Speaker 1Hello 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. Today's episode talks specifically to the data and the information that we read about all of the time about the decline in children's confidence. Now, we get this data, but we often don't understand where some of this data actually comes from. And today's episode, I am interviewing Catherine McCall from Hark and they run regular data analysis asking young people specifically in anonymous survey. So, this is really great data about how they're feeling, about their confidence and generally the state of their mental health and their wellbeing. And so, this is a really powerful conversation. You are going to be somewhat shocked. Catherine McCall: Thank you so much, Catherine. Thank you so much for having me. It's been a real pleasure. Catherine McCall: Thank you so much for having me. Catherine McCall: Thank you for having me. If you're already confident and you're more likely to put your hand up, that exposes you. and that experience reinforces your confidence. So you get this up cycle of confidence. Whereas for all of those that lack that self-belief and then feel for whatever reasons, whether that's fear of judgment, failure, they don't put their hands up or they don't interact with others, it then becomes this downward spiral.
Speaker 2Completely, completely agree with that. And that's exactly what we felt when we read it. We were thinking, how do you get these voices heard more? And I think in a society that's busy, there's so many things that our children engage with that some of this, we have to make time for it. Because sometimes I think when things are so busy, you know that we should be listening to the voices of all young people and we should be adapting the ways we do things to ensure that different voices are heard in a way that feels safe and familiar to them. But sometimes we don't always prioritize it and dedicate time to it or resource to it. And that was the biggest reminder to me as a parent, as someone who works in the field, is that we need to make sure that we're listening to the voices of all young people. In education was, okay, we need to stop and think all the time about how we're helping these voices be heard. Yeah.
Speaker 1And it, because it is just part of that kind of narrative that then gets played out that then reinforces. With the data, and I don't know if you did it at this sort of granular level, did you find that 11 year olds were generally more confident? And then what happened is they became less confident as they got older, or was it almost the other way around?
Speaker 2That's a great question. When we looked at the, when we decided on the age range, 11 to 18, firstly, they have to understand the questions and be able to participate. But also there's a lot, as we know, goes on in your life. So starting secondary, choosing your exam subjects, doing your exams, leaving school, and then being an adult and increasing independence. It was high throughout. There is a dip in confidence around 16, which I find even sadder, because again, that's when you really want them to believe in themselves and really want to be supported. And I think also people talk about the, key stage three period of 11 to 14 in England, and obviously across the UK being a challenging period of change for lots of young people. But actually 16 is higher than where I thought we'd see some of that drop in confidence. So again, I think it's thinking about how do we best support them at a time when we want them to believe in themselves and we want them to be making a next step, whether it's to college or to training and into employment and just to more independent lives at that stage.
Speaker 1How much do you feel that confidence is built? And when we see ourselves reflected in the people that are around us, I'm just thinking the London super multicultural, diverse, we see all sorts. And we also see people who may not have come from an obvious background, then becoming super successful. I just, I wonder whether does that play into it as well? I think so.
Speaker 2I think, and this is more from sort of this perspective of doing other programmes and talking to young people generally, rather than the data itself. I think so. I wouldn't want us to go, everybody in London's confident, because actually, I think probably there's even greater variety there because of, because that with high levels in some instances, but I think it is that, I think that has to be a contributing factor in terms of relatability, who they see around them, the voices they hear on the media and others that reflect them, represent them. And this isn't just about politicians and business people, it's sport, it's culture, it's people who are, you know, interviewed and engaged with. So I think that is really important, thinking about where am I hearing voices like me? Is a voice like mine heard? And I think that's something that we all have a role to play in influencing.
Speaker 1Yeah, because I think that connects a lot to this sense of belonging. I can't remember the precise number off the top of my head, but I remember being quite aghast by just the sheer significance of numbers of children saying that they did not have a sense of belonging. And I think that that often seems to amplify the sense of belonging. And I think that that often seems to amplify when they hit those secondary school years. Is that what you're sort of seeing reflected as well?
Speaker 2That, yeah, absolutely. That's, that's what we feel. And that's what we see through all the work we do. It's belonging, it's identity, it's increased focus on identity, and it's increased, just there being many more people and trying to find your place in it, particularly if they're attending large, large secondary schools. And all of that is a factor. And I think, while we say 16 is, there was a dip, I do think it's critical, the changes that young people go through from 11 to 14, thinking about how do we support their confidence during that period, because it's potentially less visible, given the environments they're in. It's potentially easy to, easier to mask low levels of confidence in those environments. Yeah. And how do we as parents help our young people to address that? And also when they're becoming less, less vocal and less, less desire to share with us, how do we address some of that as
Speaker 1well? Yeah. And I know that obviously that Hark itself, does a huge amount of work in terms of taking a lot of this data, as well as the qualitative data that you, that you collect, and then creating and redesigning and updating programs so that you can use these and implement these in schools. How can parents, let's say, take that initial data of that sense of belonging piece? And I think we still need to talk about the 16 year olds, because some parents will be listening to this, who've got children that will be transitioning. Some have already got them transitioned and they're just not settling. Or they've not yet found, I've talked, talked about, they've not yet found their tribe. You know, they've gone from that primary school, which would have been smaller, that they would have started when they were younger. And now they're sort of navigating hormones and social media and people. What are the sort of things that you found that translate from your programs to sort of what parents can do?
Speaker 2Yeah, it's a great question. It's very relevant. I've got a year seven daughter, so we've gone through, we're going through this transition at the moment. I'm from the safe bubble of primary where everybody knows you and year six, you've got your confidence is high because you're the big fish in a little pond. And then to secondary, I think some of the things that we find work really well are that pausing to give people time to talk in safe spaces. Again, as parents, we know that they often open up just before bedtime because that's the moment they want to talk. And when they're very young, that can be when you're with them at that time. And when they're older, that's less like you're less likely to be present with them at that point in time. So I think that's a really important one. One thing we try and implement across our education programs, and that's really relevant from a parenting point of view as well, is the idea of rather than saying, should you saying, could you? And I think we're probably better in education at doing that than sometimes as parents, because we're so strongly, we have such strong views on what we think is right for them, and we want to support them. But actually, it's a really important thing to do. And I think that's a really important thing to do. And I think if you're if we're talking about activities, for example, you know, that worry where they start to disengage with lots of extracurricular activities, and you're thinking about what they're going to use their time for what talking to them about could you puts the puts gives them the opportunity to talk and to share things. And there's one other thing that we do. We've done as well in educational settings, which I think works at home, which is giving them five minutes a day. And we've got a strong opinion on without you butting in without you commenting so that actually their voice is being heard regardless of what you think about what they're saying. I think sometimes again, in busy home environments, we don't give them the opportunity to talk. And I am not saying that I do this. And actually, when I was reflecting on it, I was thinking, I need to do that one more, just just just not try and solve it, just let them or offer an opinion or try and shape it. But just letting them have five minutes is very can be a very good way to very beneficial for them and in feeling heard and helping to develop their communication skills there as well.
Speaker 1Yeah, because I guess it's in home is a really safe space for them to practice using their voice and their opinion. And we don't I know that we as busy parents and busy households, we don't get the opportunity to sit and eat meals as often as we would like. We do get the opportunities at some point during the week, even if it's just only once. But just using those I find meal times can be a great place to be bringing up something topical or something that you don't know about, or maybe a new term that you've heard and then asking your young people, you know what their views are. And they do all have an opinion, even our
Speaker 2quiet reserved ones. Completely. I also find that using some data, some of this data, for example, and just saying, just sharing that with the young person and hearing their views on it, because that can create a safe space for them to want to talk then about themselves. But you're starting from a point of view where you're at the point of people. And that therefore is an easier entry point, I think, than going right now, I want to talk about myself. And I sometimes do those sorts of things if I'm walking with them somewhere, because I think sometimes not having the eye contact helps as well, which is interesting from a confidence point of view, but just feeling able to share because it doesn't feel as intense. Maybe it feels safer in that way.
Speaker 1Hugely, hugely. I think it makes a massive difference that sort of side by side walk or whether in the back of the car. Because I think there's a, it's not necessarily that we are doing it deliberately, but it feels threatening when we're doing that eye to eye for them much more. And I do think going back to Catherine, your comment about sort of giving them a bit of data. I think that's a great way of doing it because it is objective. And then you'll probably get, I'm sort of giving you two extreme ends and then there'll be something in the middle. You might get an extreme end where you've got a young person that thinks, oh my goodness me, I'm not alone in this. So this is a really great, I'm not that only person, but you also get that sort of real shock that oh my goodness me this happens with other people you'll kind of i think it it really lends itself to a conversation either way yeah exactly that works really well yeah so those are really helpful things and i think as parents so often and particularly when we've got a young person that isn't particularly engaging in conversation we can be so desperate to try and extract something that we forget that almost less is more for them to create that sort of space and providing let's say an opportunity because as you said when when our children are much younger we can scaffold conversations around the story that we're going to read to them but we don't necessarily have that with
Speaker 2older no no there's another great thing i learned from our researchers at work so they're always talking to young people every day to to develop these programs and they were talking about pausing for longer than you need to then you feel is comfortable particularly with young people so that sort of 15 20 seconds and it's so hard to feel it's so hard to do with your own children because your head's then thinking about admin or something you need to do or whatever but when they said that i just i always think of that because there will then be something that comes up particularly around those moments like bedtime or when they're walking when they are less focused less focused on other things and less distracted by other things around them
Speaker 1yeah that's a brilliant one and even if it means counting in your head to kind of stop yourself from doing it then i think that that can do what wrong do you feel social media and technology is having in confidence you know there's a huge amount of debate at the moment as to whether we should be banning mobile phones for under 16 year olds whether we should be banning phones in schools i'm feeling like there's got to be some significance to technology on confidence levels i
Speaker 2completely agree when i was reflecting on this i was thinking about the society that young people live in so the fact that and this is this is the society and world we live in as well but when when we were younger when we were children we would buy things in a shop with through a communication conversation with somebody else in a restaurant now they can be ordering or a cafe they can be ordering through an app you don't really have to communicate with someone they're buying a lot of stuff online really simple things like i used to hate in the street having to ask someone for directions that was that was just something i felt so uncomfortable with or having to ask for a piece of information but that was me having to talk to an unfamiliar adult about something similarly i used to hate ringing my friends houses and my friend's mom picking up the phone and having to talk to an unfamiliar adult about having to make polite conversation especially if your friend wasn't there but that was interaction with adults and actually technology and social media has stopped us needing to do some of that so it's thinking about providing those opportunities so that they need to do it what social media or also does is bring in that anonymity so that communicating with people online that you've never met you're behind a screen literally so you feel more able to do that so i think it's creating those opportunities because the working world is full of networking standing up speaking having to share your view in a meeting regardless of whether we're doing it on a screen or not so i think as parents considering how we still put them in those positions of feeling a little uncomfortable but also supporting them through it i've noticed it recently with phone etiquette so when my daughter does eventually pick up her phone she'll just go yeah so it's not a sort of community so i'm interfering with whatever she's doing and that's because she doesn't hear me use a phone she doesn't hear me communicate with people how she doesn't hear anyone do that so therefore there are some of and obviously communications behaviors changes maybe that is how we should be answering a phone but there's just some of that interaction with people that they don't see and i think we have to create those opportunities or role model them where we can yeah
Speaker 1and i love the way the way that you've kind of approached that actually katherine because it's not demonizing the technology in itself it's just simply saying the technology means that our children are not doing these things so rather than saying get rid of the mobile phones we can work alongside and what are the things that we can be mindful of as parents i mean i can remember very vividly and i am very much older than everybody else listening at the moment but just being taught by my parents how to answer the home phone yeah how you had to say salisbury how can i help you or who's speaking just little things that you just did that meant actually now i would much rather pick up a phone and resolve something whereas because young people are not getting that same level of experience we know from data that they are much less likely to make actual phone calls
Speaker 2yeah completely completely when we sit there you know if you're sitting in a restaurant or something i'll often order for the kids and then think actually no they've taught they don't need to do that they've chosen their food they can speak up and it's little things like that where i think i'm doing it to speed up the process to make it easier for the person who's ordering yeah i think that's a really good point i think that's a really good point i think that's a but actually there's real benefits of letting them do some of
Speaker 1that yeah i read an article recently that talked about this idea of and i think i did a podcast episode on it but it's just devices themselves have made our lives frictionless yeah and what we just what we want to be looking at is just introducing a certain element of friction because we you could go through an entire day of not interacting with anyone in terms of online food everything we can do you know we can order anything that we need and so creating a little bit of that friction is really helpful in terms of that confidence completely yeah
Speaker 2i think that's a great great point it's actually something we're doing a lot of at heart with our um with our clients as well because schools are saying the thing we most want from from businesses is face-to-face interaction we want real life scenarios we want to understand the world of work we want your employees to be talking to our young people and we want to do it in a way that's beneficial for those young people and particularly those young people who don't have the same exposure to a variety of different careers within their own personal lives so again it's thinking always thinking like that so again for those parents who are who are listening to this but also are working thinking how can i ensure that i'm giving young people that opportunity to be um to talk just to talk about my job to hear about it to ask me questions in a safe way to ask questions they're interested in rather than questions things i'm interested in telling them so i think that's a great point and i think that's a great point and i think that's a great point it's sometimes for us as well thinking about the art of the art of a good conversation so that we are listening to what young people really care about and want to know
Speaker 1about yeah i think that's and it levels the playing field much more than you don't get this because if you are in a particular geographical location if there are certain economics and social economics around where then you have these opportunities and therefore you get this upward spiral but for others who don't get an opportunity to have a conversation about certain career paths that would not be on
Speaker 2radar no and therefore the questions they want to ask they're curious they want to understand things but on their terms and they want to feel comfortable being able to ask the questions that they maybe think they shouldn't or maybe think they should already know the answers to so again it's just ensuring we create those opportunities for those young people
Speaker 1can i go back to this sort of question of the 16 year olds as to if you got any views as to what i mean obviously if we're thinking from a uk perspective at 16 year olds in the uk would be taking gcses or wouldn't finish taking their gcses it may well be the results or may well be before that but is you getting any sense from the qualitative research that you do why 16 year olds particularly were getting this sort of
Speaker 2dip yeah so the because of the point in time when we did it it was last summer so it was before they got their results but around the time that they had done or finished their exams i think we talk a lot about pre-exam stress and we talk about supporting them into their careers and i think that's a really good point because i think that's i think firstly that period of a few months which is life-changing for those 16 year olds is thinking about often we just go oh completely relaxed and obviously that that is right they they've had a really busy time i think thinking about how we can support their mental well-being during that time as well which must be really stressful when you're waiting for something i think what we also find is that things are so invest the focus is so much on those exams that opportunities outside of that they don't feel like they're going to be able to do that as engaged with and they feel probably even more conscious of getting things wrong putting their hands up and not being right it's that sort of am i an adult am i a young person so i can also understand some of that not wanting to engage with people that you you don't know a lot of that sort of who am i comes to fruition there and i again it's both as parents and again with the businesses we work with just thinking about that age group and how we can best support them and not just support them into what choice are you going to make next which is a really good point i think which is a pressured question but also thinking about how we continue to work on their confidence and their self-belief
Speaker 1and i think that underlies doesn't it so much about why confidence is such a crucial skill and yes we can talk about some children to seem to be you know born with an abundance of it but it is 100 something that can be taught but it's taught through exposure it's not something we can theorize about or praise into being taught but it's taught through
Speaker 2being yeah oh that's that's completely completely true and i think i think you mentioned you wanted to cover this topic particularly with girls and thinking particularly about what their response to some of this is and how we consider their needs in thinking about
Speaker 1confidence yeah and do we feel that that that we're getting that more with girls because of some sort of biological predisposition that as girl you know that do we have that genetic thing or is it and i know it's not as simple as this but is it a society thing is it a biological thing is it a society thing is it a biological thing or is it an interaction
Speaker 2i i think it's a really interesting question my own perspective is that at all you here so in the data one of the things that disturbed me the most was that 44 of young women pretend to be less confident than they feel so it's not just about being confident it's actually pretending to be less confident and that's because and this came out in the qualitative and i think we would associate with it they don't want to show off they don't want to show off they don't want to stand out they don't want to look as though they are bragging or that they are that from their a friend's position they're making their friends feel uncomfortable i think that in itself we should really look into and consider i i think there's a number of interesting factors at play i think some of the language we use and this is as parents as well so the terms show off which came up in the qualitative research i think we probably use some more often with girls and boys i think we try and manage behavior so that if someone's being trying to get attention trying to perform trying to share their view we probably try and manage that and minimize it and i know that this is an area you probably have a lot more expertise in than me but that's a that's a general observation i think also one of the areas we do a lot of working at hark is football so we've been doing a lot with the premier league and the fa actually on things like um playground behaviors so children interacting in the playground again many girls won't have the confidence to play football in the playground they might be playing for a club over here but they don't want to put themselves out there they don't that's a very specific sport related thing because they also feel vulnerable to criticism and banter and just sort of being pointed out rather than being allowed to engage i think there's a real question around do we provide enough confident female role models for girls i don't know that we do i don't think generally there are enough female role models that are that we felt positive female role models that we focus on and tell the stories of for girls anyway but focusing on their confidence is another football analogy actually but last year in the chloe kelly's interview in the euros where she had some final penalty and someone said to did you think you know how did you feel did you feel the pressure and she said something this is sort of paraphrasing something like i was calm i was confident i knew it would go in and we don't often hear that from girls and you think that self-belief and that affects your game and there's nothing more of sort of more obvious than a penalty to go right i i believe this is going to go in so i think looking for some of those positive relatable female role models and focusing on that that's one of the things that i think is really important and that's why i think it's really important to think about that and i think that's why i think it's really important to think about that and i think that's why i think that's why i think it's really important to think about that and i think that's why i think it's really important to think about that and i think that's why i think it's really important to think about that and i think that's why i think it's really important to think about that and i think that's why i think it's really important to think about confidence but they are pretending to be more confident than they are and then you can see the discrepancy in the distance between where girls and boys are not everybody but you know there is some of that i'm really thinking about how do we address that so that we allow girls to see that being confident is positive and being confident is something that other people are and it's an attribute that will help you to succeed at what you do and also that we help them to develop it so they don't think they've either got it or they have it
Speaker 1yeah there's so much within that that is just so powerful isn't it because there's there will be cultural differences as in you know certain cultures will be very much about being you know much more submissive and subdued in terms of their narrative but i also think it is the language this this showing off and i think also what i would say is that it's yes we want more confident female role models with that unwavering confidence but we also want confident female role models that the press and the media don't demonize for their confidence and then say that they're arrogant and that because we just don't typically see that no comparably with men no
Speaker 2completely and i think we should also reflect on some of the cultural specificities within this as well one of the teachers that we spoke to spoke particularly about black girls and she said you know sometimes they talk about some of the girls that i work with people say that they're rude or they have a bad attitude when actually they're being passionate about something they care about or they're being assertive and within particular demographic groups i think we should also consider how are we behaving there and are we best supporting those young people's needs as
Speaker 1well yeah oh my gosh that's just such i think that that will be the biggest thing that i'm going to take from this conversation is the number of girls that are downplaying their confidence and really trying to take any action that i can in terms of their confidence and their confidence in terms of their confidence in terms of the language that i now use around young girls particularly with that sort of i mean i don't think i'll probably use the show off but i'm aware that i will be using language that will communicate the same thing completely i feel
Speaker 2it as well i think that was something i really took away from it is thinking how do we do it and sometimes there was another idea that we've seen work in education which i i'm keen to take into the home which is it's sort of a confidence ladder because i think sometimes think that the goal that we're setting is that we're going to be setting them as so far away which might be a okay you want to try this new club this new experience that you've never been part of before but laddering it up and we do those sorts of things for so many things but actually breaking down the little steps they can take to get to the goal that they want is really you know whether that's speaking in assembly or whether it's yeah attending something new or putting your hand up in class breaking it down i think could be could be really helpful and it's a question i actually you know do i ask often do you put your hand up in class or how do you feel about putting your hand up in class i probably don't focus on the actual in-class behaviors and i think that's a really interesting thing to pick up on explorer
Speaker 1as well yes because we so often ask them it's that kind of thing like who did you hang out with or what i did ask my daughter when she transitioned to secondary school on maybe on first or second day you know who did you play with she said mommy we don't play we hang out who do you hang out with but we as you say we don't necessarily think about how does it feel now are you in a class of people that you don't know for the very first time to put your hand up what what shows up for you yeah yeah
Speaker 2and when they're doing small you know lots of things about small group work and that's a better environment or doing what we call micro presentations so you're not standing in front of class but you're in front of a small group things like that again would be really interesting to explore and to be asking them about the different feelings they have in different environments so you can support them better
Speaker 1yeah and i love you you preempted me by coming in and talking about that ladder but i love the way that you call it a bravery ladder and we can call it anything relevant for our child but it is fundamentally that isn't it
Speaker 2yeah it is it is there is such a strong link between the two and it was then also making me reflect on my behaviors as a parent and what they see me do and often what they see me choose not to do it was this is very like it was something about um how no mums go on roller coasters at theme parks where they used to when with a group of friends and then i was thinking oh it's a very tiny thing and it just doesn't matter but also there's a sense of they can read that as because mums aren't brave and it's trying to interpret some of it and it's probably because i can't really be bothered but there is probably more of a sense of fear or uncomfortable than than they used to be or things i don't try they don't see me try new things for the first time as much as i'd like them to or talk to them about confidence as well they probably again see us interact with people all the time and think we find that comfortable and actually talking about some of the feelings we feel whether that's as a parent or a teacher or at work is actually really helpful to talk to young people about some of the feelings that we encounter
Speaker 1yes because it's it's about sort of normalizing i think you know children look at us as adults often feeling that we're doing things effortlessly and that there is no fear there is no worry there is no angst there is no frustration but actually being able to kind of just articulate it makes such a difference because it but it is you're not alone that i think that's probably one of the most powerful things that i've learned certainly when i've worked in schools is that when they're in a school environment and you can create a safe space within a class or a year group when people are speaking it is palpable in their facial expressions just this whole realization oh my gosh i'm not the only one who takes ages to fall asleep at night because i'm replaying things that have happened during the day oh my goodness me i'm not the only one who has to have a light on whatever it is there's suddenly this because they've been caught in this sort of belief that everybody is going along then around their lives super confident and your data is saying anything
Speaker 2but that anything but it and and that sense that feeling nervous people are embarrassed to say they feel nervous about something and that's a natural thing and again if we can be if we can have more examples from music film sport whatever where people go i was nervous about that this is and this is how being nervous felt this is when my heart was racing and my stomach hurt and i think again that normalizes all those feelings that we know but young people find really hard to explain it or to know that's what it is and to know that that's can actually contribute to the adrenaline and the desire they want to do it and so it's just better helping them to better understand how they're
Speaker 1feeling oh my goodness me catherine we have oh my god i could talk to you for hours thank you so much that has been so informative there's been so much great stuff there we will be sharing in the show notes links to direct and also to the research so that if you are listening and you're an educator and you'd like to get involved more if you are listening as a parent and maybe you're thinking oh I might be able to help out with conversations in schools then we'll give you all of the ways that you can make contact but for now Catherine thank you so much
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