I asked my class full of 8-year olds a simple question – What’s confidence? And the answers were anything but mundane.
“It’s when I know all the answers.”
“No, confidence is when I can speak without mistakes.”
“It’s when I can do anything and win.”
Just look at their confidence!
Confidence is all this and more. But somewhere along the way, its meaning changed. It became something that needs to be taught, and developed its own well defined metrics.
You had to praise more, protect more, reassure more.
These well-intentioned actions are actually counterproductive as they undid what took thousands of years of evolution – the instinctive reactions, the ability to react based on your own judgements.
If every time the child’s feeling unsure, you rush in, you’re denying them the opportunity to nurture their own thinking and assessment abilities.
Confidence doesn’t grow in comfort. That’s illusion. It grows in recovery, in experiencing failure.
The Myth of the Smooth Childhood
When things are going right, it develops complacency and misplaced confidence, bordering on arrogance.
It’s the small setbacks which allow the children to rethink and rework on that which leads to confidence. Their belief in themselves and their ability, their resilience and their knowledge that they can survive it.
I mean, the minor obstacles are fine. Their first attempt will always be clumsy. The shoelaces get tangled. The solution is wrong. The diagram looks…creepy. The presentation is not polished enough. The voice falters.
There will be many such scenarios. Some may feel insignificant to us, but they’re teaching your child something formative and deep.
Their awkward attempt or imperfect outcome is teaching them that it’s important to try and do their best. If it doesn’t work that’s ok too because they can try once again. They get another chance to improve.
That belief is confidence building.
But you’re preventing this growth when you step in at the first sign of discomfort or failure. You replace their experience with explanation or solution.
But your explanation or solution will not build their resilience. It’s their personal experience which has to be their teacher and guide.
When Helping Becomes Hindering
A big mistake all parents do (me included, learnt it the hard way) is we confuse support with intervention.
I know, its uncomfortable watching the child struggle, and you want to jump in and rescue them from that discomfort. You want to fix the problem, finish the task, smooth the edges.
But think about it – have you really helped them? You’ve stolen an important learning experience.
How do you teach them to pause, rethink and retry?
How do you teach them to regulate their disappointment?
How will you teach them to recover from the setback?
These small controlled failures are rehearsals for the future.
Right now, they’re in a safe space to fail. These experiences provide them the essential training grounds for life’s larger uncertainties.
The Real Cost of Overprotection
Be it the tangled shoelaces, or forgotten homework, or a missed goal, they’re all still safe and protected.
Look at it this way – the cost of replacing those shoe laces is small. But what will be the cost of replacing their lost confidence?
A child who has never been allowed to fail grows into an adult who’s terrified of trying. And sadly, they’ll never realise or admit it.
They’ll be scared not because they lack the ability but because they don’t know how to recover. They lack evidence of what follows in case of a failure.
Confidence isn’t the absence of fear. It’s the familiarity with failure.
So the next time your instinct tells you to step in, talk it out of it. Give your child the chance to struggle, fumble, figure out and, finally finish.
You’re supporting them in their effort to build competence, and resilience, and courage.
And these are lessons that can’t be taught. They’re learnt through experience. And they’ve to be earned.
