When Your Child Struggles with Confidence

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You hate to see your child struggle! It makes your heart hurt for them! I believe it’s important for children to be coached to solve problems on their own to help build independence and resilience, but can that happen when they are struggling with confidence?

Our second son has been struggling with doubting his abilities. He’s scared of trying anything new (ex. sports) out of fear of “messing up” and then embarrassing himself. He tells us he’s not good at certain things, but he doesn’t even know if he’s good because he hasn’t tried. This fear and doubt is really wearing on his confidence.

We try not to compare our children to each other because we understand that they are totally different people, have different talents, and different strengths, but somehow they still end up comparing themselves to each other. He often compares himself to big brother, which is normal among siblings. But it’s hard for a 9 year old to realize that big brother has 2 more years of life skills, coordination, and practice than he does. He only focuses on what big brother can do and he “can’t” do. And then he doesn’t want to do the activity.

I remember going through this stage when I was growing up—I would question whether I was smart enough, athletic enough, or pretty enough. I compared myself to my siblings and/or friends. I doubted my abilities too and had a fear of trying new things because I didn’t want to fail. However, this stage happened as a teen, so it’s thrown me for a loop to see my 9 year old struggling with confidence.

I can’t exactly remember how I “recovered” when my confidence was shaky. So, how do I help my child build his confidence back up? I’ll share some ideas we have tried that have and have not worked because, like I said, each child is different so something that didn’t work for my son might work for your daughter and vice versa.

How to Build Confidence

1. Speak and pray scripture over him. I pray for my children each day. I pray specific prayers over their needs, so lately I’ve been praying for God to help my son to feel brave when presenting a speech at school, to have confidence to try a sport he enjoys, and to calm his nerves in new situations.

   Not only do I pray quietly for them, but I want them to learn to turn to God in the good times and the bad. On occasion (maybe every other week), I write a post-it note to my children pointing out something good, brave, or kind I noticed that they did to encourage those good qualities to continue and let them know that I see the good in them. I’ve been trying to include a Bible verse on those post-it notes that goes along with the complement or encourages them. They love the post-it notes and keep them beside their bed to re-read them. They call it their “Wall of Compliments.” Here are some verses I’ve found that share that God gives us confidence and strength:

   2 Corinthians 12:9, 2 Timothy 1:7, Ephesians 3:12, Hebrews 13:6, Isaiah 41:10, Jeremiah 17:7, Joshua 1:9, 1 John 5:14, Philippians 4:13

2. Let them pick an activity that is just theirs. To help my son not compare his abilities to his brother we’ve tried to let him pick an activity that is just for him. This isn’t easy because usually if one child shows an interest, then they all become interested. He has tried wrestling, cooking, and crossfit. He loves cooking so that’s usually what we do for our one-on-one date time. And he’s really into doing the crossfit workouts with a friend each Saturday morning.

   He was really into baseball, but wasn’t ready to play on a team yet because he lacked confidence in his abilities since big brother also plays. So, we got him some one-on-one fielding and hitting lessons with a college baseball player. It was fun to witness his confidence increase from week to week. The first week, he walked into the lesson with hunched shoulders and barely answering the coach’s questions. And by the 5th lesson he was cracking jokes with the coach and smiling every time he hit the ball.

3. Answer all the questions. We’ve discovered that a large part of his lack of confidence is due to fear of the unknown. He doesn’t know the rules of a sport, he doesn’t know what to expect at an event, or he doesn’t know how it will turn out. We also don’t know the answers to things of the future, but we can help settle his nerves by answering the questions we do know. Many of the sports that he was unwilling to play were due to the fact that he didn’t know the rules of the game, so we would try to explain what was happening as we watched a school sporting event. Even when we are on question 748 and worn out, we answer question 749 to the best of our ability if he asks it.

4. Respect their feelings. It’s ok for him to feel down or frustrated or angry. These are normal feelings that we feel as adults too. So, we acknowledge and respect those feelings.

5. Talk about times we’ve failed. We make sure our children know that it’s ok to fail. Mommy and Daddy fail constantly. About once a week, during family dinner, we try to all share a time that we failed at something. Sometimes they are silly things like forgetting to put shoes on to go to the library. I’ve shared about times where I had a big dinner flop, or when I brought home a 0 on a progress report in high school, or about when I wasn’t such a good friend. Allowing our kids to share their failures with us has allowed them to feel like they don’t have to be perfect—we will still love them if they make mistakes. It’s also a good reminder to myself that it’s good for my kids to know that I have failed and still do. After we share our failures, we talk about if there was something we learned from that experience that could help us going forward. There is a lot of coaching through the “learning” part of these talks at this age.

6. Pointing out the things they are good at. Another thing we like to do during family dinners, about once a week, is have everyone share something they are good at (and it can’t be something they’ve already said before). I like doing this because it helps shift the brain from thinking about “can’ts” to “cans.” Sometimes we change it up and ask the person to their right to say something the person on their left is good at. This strategy helps teach them to think about others too.

7. Asking them for help/giving them harder tasks to complete. As my kids have gotten older, I’ve realized how much more they can do. Sometimes I forget how much they can actually do and how much they want to help. One thing that has been beneficial in building confidence is giving my son harder tasks or asking him to help me with something I “can’t” do. He loves to cook, so I often ask him to help me cut up something or work on a particular part of dinner while I work on something else. He feels so proud of himself for being apart of making a dinner everyone enjoys.

8. Exposure to the uncomfortable. We all have to do things that are uncomfortable. It’s just part of life. This exposure therapy is good for building confidence (or at least feeling more comfortable with the uncomfortable). My kids’ school requires a “performance” twice a year, which I think is a great way to allow them to practice speaking in front of people. These performances are things like presenting a speech on a historical figure, saying a poem, Thanksgiving play, or science fair project—not too bad. However, when you are struggling with confidence, this is a nightmare! My son will have to give a speech to parents soon and he is not excited. So, we’ve answered ALL the questions, we’ve practiced in silly voices, we’ve practiced in front of family, we’ve practiced in a gorilla mask, but soon he will just have to be brave and do it. I know he will be nervous, but he will do a great job. And having that great experience under his belt will give him confidence for the next time he has to do it.

I know this is just a stage that my son will have to go through because I went through it too, but it doesn’t make it any easier seeing your child go through something hard. If only one of the “tricks” we have tried works, I hope that my son knows that his strength and confidence comes from God and he can call on Him when he feels nervous. There will be plenty of times throughout his life that his nerves will get the best of him, and I just want him to be able to feel comfort, peace, and confidence in God.