Speaker 1Hello and welcome to the How Not To Screw Up Your Kids podcast, the bucket-emptying episodes. I'm your host, Dr Mary Han, psychologist and parenting expert. So, pour yourself a cuppa, find a comfy seat and enjoy the conversation. Today's episode follows on from some of the recent episodes that we've been looking around building our children's self-esteem and their confidence. So, we have looked at what do we do when we've got a child who self-criticizes. So, they're constantly saying how rubbish they are at anything and everything or that they're an awful person. And then we've looked in one of the longer episodes about how do we actually build self-belief and self-confidence in the first place. So, this episode is tackling the very specifics when we have got a child who, or a child or a teen, whose self-belief and their confidence is pretty much, well, it's either at rock bottom or it's pretty, pretty low. So, it's like, how can we then build that back up? Now, just a very sort of quick reminder and a recap in terms of we use this idea about self-belief and self-confidence. It seems to be slightly interchangeable. So, I just want to recap on self-belief is how your child feels about themselves and also their, you know, their self-esteem. So, I'm going to start with a little bit of self-confidence. So, self-confidence is basically taking those beliefs and then applying them in terms of what they believe their capabilities are when they're faced with a task or an activity or a challenge. So, of course, we want to make sure that their self-belief is solid because with that solid self-belief, when it comes to new situations, challenges or tasks or activities, they're likely to then feel that they have that capability. And the thing that we know about, you know, what's the biggest uptick when it comes to building confidence is a sense of mastery, a sense of feeling competent. And it doesn't necessarily have to feel that competence and that mastery doesn't have to be in the area that you're asking them to do it. So, for example, if you've got a child who's really not feeling very confident academically, they're always criticizing their academic capabilities. We can build their self-belief. We can build their confidence then to apply in the academic setting by creating mastery and building mastery and confidence in areas of hobbies, interests, things that they really like. So, we don't have to be thinking, oh my goodness, me and my child's struggling here. How can I build their confidence in that arena? It does generalize. Obviously, it is much quicker if we're able to build it in the area that they're feeling that low self-confidence and self-belief. But in my experience, you're much better starting in areas that your child is interested in or is prepared to make an investment of time and effort and exposure because we can build on that and then translate that across. So, I'm going to share three things that are going to be really helpful when it comes to our children and our teens who are struggling with their self-belief. So, I'm going to share three things that are going to be helpful when it comes to our children and our teens who are struggling with their self-belief and their confidence. So, the first one is about working on building a new capable mindset. I hesitated for a moment then because sort of the instinct is to sort of say, oh, we're working on a positive mindset. I find over the years, I mean, I've been working with children for over 20 years now, is that there just seems to be often a bit of a visceral reaction to this word positive. And I suspect it's probably because it's been overused, and so in the same way as when we say to our child who's getting anxious or angry, you need to take a deep breath. It almost seems to have the opposite effect. It riles them, it gets them angry. And actually, I think positive doesn't really say anything in terms of the very specifics that we want to move them towards, whereas actually building a capable mindset is very clear. We're building a mindset that says that I am capable of doing things rather than positive as in, which feels like there's just rah, rah, I'm amazing. So how we work on that new capable mindset is, first of all, is accepting and acknowledging both for our child and also for us in terms of managing expectations is that it takes time. We don't master anything that's worth having, and self-belief and self-confidence is 100% worth having. We don't master that in a short space of time. Anything worth having is something that takes time to acquire. So it's about working towards, and being really intentional to doing something. And each and every day, that is that whole kind of like 1% that we're aiming for each time. I'm going to show up that 1% more within that capable mindset. So the first one is about managing expectations in terms of accepting that it will take time. And then as part of this working on building this new capable mindset, we want to retrain, we want to reframe thoughts so that what we're, then beginning to do is like, I know, rather than this, I can't possibly in the self-critical is that I know if I put my mind to it, I could learn to have a go. I could learn to try. I could learn to feel braver. So it's that acknowledgement. So this is why, you know, it's that capability rather than this positive. It's not like I can do it. I'm amazing. But just this acknowledgement that I know if I put my mind to it, I could try this. And it doesn't matter. What the outcome is. So that's number one is that we want to kind of talk about this capable mindset and building this new one. And so within that, once we've set that context, that's our foundational bit, we then want to build up challenges slowly. One of the ways that we often sort of fall apart with these, or we don't manage to progress things with our children in terms of building up their confidence is that we try to do it in a way that we can't do too much too quickly. So what we want to do is we want to build up these challenges, use my ladder analogy, if that's really helpful. For those of you who are listening for the first time, the analogy that I simply use is that a ladder is something that takes us from the bottom to the top. So when we're setting up challenges, it's like a ladder. We're taking very small, each rung of the ladder is a new small challenge that we are working up. We consolidate ourselves on that rung before we then move on. And so that's what we want to do. And so that's what we want to move up. And what we want to do with each of those rungs is we want those rungs to be just outside our child's comfort zone. So that we're not, it doesn't feel like too big a leap, but enough that it creates a bit of a reaction physiologically, or this feels a bit scary, not quite sure if I can do this, but it feels manageable because it's just outside rather than it's too much. And then what we want to do is that it's then just literally becomes a rinse and repeat. You know, let's try, do this challenge. Let's do another one. Confidence builds all through this, this acknowledgement of mastery and competence through having a go through trying. And of course, one of the best ways to help build that, build up those challenges is going to be number three, which is shaking off the self doubt. So we're going to use things like mantras. We're going to I know if I put my mind to it, I could have a go. It doesn't matter whether this works or it doesn't work. It's all about trying. Not everyone's going to like me and that's okay. It's just finding affirmations, finding statements, finding mantras that work for your child. If you are not quite sure about how you might tackle mantras or these affirmations, then I would encourage you, if you haven't already done so, to sign up to the free resource library. So www.drmaryhann.com forward slash library. If you haven't signed up, then you literally will ask for an email address and then you'll get instant access. If you in that, the free resources are searchable. There are mantras in there. I can't remember, but there's quite a significant number. There's a sheet that will literally give you a whole load of mantras. Now these are mantras that I call Mary Hann-isms. So they are my words. What I do when I work with young children, when I work with family members, when I work with my kids, when I work with my kids, when I work with families, or when I'm in schools, is I encourage children to take my Mary Hann-ism and make it theirs. So use the structure and some of the wording, but make it sound like something that they would say to themselves. And it's about encouraging them to, you know, let's literally shake off, physically get them to do a bit of a shake, shake that energy, shake their hands out, and then use their mantra, use their affirmation, use their statement of, I know if I'm going to put my mind to it, I can do that. And then alongside that, get them to document their successes, whether that's having a box where they put their successes in, and remember success is not outcome, success is trying. So it could be photographs. It could be leaflets from things that they have done, or it could be statements that they've made on a piece of paper about how they felt when they've tried something. It could just be bits of paper for all of the new things that they've tried. or if your child doesn't like it in that sort of format, you can use a jar and you can put marbles or pebbles into it. So each time they try something, they build up one of their challenges. Again, we're not worried about success or failure. It's just trying. Each time they do that, they put it in the jar and then they've got a real visual of this is how you are building your confidence. Look, can you see it? And I would always recommend you start with a small jar because there's something rather fabulous about filling the jar. Oh, look, the jar's already full. We need to get a bigger jar and then seeing that build. And that has a really great way of, it's a very tangible. So it's working on whichever works for your child, but it's a really good way that documenting is a really, it's helpful for them to then be able to refer back to when they have the inevitable wobble because they are going to. So those three are work on building this new capable mindset, build up challenges slowly and shake off physical challenges. And also in terms of the chatter, the self-doubt through these mantras, through these statements, through these affirmations, as well as documenting their successes in trying. And I hope that that gives you some really robust set of podcast episodes to refer to if you are, if your child is struggling with their self-belief and their self-confidence and gives you some super tangible, super workable solutions. Wherever your child might be in their self-confidence and also their self-belief as ever. 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