let's just quick recap on the seven C's and then we'll launch straight into those 10 days. So the first one, when we're looking at building that resilience and that resilient adult, it's all about competence. You know, children learn through their own experience and what is modeled to them. So we can't have, you know, competence isn't theoretical. It doesn't come from talking. Competence comes through exposure. It comes through experiencing being in it and competence isn't about doing something and then doing that successfully and getting it right and not failing. Competence is just having a go. And the more our children do, the more competent they, they feel over time. So when we look at the 10 days, some of the focuses on certain days will tap into enriching and building that level of competence so that it then leads into the second C, which is confidence. Yeah. Children's confidence grows when they tackle new challenges on their own, when they feel capable to do that, whether that succeeds or doesn't. And that's what we're talking about. And that's what we get in the way of it. When we're too quick to fix things, we rush in so that our child doesn't fail. And that actually has the exact opposite. We're not building their confidence. We're not scaffolding their confidence at all. We're literally pulling the rug from underneath them because they never get that chance to experience that competence piece and then build that confidence. So we've got competence, we've got confidence, and then we have connection. And that's a platform that allows our children to stand on their own two feet. And that's developed and nurtured by the connections they have. The most immediate connections will be with their immediate family, with their parents, but that also extends to their siblings, that extends to our wider family, to the community that we live in, but also the wider community of the things that our child participates in, whether that's nursery, whether that's preschool, school, Cubs, Scouts, lessons, drama classes, band, or sports group. You know, that whole connection piece is a crucial part to then helping our children feel that they can then take on some of these challenges. So we've got competence, confidence, and connection. Character is built really from the values which underpin for our children, a clear sense of what is right and what is wrong. And that character build from our values, the values that we instill within our family, but then broadens as our children get older, because of course they then experience the values of others, of their peers, their contemporaries, and others that they may experience across their lifetime. And part of that, I always explain, is that they're going to have these values presented to them, some of which they will take on board and take them on as their values too, even if it's just trying out for size for a while. So they may discard it. Other values that they may come across, they then do choose to discard them. They're not, they're not going to be part of their own value system, but their character comes as a result of them building up on these, on these values and what they take. So we've got competence, confidence, connection, and character. Then we have contribution. So children who see or learn through their experiences that their contribution, whatever that might be, however little, however small, however varied, that it's valued and it positively impacts others, they find purpose in their action. They understand in almost an unspoken way that their community is a better place because they're in it. And so contribution can be hampered. We can get in the way of that when we find fault with our children's contribution. Maybe the contribution that they make isn't quite what we expect it to, or it's not what we expect it to be. Quite done the way that we want it to. Actually, contribution is a really big part. And I think is probably one of the challenges that most children face when they go to senior school is that because they've been quite young when they've started their primary schools, you know, from five onwards, they've, you know, they've really had a sense of contribution within that school setting. When they transition to their secondary school, if they don't get that sense of belonging in those early weeks, that can really get in the way of their future. And I think that's really important. And hamper their connection with the school and then their connection in terms of friends, because they don't feel, they don't get that same sense of belonging. They've gone from a place that they felt so belong, that they were part of the fabric of the furniture. But actually, because they've been there from when they were really young. And of course, when our children are younger, they generally tend to be more embracing of things. As they get older, they've got a lot of that narrative around what might people think and judgment and concern about others. And so if they don't have that sense of contribution, if that doesn't come over to them quite early in that sense of belonging, that's where they often struggle with that transition from primary school to secondary. So that's contribution. Coping is fundamentally that our children learn through experience, healthy ways to manage stress and to bounce back from stress. There's a whole lot of stuff in the press recently about whether we're demonizing this notion of stress and instead labeling it as stress. And I think that's as anxiety or a mental health issue, but fundamentally stress is good. It is a response that is happening to us. That is an alert simply just like, can you just check this out? Check that we're okay in that in one sense. And in the other sense, it is simply a galvanizing us to take action. So being able to understand that they can cope and that they can manage in healthy ways when they are on the up is a really core competency when it comes to raising that resilient adults at the end. And then the final C is this sense of control. And this isn't control in the sense that we might think of it of like, oh my goodness me, my child needs to have control of everything. This is much more about where they position the control of their life. So you've probably heard me, if you're certainly a listener for a while, I talk about the difference between an internal locus of control and an external. When we're internal locus of control, our children understand that their choices and actions determine their outcomes. Regardless of whether the result is what they want or whether they don't want it, but that they have agency, that they have choice, that they can act on their environment and their situation and make a difference. When we talk about external locus of control, this is much more a child whose belief system is very much centered and focused around life happens to me. I have no control. You know, it's all external factors, other people's moods, other people's behavior, the temperament of the teacher, the, the situation that I find myself in. And so what happens then is that they don't believe that they can act on their life in any way, meaningful way or make any difference. They just have to be in the right place at the right time. And of course, what we want to do is we want to cultivate an internal locus of control, particularly when we're talking about resilience and confidence, because that just simply means, well, okay, this hasn't quite gone to plan. What can I do about it? Whereas an external locus of control would be like, well, it didn't go to plan because, they didn't do what they were supposed to do. And it was just really awful. And I can't really do anything unless they change the way that they're behaving, for example. So these are the seven C's, which we will be tapping into addressing, building on and flexing as part of our 10 days. So let me talk you through day one, and then we can then mix it up from day two to day nine. So for their successes, for their celebration of who they are, ready for them to document and chronicle their lives. So a lot of it depends on how you want to position these 10 days. And you don't have to position it at all. You could just simply say, do you know what? I think it's really important that we celebrate ourselves, particularly if you're listening to this at a time where there is a natural transition. So celebrate ourselves as we come to the end of 2025, or you could say, celebrate ourselves at the end of the week, celebrate ourselves at the end of an academic term. Whatever it might be, it's up to you how you position it. The way that I've designed the 10 days is you don't need to sit down and have very long conversations with your children around, you know, I've just listened to a podcast and I think your confidence isn't quite where it ought to be, and we need to set goals, and this is what we're going to do. The challenge is set so that those of you who say and write in regularly to say, you know, podcast was really great, Maryam, but I just can't get my child to sit down and talk to me. Or they're very, they keep themselves to themselves, they're non-communicative, I can't get them to sort of open up in any way. These 10 days do not require your child to tell you what's going on in their head, does not require your child to set out some long-term goals that they want to work through. There are some of the days where we want a bit of input from them, but most of it is very much focused, well, in fact, all of it is focused on you. What are you going to focus on in that one day? And then in some of the days, we're going to get a little bit back from your children as well. So the first thing is creating this wall of fame. Whilst books are great, and they can have journals and picture books and, you know, stick pictures and things like that within them, they require your child to actively go to get the book in order to remind themselves and to truly celebrate themselves. When we plaster it all over our fridge, when we put it on bedroom walls, there are ways that we can do this. But when they have that visual in a place where they are often going to walk past or regularly see, then we're not just tapping into and affirming at the conscious level, we're doing it at the subconscious level because it's just around them all of the time. So if you can, I would really encourage you to do it that way. The visual is great and have it somewhere where you can walk around and see regularly. They can be as creative as they want. It can be as big as you want. It can be as small as you want. It's simply an acknowledgement and a place and a space where you are going, you're going to encourage them to put things up that celebrate who they are. And they could be pictures, drawings, whatever. And if you all want to get involved, then you can all have one. Celebrate yourselves in different places around the house. Day two. Now this is focus. So for this day, whether it's day two, day three, day eight, it's up to you. Your sole focus is to help and encourage your child's self-talk statements to be more growth orientated. All right. So this does not require you to sit and have long, meaningful discussions. What you're doing is you are noticing when your child uses language that is very fixed. I can't do, or language, which is very self-critical. So in those moments, we want to do that wonderful acknowledgement. I can see that. I get that you're, you know, it can feel really tricky, can't it? When we're trying something new, I get that. So we're doing that acknowledgement, but will you then want to try with no lecturing, but just spin it either at the yet? You can't do that. It feels really tricky, but you can't do that yet. We don't need to get into a long discussion about what do you need to do? And therefore, in order to be able to do it, we are just focusing on that one day about ways we can help change and encourage a sort of a more growth statement. So things like, you know, I can do difficult things. Yep. This is, seems really difficult, but I've seen you Jack do difficult things. Remember that time when you did X, Y, or Z and you were really, God, the look on your face when you did it, you were so pleased with yourself. So you can do hard things. That's it. Doesn't require a long lecture of like, well, now let's talk about the hard thing that you're trying to avoid. It's just, we're going to focus that day on picking up anything where our children's language is getting in the way. And then we're going to help gently acknowledge and then see if we can tweak it. So that's day two. Day three is we're going to ask for their help for important jobs. I probably would choose the, I need your help for important jobs when we've got a child who is younger. And if we've got older children, I would pitch it as you want their advice or their expertise. In something. Now, the reason why we're doing this, and that's all you're doing that day, taking as many opportunities as you can to get them, our younger ones to help with important jobs and to get our older ones for their expertise and their advice. And the reason why I'm saying that is because what this is doing is it's validating their competence and their capability and also really creating that connection as well as that contribution piece. You know, you are, you are contributing that what this family would not be the same without your help in this important job or your expertise or advice. So we don't want it to be contrite. We want you to genuinely be in a situation where you could do with a little bit of extra help. So don't focus on things that are arduous and chores, but much more where their skills may be genuinely beneficial. You might have a child who's super creative. And so you might ask their opinion about something creative. I'm thinking, thinking of decorating this room in this color. What do you think? Or do you think about that? I'm thinking that we might spend tomorrow doing X, but I'm really, you're always really good at organizing things with your friends. So I'd love to get your opinion on it. We could go to the cinema, but I really want your expert advice about what's good at the moment and what we could see and what we couldn't see. So we're trying to pull them in because what we then do is this validates them and praises them and provides evidence of their capability without us going into foster that. So that's day three. And that's the only thing that we're focusing in on day three. If you want to start layering up, if you've done something on a day and it's proved it's worked really well, and you've noticed it's really made a big impact, real positive impact, and you want to continue to do that whilst adding in other day things. Absolutely. My only cautionary note is try not to do too many things because I want you to get the breadth of the 10 different things it's the 10 that work together that is going to make the significant change. One alone, one or two or three is not going to do it. It's the, it's the combination of the 10. So just keep that front in mind so that you don't end up because I've designed it in such a way. So it doesn't make you feel overwhelmed. I want to avoid you ending up becoming overwhelmed and then not seeing the 10 different days through because it has then felt too much. Um, so that's number three, number four, is this day, your intention for the whole day is to give descriptive praise. And I want you to give the descriptive praise when focusing primarily if you can on effort. So of course, descriptively praise your child when they do other things, but I want that real intention and focus to be when I see my child having a go, putting some effort in, even if it's effort to absolutely not lose it when we've asked them to come off their devices and there's been some effort even if they still lose it it's the fact that they've tried and you've seen that glimmer desperately trying to make better choices even if the choice wasn't better in the end and descriptive praise for those of you who are new to the podcast is simply say what you see so instead of saying you were brilliant at not getting cross say i was so impressed with the way that you i could see that you were trying to count in your mind and not get cross with your brother when he came over to try to take the ipad from you and you really tried to take that deep breath i could see that you were trying to do it i know you got cross with him but i'm so proud and i could really see how hard you were working to pause take a breath before and that's really brilliant so we're saying exactly what we've seen in a way that's just tangible and usable for our child saying that they're amazing incredible is lovely but it's temporary it disappears that feel-good factor goes when we tell them exactly what it is that we've appreciated that the praise is about it's a more tangible real ah so i did this and that was good for my parents but when i did that that was not so good so you're giving them something really concrete that tells them what what you want to see more of and what you're proud of so on day four if you do it in this order what you will be doing all day and only this is giving them descriptive praise number five you've got just one thing to do you can't do this throughout the day it's going to be at one point of the day which i would recommend is near the end and i want you to reflect with your child or children this works really well as an not an exercise i was about to say exercise but just something that you do when you're all eating together is reflecting on three good things from the day and one learning and what's great about this is it helps them understand where they have got competence it helps them understand a little bit more about how they can cope with things yeah these are these are good things that have happened and it also taps into that understanding of coping equally and control around the one thing that they've learned it may well be what i've learned is that i'm not very patient when it comes to playing a game with my brother that is football or it may well be that they've learned that even though something felt quite scary that when they tried taking a deep breath and just doing it anyway it wasn't quite as bad as they thought it was going to be so it could be all sorts of learning it could be learning from that perspective of you know the outcome ended up being really good or it could be a learning is it as in i've what i've learned that that's probably not going to be work for me again or that i've learned that i really like broccoli for example it could be all sorts of things day six i want you to set aside some time to play and play will be play according to your child so your teen may play in a very different way to your to a three-year-old to an eight-year-old to a nine-year-old so i want you just to think about setting aside now i'm not asking you to set aside a huge amount of time i'm just simply asking you to set aside some time dedicated time that you are going to play with your child and that play needs to be what they want to do and i want it to be a time that you can commit to give them your absolute undivided attention and allowing them to fully lead so five minutes 10 minutes 20 minutes it's up to you this is not an all-day thing it's just can you find moments throughout the day where you can just play with your child and use that time to fully immerse yourself in their world so if it's a teen and they're really into a particular social platform immerse yourself in what they like watching explain it to me show me i want to understand do it in a way where you're trying to really understand what's going on in their world and actively listening so this is listening so that you could attempt to paraphrase back what you think you've heard them say so you're you're really trying to listen to understand rather than listening with an answer or a response in your head and definitely listening without judgment if you're you know if we go back to that social platform scenario in your teen is showing you things that they're looking at and memes and you've got a fundamental issue with it do not launch into oh my goodness me that's awful i cannot believe that you're listening you must delete that instead try and meet them where that gosh that's interesting doesn't intrigued about why you like that tell me a little bit more about it because gosh that makes me feel quite uncomfortable i don't i'm not so you're trying to kind of be human this isn't something this isn't content that i would watch and i'm a little bit surprised actually but i'm really intrigued because i know that you wouldn't just be watching or following someone if there wasn't a particular reason so i'd really like to understand why so it's not accusatory it's just simply a i really want to understand rather than i'm not going to understand why i'm not going to that instant my goodness me they've got so many piercings and they're advocating all sorts of toxic masculinity or whatever it might be instead you're going to get so much further and so much more understanding from your young person at any level regardless of what it is that you're immersing yourself in if you truly ask questions to understand rather than pass judgment day seven i want us to focus on acknowledging their feelings so that day we're just simply going to your today my job is to simply notice and acknowledge my child's feelings as often as i can with a particular emphasis on their fear of failure again we want to acknowledge their emotions regardless but you might want to really try and tune into how they respond and how they emotionally regulate when things are not quite going according to plan so i think that would be really good so it's that acknowledgement of you know it's okay you know big emotion it feels really scary get it feels like it's something you know stakes are too high to do that and goodness me what might happen if you can't do it feels scary doesn't it and it you know your whole body is reacting to that i get that so we're validating we're trying to understand and on that particular day we can ask questions but i don't think we should try and probe too much this is not about sort of interrogating because what we're really trying to help them understand is this really feels like it's going to happen and i think that's a really good way to from the seven c's the coping you know that they can learn that they're that stress is healthy that that's okay we can feel overwhelmed but we can do hard things so it's really kind of tapping into that language so that is going to be your day seven day eight this is where we will ask them to do something all right and i i personally would recommend with with day eight that this is something that you all do and that's that is you commit to accomplishing one thing that day which feels a little bit scary or something that you've been putting off so it may well be that you have been putting off having a difficult conversation you as a parent maybe have put off decluttering something or organizing something and it may well be the same for your child it may be that your child makes a commitment to tidying their bedroom or they might make a commitment to contacting friends so they can meet up with them or making their connections with friends or whether that's asking the person next door to come and play whatever it might be that feels a little bit scary it's that i'm going to make a commitment that by the end of the day i will have tried you don't have to have succeeded what we're doing here is we're cultivating that competence through contribution through connection and through community so we're just asking them to make that commitment and then we can do a reflective piece afterwards maybe what well went well what didn't go well but the focus on that day is simply that and we can have conversations with our children about how they might approach it what are their fears how might they overcome those fears how are they going to try accomplishing it so that is our day eight day nine and i think this on this day all you are going to focus on the whole day is where can i give my children what i'm going to give them what i'm going to give them what i'm going to give them my child stage appropriate choices notice how i said stage and not age remember it is not that our children should be able to do x y or z by certain ages it's the stage of development that they are in and so on this day your intention and your focus throughout the whole day is rather than like you need to do x or y is asking ourselves can i give them a choice here is this something where actually i can pass the responsibility to build their capability to build their sense of contribution to build that sense of confidence to help them feel that contribution and that certain sense of control can i it's not even about delegating tasks but it's like can i just let them choose rather than tell them and of course it's got to be stage appropriate so that's the focus of day nine and then day 10 is again this is the non this is the one that you must do at the end all listen to me being bossy there you must i would encourage you to do at the end day 10 is about reflecting on the different things you've asked or you've focused on in those 10 days. And that's going to be something that I'm going to encourage you to do in terms of reflecting on how well you think things have gone, but also having a bit of a reflective practice with your children in terms of how did you think you got on with that when you made that commitment for that particular challenge? How do you feel, you know, let's think about the last couple of weeks, maybe if you've done the 10 days over two or three weeks, what's worked really well across those weeks? What hasn't worked? You know, you're not necessarily going to sit your child down and say, I'm going to descriptively praise you all day today. And I'm going to sit and play with you for chunks of time today. And I'm going to look for opportunities to give you choices. Of course, we're not going to do that, but we are going to ask them how the last 10 days have felt or how the last two weeks have felt or three weeks have felt so that we can get them into this regular practice of reflecting on what's worked, what hasn't worked and what they might not have done. And that's what I'm going to ask you to do. And I'm going to ask you to think continue to do, particularly because all of those 10 days are real core skills around the inner language and changing that narrative to a more growth narrative, to being able to celebrate themselves in a very visual way and be reminded of that and affirmed of that regularly, had their feelings acknowledged, had their worlds seen through their own eyes in terms of play. And empowered them to make choices. So I'm hopeful that those 10 days will really give you something concrete to be able to work through and hopefully your children will absolutely love it. But I can guarantee if you stick to the 10, if you do all of the 10, however long it takes you to do them, there's no limit. It's not going to be done within a certain number of days, but if you just do the 10, you will see marked improvements in your child or your children's confidence as a result. And I hope that you can write in and let me know which of the 10 you noticed the biggest impact from with your child. So write in to contact at drmaryhann.com and Ava will be able to respond to that via me. As ever, if you enjoy listening to the podcast, or if you have just found us for the very, very first time, if you could take just a few moments to rate the podcast out of five, hopefully it's or a sentence, it helps other families, other parents find the podcast, find the strategies and the advice so that we can spread the love. So until next time.
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