Speaker 1A quick word before we dive in. This episode is brought to you by Biogland Smart Minds. It's back to school season. They're year six now, top of the school, and the pressure is on. The first day nerves of a very different kind, which nobody quite admits to. I remember the feeling so well as a mum. Biogland Smart Minds are tasty, sugar-free gummies designed to support growing minds, balanced moods, and restful sleep. And they're the ones I'm happy to recommend. Available online and in store at Holland and Barrett. Today, I want to talk about confidence. And one of the things parents ask me about most. And I want to start with something that might surprise you. Most of what we think confidence looks like is not actually confidence. And once you understand what it really is, building it in your child becomes very much more straightforward. I'm Dr. Mary Han. This is how not to screw up your kids. Confidence is one of the most requested topics I receive. Parents worry about it from toddlerhood right through the teenage years. They worry about the child who will not try new things, the one who falls apart at the first sign of difficulty, the one who looks at what others can do and decides in advance that they can't. And yet most of what we think, confidence looks like being outgoing, fearless, quick to speak up, comfortable in the spotlight is not confidence at all. It is performance. Some of the most genuinely confident people I know, and I'm sure you know too, are quiet. They're cautious and they would never volunteer to go first. Real confidence is the belief that you can handle what comes. Not that things will always go well and not that they will never fail, but that when you're in a situation where you're in a situation where things are hard, when they get things wrong, when it does not go the way that they had hoped that they will be okay and that they'll manage and that they'll try again. That belief does not come from telling children how wonderful they are. It does not come from protecting them from failure. It comes from accumulated experience of trying things, of getting things wrong and surviving it, of being trusted with real responsibility. And crucially, it comes from having a safe base to return to when it doesn't go to plan. So let's go back to this fine lens, wide lens distinction. So remember when we think about the fine lens, we're looking specifically at the problem. And so as a parent, if we're thinking about this from the perspective of a child who isn't particularly confident, for example, the fine lens problem that we'll be seeing and our children will be presenting to us is a child that doesn't try new things. A child that says, I can't do it. Before, they've even started. And the child that falls apart when they make a mistake or the child that seems to shrink when they're in a group. The wide lens, which is instead, rather than looking at the specific problem, is taking that broader lens and thinking, what skill might my child be missing or has not yet fully developed, which if they had, would mean that this particular problem wouldn't be there and I would be equipping them to be capable beyond that. And so the wide lens underneath it has two skills. There's a skills gap in two areas. The first is this notion of psychologists that we call self-efficacy. The belief that we, as individuals, that our child is capable. And children without this sense of self-capability tend to avoid challenge because trying something and failing feels catastrophic. The second skill gap that we're on is unconditional self-worth. That deep knowledge that your value as an individual is not tied to your performance. Children who do not have this will not take risks. So children who don't have this unconditional self-belief in themselves, they don't take risks because the cost of failure to them feels way too high. So confident children are not children who never feel afraid. They are children who have learned that fear is manageable and failure is survivable because both of these lessons have been lived, not just told. And what I would also add to that is this children who have the confidence to try new things are not necessarily sort of screening through the failure itself. Whereas what we tend to find children who are not so confident, the failure piece is the thing that they think about all of the time. Confident children doesn't enter into their equation. It's just simply oh, this is something new and interesting. I wonder how I might do with this rather than thinking consciously if this doesn't quite go to plan, I'm confident enough to deal with a failure. So before we go into my five top tips, let's go back and just unpick a little bit the skills that we're going to help our children build so that you can almost do a little bit of an internal audit as to where your child might be at the moment across these two skills. So the two skills that we're going to talk about today are the skills gap and the gap is going to be different for each of us that are listening. Some of you will be listening where the gap is nearly closed. There's a small gap to fill. Others, you may well actually be listening to this thinking actually my child doesn't have either of those skills yet. And so that gap is much wider. Either way, you start where you are at with that particular child and you might have more than one child and the gap may well be very different. It's likely to be, but you work with what you've got because that's what you're going to do. So that gap does close because it's a skill. So the two skills that we're going to be working on are self-efficacy and unconditional self-worth. So self-efficacy really was proposed by this psychologist, Albert Bandura, and it's a term for the belief in one's own ability to achieve things. And it's built through four roots. So you can be thinking about this when we then start going into the, into the actual practical things that you can do. And the four roots are, one, mastery experiences. So doing hard things and finding that you can manage them, or it's seeing other people similar to you who succeed. And then what happens is that you then see what I know. And again, it's not at a conscious level, but an unconscious level. There are also people like me who are able to do this. And because they're like me, I should equally be able to do that. So either their own mastery experiences themselves, or by observing other people who are similar to them, or it's through receiving specific, believable encouragement from people you trust. And when we talk about this specific, it goes back to what we talk about all of the time, this descriptive praise, say what you see, give your child a very clear rundown of what specific behavior that they have just done, that you are praising them for, and that that encouragement is not a superlative, oh my gosh, amazing, you're wonderful, you're fabulous, but specific to what they've done, and is very much based on the process rather than the outcome. Because what then happens is it's super specific, so there's no ambiguity. It's believable because it's the behavior that you've observed, that pattern of trying is one that is indisputable, it's observable, and then that builds that trust. So it can either be through mastery themselves, through observing someone who's similar to them, or it can be through the trust that they have, and then it can be through them who can do that, or we are giving them some specific feedback. And it can also be from learning to read their own physical nervousness as excitement rather than danger. So we're reframing because we know that nervousness and worry is a normal part of the human experience when we're asking ourselves to do something slightly outside of our comfort zone, because learning happens at that edge between that just put us just outside our comfort zone. That's where real learning happens. And so it's helping that reframe of, oh, that sort of increased heart rate and that flutter in my stomach could be fear and nervousness, but actually could also be excitement. And it's helping them reinterpret that. And all four of these things are things that we can influence. So that's self-efficacy and what we're going to be looking at in that. And then the second skills gap that we're working on is unconditional self-worth. And that's built through relationships. It is the message that is communicated consistently through our words, through others' words to our children, the tone and the behavior, that our child's value does not change based on what they achieve, how they perform, or whether they please us or don't please us. It is the foundation on which self-efficacy is built because children who know their worth is safe are far more willing to try things which they might fail at. So that's a precursor if you think about it as a house that's being built, the unconditional self-worth is the foundation. You can't, the self-efficacy is on very shaky grounds if we haven't got that unconditional self-worth. So those are the skills that we're building and we're going to do them across my five top tips. So with this one, what I'm going to do is I'm going to explain the tip specifically, and then I'm going to give you something, explain it in terms of what you could be doing this week, but also what you can be doing with children across the board. So I'm going to across different age ranges with toddlers and young children, with primary school children and with teenagers, because those of you who are listening have got children of all different ages and are likely to have more than one. So here are my five top tips, what we can do to bridge that skills gap so that we can raise that really confident individual. Number one, I think it's important to redefine what confidence means, not only to ourselves, but also to our children. So it's this notion that confidence is not about being brave. It's not about being loud or never scared. It's about trying anyway. The distinguishing factor between those who are confident and those who aren't is not that those who aren't confident don't feel that flurry of maybe a little bit nervousness and a little bit of excitement. It's about trying to make sure that those who aren't excitement, but they work through it and they do it anyway. And that's the distinction that we want to build. So the first shift has got to be ours. Remember, children are much more likely to do what they see than what we say. So what we want to do first is to notice where we celebrate outcomes over effort with the language that we use. And this is not about a criticism at all. You know, we're doing our best, but I always believe that a bit of an audit is helpful So just notice, just observe yourself and just pick up, be really intentional. I'm going to be looking out and noticing the language that I use with my children when I celebrate something that they've done. And, you know, what we want to do when we notice, and we don't have to notice 100% of the time, if we can notice one more time than we're currently doing, then we're making progress. So it's that reframe. And what we'd want to do is we want to swap, you were so good, for you tried something new today. So that we're going back to that notion of praising the process and helping that self-worth be related not to any outcome. Their validation of who they are and their capability is contingent on nothing other than themselves. So we want to do that. And we want to make trying the headline in our home. And it becomes the goal that our child is going to do. And we want to make sure that our child is going to be able to do that. So consistently over time, being the factor that gets praised, that's the strategy in itself. And what does it look like for you? So this week, I would encourage you to audit your language for three days. Yeah. Count how many of your responses to your child are about what they achieved versus what they attempted. And that ratio will tell you everything. And I would say for most of us, me included, and I know, I know it. I've been talking about it for a long time. I've been a really long time, but I slip into it quite often. But for most of us, what we'll find in terms of that ratio is it's going to be heavily weighted towards outcome. We will find ourselves praising that outcome, not because we're bad parents, but just because it's, it's so ingrained in how, you know, how we feel that we want to validate our children. And of course, we want to praise them for having a great result. But if we really want to build that solid foundation, that self-worth, we want to try and focus on that process much more than anything else. And when we begin deliberately, we'll eventually over time tip the ratio. It doesn't have to be, what I think, what I want to sort of say crucially here is you do not have to praise process a hundred percent of the time. We just want the ratio to be tipped in favor of the process, the effort, the trying rather than the outcome, because the brain, is a numbers machine and it's a predictability machine. And if it notices that we get praised more often for trying than we do for the outcome, then that's fundamentally will drive that pattern of behavior. So that's one thing for you to do. Now, I want to talk you through what we can do if we've got children who are aged between about two and six. Now, what you will remember from me, if you've been listening to the podcast regularly, is that I'm not one for hard, fast, these are the that you need to do. This is much more about stage. So if you have a child who you feel that you have probably over-praised outcome, whose sense of self-worth is not foundational yet, you may find, and they may well be 11 or 12 and would therefore fall into the primary school age children or the teenagers category. You may, after listening to the toddlers and young people think, actually, do you know what? That's probably where I need to start. So do you don't think that that means that your child is acting like a two or a six-year-old when they're 12. It just simply means that for this skill, that's where they are right now. And don't over-interpret anything. These are skills gaps. If you've got a much bigger gap, it means you've got to go further back before you can make the progress than someone who's got a smaller one. No criticism of you, no criticism of your child. It's just simply starting and meeting your child where they're at. So with younger children, anything that they do, a crayon drawing, a first attempt at the climbing frame, trying a new food, even if they spit it out, narrate the try, not the result. So you tried that is a complete sentence. Don't need to say any more. You tried that. You do not need with it, you are brilliant at it. Just simply, you tried that. The try itself is what you are making visible and valued. So again, you may want to go back to that, those basic bits, it may well be that your child's gap is quite small, but you've noticed in your audit for those three days that actually, gosh, I praise outcome a lot. So actually it'd be really good for me to just make that my task for a few days is I'm just simply going to say, you tried that with any age of child that I've got, and then I'll move up. So that's the first thing to try. The next one is maybe you might want to start a trying jar. So it's basically, I'm a big fan of glass jars, use them all the time. So a glass jar, maybe on the kitchen counter or in their bedroom, a handful of pebbles or marbles. Every time your child tries something that felt hard, a new activity, speaking up in class, asking someone to play, they add a pebble. Not for succeeding, because remember, this is all about trying, just for trying. And that visual of watching it fill, you can talk about what's in it and all of the things that they've tried and you're enforcing the language that you're using now with a visual cue. So that's one that you could do. The next one, and then with teenagers, make what is the hardest thing you've tried this week, a regular question. At dinner, in the car, without making it a big event, we don't want to make it a big one, but not how did it go? Not did you manage it? Just what did you try? And the question itself communicates over time with consistency, what we're valuing, this process of trying. And over time, they begin to notice their own trying, which is the whole point. We want to move it, particularly as our children get older. We want to move it away from us noticing to them noticing and then going from there. So number one is about reframing what confidence means to yourself and also to your child. Number two, give real age appropriate, stage appropriate, responsibility. Competence and confidence is built through doing, not being told you are capable. Every time we do something, you do something for your child that they could do, even imperfectly, making their bed, for example, you take a confidence building opportunity off the table. Let them do it. Let them sometimes get it wrong. The doing is the point. The parent principle. Now, resist, and this is something we do. And if you're like me, a control enthusiast who wants to jump in and fix, is that we have a tendency. We want to resist that tendency to rescue. So when something goes wrong, the sandwich maybe that they're making is lopsided or all over the counter, and the route takes twice as long. Hold your response. Ask, what do you think you could try? Rather than jumping in before us offering a solution, let's ask them first. And the first thing we answer does not need to be your answer, their answer. Tested and sometimes failed, build something in them that your answer never can. So what can we do with our children? So again, let's see these as the different levels. The first level is choice, providing that choice, and a small physical task. So for example, I'm just giving you some random examples here. They have to choose between two outfits, both of which may be acceptable to you, but they get to choose. They've got that sense of agency, that sense of capability. Maybe pour water from a small jug into their own cup, carry their own backpack, rucksack, put their plate near the sink after meals. These might feel tiny. You can obviously look at whatever you need to think about and what might be age and stage appropriate for your children. But what we're doing is by providing them something that we ask them to do, that we're providing that sense of capability because they are doing things. To a two-year-old, if we're looking at really young children, to a two-year-old's development, sense of self, these things are enormous. Just simply pouring from one jug into another, into their own cup can feel huge. Carrying something that's theirs, even if it takes you twice as long. These are all part of that sense of capability. The next stage is we want to then provide opportunities for our children to have a real contribution to the household. Set the table, becomes their job, not yours. Feeding the pet, watering a plant that they're responsible for. Make their own simple sandwich with ingredients that are laid out. Pack their own school bag from a checklist they helped create. Not supervised, but actually theirs. We're thinking about what level can we start at in terms of giving them things that they're responsible for and then building up. And then the more complex, and more independent our children are, then they can manage their own morning routine, for example, with an agreed checklist. So these are things that you're not handing over completely, but you're agreeing in advance what are the things that they might do so that they have got a tangible checklist that they can work from rather than us chasing. Maybe they navigate a familiar journey to a friend's house, to a local shop on their own or with a friend. Maybe they plan a family meal. Choose the recipe, write the shopping list, cook with you rather than watch you do it. Manage their own reading or homework time. So that might be, again, think about what might be right for the age and stage of your child. And then when we're moving up to our preteens and our teens, this is where giving real responsibility matters. A weekly household task, which is genuinely relied upon, as in if they do not do it, it does not get done. Manage their own revision schedule. Handle their own communication with teachers when something has gone wrong. Plan and manage a small budget. The higher the stakes within, obviously, safety margins, the more real the competence which grows from it. So number three is about, number two, sorry, is about giving real age-appropriate responsibility. Number three, watch the labels. I say this with love, but identity. Labels stick. If you have not yet listened to Who's Your Favourite, an episode that I did some while back with the incredible Catherine Carr and her book on siblings, labels that we have inadvertently acquired or been given to us by our parents or within our family tend to stick. And they don't just stick as we're children, they stick well into adulthood. And research has shown, for example, that the young, probably, slightly pandered to youngest child can often play out that role as a 43-year-old in a corporate job, for example. So these labels stick with us forever if we are not careful and in a way that can be limiting. So identity labels stick. She is shy. He is not sporty. She's the anxious one. Children hear what you say about them to other people. In the room, on the phone, in passing, even when we think we're being discreet and we're lowering our voice, or we're just whispering it, or we're trying to take someone to one side, they are incredibly attuned. And they use that as data to construct a sense of their own self-concept. So they end up becoming the story that you tell about them. So for this week, maybe write down three words you use most often to describe your child to others. And are they identity labels? This is not a criticism. This is an audit that we're doing so that we can become more self-aware and therefore make that shift, particularly if we want to raise that confident child, because there is a huge part of what we do within that equation, as well as affording our children opportunities and that capability too. So write down those three words we most often use. Are they identity labels? And an identity label typically is fixed. It's permanent. It's about who they are. It doesn't mean permanent as in, this is what's going to happen to them, but they tend to be things, traits like they're shy. Shy isn't a transitory label. It's something that seems to be fixed and much more permanent. And it's about who they are. Or so are they identity labels or do they tend to be more situational descriptions about how they respond in certain circumstances? She is shy is an identity. She takes time to warm up. In new situations is a situation. And one closes the door, shy, fixed personality traits. The other, she takes a little time to warm up, keeps it open and gives us something tangible to work on in terms of skillset. So the practical switch for all ages of children, regardless of how old your child is, replace permanent with temporary. If you've done that audit, you've done those three words that you use for your child. You've done that audit. You've done that time to think about, okay, if these are the words that I used to describe my child and they're permanent ones, what could I replace them with? You've given yourself that thinking time and then you can then do that switch. So replace permanent with temporary, replace fixed with fluid. The single most useful word in your vocabulary, which I talked to you about when we talked about growth mindset for our children, it's just simply add the word yet. You can't do it yet. That is not easy for you yet. Yet makes the current state temporary and the future state possible. When we say that they are, they find new situations difficult, that's permanent, that's fixed. But if they say they're, you know, they haven't yet familiarized themselves with difficult situations, you've then made it something that they can work towards. Put it on the fridge. If you need a reminder, use it until it becomes instinctive. So that's about the practical switch of the language that we use for us. But what do we do when our child has adopted the label themselves? So children who have heard, I am shy, and it may not have come from home, but may well have come elsewhere, or I'm bad at maths. If they've heard that enough times, they begin to say it themselves and they use it to avoid risk. Because if I'm not good at maths, why would I want to do maths? If I am shy, then I wouldn't want to be in that situation either. So when we hear our children say it, we don't want to argue with it, but we might gently kind of ask them to consider it. So I wonder if that's always true, or just true in some situations. Then name a situation where it is not true. Yeah, so we're not dismissing their experience, we're still validating it. But we are asking them to challenge that. And then we are giving them an example of a particular situation where that doesn't happen. So we're widening the story that they tell themselves. So that's what we are asking them to do. And for older children and teenagers, if you have used a label for years, name it and take it back. This is a conversation worth having directly with your child. I've sometimes described you as lazy, unmotivated, anxious, whatever that might be. I've sometimes described you as whatever that label is, and I want to take it back. Here is what I actually see when I look at you. So we take it back, and then we give them specific evidence for what we've seen. Teenagers are particularly alert to inauthenticity. So we want to keep it simple, we want to keep it specific. Vague reassurance lands nowhere. Specific observation tends to land deep. So that's number three. It's about watching the labels. Number four, separate worth, their self-worth from performance, and do that out. Loud. So this one must be said, not just felt. After a disappointment, after a failure, after a result that was not what they hoped for, your child needs to hear from you explicitly that your view of them has not changed. Do not assume that they know. Say it. So here's the formula. Acknowledge the reality and restate their unchanged worth The word and is load-bearing here. That did not go the way you hoped, and I'm just as proud of you. Can you see how that works? The word but erases everything before it. So if we said, I know that didn't go to plan, but I'm still proud of you. It erases everything. So instead, we want to use the word and. So and holds both things together at once. The reality of what happened and the unchanged truth of what they are worth. Write it on a post-it note, practice it. It does take conscious effort at first. And I've found that I've done it actually as a practice relatively recent. Well, no, not even recently, probably the past year is whenever I've been writing something and I've gone to write but, I've substituted the but for and except for the very last year. So I've been writing for a long time. I've been writing for a long time. I've been writing actually, because we say but all of the time. So often it just happens. And actually, and works just as well, probably 90% of the time. And for those of you who've been listening for a while, you'll know that I'm in the process of writing a book. And I have done that across the whole book is where I have been able to, I've substituted but for and. And so what's happened is, because that's becoming part of the normal language that I'm using when I write, I found it easier to implement in practice. I'm not saying that you need to do that in terms of your writing. But actually, it's really helpful if you find a hack or a technique that works for you to substitute that and because it is such an automatic habitual thing that we do is that we add the word but, but not and. So that's the formula. With young children, get down to their level. Physically, eye contact, say it simply and plainly. That felt really hard. And I love you exactly the same. Young children need to feel it in in their body, as much as hear it in your words, a hand on the back, staying close, not rushing away to fix or, or distract, you are the message. When we get to slightly older children here, we want to use it in low stakes moments, too, not just the big ones, but in the long term. And I think that's a really important thing. And low stakes moments as well. Not just those, but not the big failure, not just big failures. So it does not only arrive after a disaster. Yeah, because otherwise, then that doesn't feel quite so authentic either. When they do not get picked when the result test isn't is disappointing when the friend group leaves them out. And then in small moments to you did not win that game. And I love spending time with you either way. Build the pattern so it is familiar before the big moments arrive. And then with older teenagers, write it as well as say it a note tucked into their bag on exam day, a text after a hard result, brief, definitely not gushing, something that they can hold and reread when you are not there. Teenagers often reject verbal reassurance in the moment and absorb it 10 minutes later when they are alone. Notice how I didn't use the button. Keep saying it. They hear it even when they roll their eyes. The channel stays open because you keep it open. So that's number four. And number five, be the safe base for failure. So the research on secure attachment is unambiguous. Children whose parents are a warm, reliable, non-judgmental safe base are significantly more willing to try new things they might fail at. Because the cost of failure becomes tolerable if they know that when something goes wrong, they can come home and be received with warmth, not fixed, not put in perspective, not have their feelings corrected. They are much more likely to take more risks. So let's think about the three stage sequence. And this is for all children. So I want you to be thinking about this as stage. So hold first, help second, help them think third, and in that order always. Hold first, help second, help them think third, and in that order. Hold means receiving what happened without doing anything with it. Sounds really hard. Tell me what happened, not why did you. Not what did you expect, when. Just I am here and I am listening. This is the stage most parents skip because it feels passive. And it's not passive at all. It's probably the most passive and most regulating thing that we can offer in that moment. Help means physical, a hug if they want one, a snack, being near, not advice, not perspective, not silver linings, physical warmth and proximity while they come down from the emotional state. And that third stage, help them think that third stage. And we only go to that stage when they are calm. What do you want to do about it? Not here is what I think you should do. It's not here is what I think you should do. Their answer, their agency, you are simply the sounding board, not the solution. So those are the three. So with young children, failure at this stage is often a meltdown or a big cry. Get down to their level. Stay. Don't rush to comfort. Do not redirect to the next thing. Let them feel what they feel in your calm presence. You are emptying their bucket. Being steady is the whole task. That's what we need to be doing. And actually just not distracting and being with them and helping them work through that is such a crucial scaffolding skill of being able to sit with discomfort that isn't just one of the basics and foundations when it comes to building confidence, but on so many other levels of other things that our children will be building skills on. So that's with young children. With primary school children, then we want to resist the instant pivot you'll do better next time because that dismisses the feeling before it has even been felt. Sit in that disappointment with them first, even for five minutes. This is a really rubbish feeling. I'm here. Then only once they have been genuinely heard can perspective begin to land. So it's really that whole sitting with them and that experience is such an important part. And with teenagers or older children, make home the place where you are. And if you're not, then you're not. And if you're not, that they can be honest about struggles without it becoming a problem to be solved or a long conversation or a lecture to be given. The teenager who says today was awful and gets fixed before they have finished the sentence learns not to say, learns not to ask, learns not to communicate. But instead, let's ask that question. Do you want me to help or do you just want me to listen? And then do what they ask in their response. The simple, the simple act of asking that question changes the whole dynamic. So I hope that that has been a helpful and hopefully a pretty thorough set of skills gaps to look at. On Monday, I'm going to go into the world of toddlers, specifically the tantrum. And if you feel that your 12 year old or 16 year old is still probably having them, then the episode will be just as helpful for you because the principles around the skills gap are the same. But we're looking at toddlers and tantrums, why they happen, what is actually going on neurologically in that moment, and five things which genuinely help. If you've got a toddler in your life, or a child who is not emotionally as regulated as they could be and have a skills gap, then Monday's episode is for you. Be as kind to yourself as you're trying to be to your children. You don't have to get it right every time. And the fact you're here learning and growing already says a lot. For more episodes, and all the resources to support you, head to drmerihan.com. I'm Dr. Merihan. Take good care of yourself. I'll see you Monday.
PodcastTranscript AI