Confidence Isn't a Personality Trait

It's an emergent property of successful prediction.

It's what?

When a child (person of any age, but I've spent my career talking about kids, so why not continue) has an internal sense of reality that often accurately predicts 'this will work' when they try new things, confidence naturally follows.

Conversely, when a child has an internal sense of reality that often predicts 'this will work' and then it doesn't, they not only lose confidence –their map of reality isn't in agreement with reality, so their predictions are too often proven wrong– they lose faith in their ability to understand the world.

It feels unfair, when they see others getting what they want, or others succeeding in their attempts to do similar things. It leads to disappointment, frustration, shame, and rage.

The sense of ineptitude, especially in our 'Winning is the ONLY Option' culture, creates an internal downward spiral of self-esteem, self-worth, and self-loathing, which can make parents feel completely helpless, and a child utterly hopeless.

What Can't Be Done to Increase Confidence?

Many experts and influencers will tell a parent that they just need to boost the child's language: When a child says, 'I'm stupid and everyone hates me!' a parent has to simply say, 'No, you're not stupid, you're super smart, and everyone loves you!'

Ta da.

Magic.

Instantly, the child will –of course– totally alter everything they think about themselves, because that is, obviously, a far more accurate viewpoint than the child's.

Except it doesn't work. Ever.

It's supposed to work. Parents, after all, have a tremendous influence on a child's confidence and self-esteem, supplying much of a child's inner voice...

Well, yes... only... not that directly. And not when the child's experience is 'I can't.' The evidence just argues too directly and too loudly with the parent's words, as painful as that is for a child.

What is already in the child's head, which makes up their perception of reality, is 'all my failures' and 'all my mistakes' and 'all the words and attitudes and tones I've seen other people use for their own mistakes and failures.' Painstakingly constructed over years of experience, the child's inner map of reality is very real to them, no matter how objectively false it may look to a parent.

No 'affirmation' can possibly unwrite all that in a single sentence. It can't.

Affirmations, in general, don't function the way they're sold. It's not a simplistic matter of chanting to yourself, over and over, 'I'm hot, I'm sexy, I'm the best salesperson on the planet, I am killing it, every day and every night,' when you already know that not one word of that is anywhere close to true. A professional athlete can certainly use grandiose affirmations about being 'the best in the world' because they measurably already are, at least in the world they can perceive. They're better than they started out, and they're better than 95% of the general population, evidenced by the extremely high salaries they get paid to play a game for a living.

To put it into the words of the architecture of adaptive systems: when the internal map of reality says, 'I am crap at this' there is no way to alter that with simplistic language that has zero points of contact with that map. A map that person has assembled for years based on concrete evidence and perception of 'how the world actually works.' Trite affirmations are simply too far from where their reality is.

Okay, Then What Can?

What can increase a child's confidence?

Or, perhaps more importantly, what can a parent do to support a child's growing confidence?

I need to help you learn to see... This is complicated, and I'm not sure I can do this coherently in one pass, but let's see...

In order to alter a child's inner map of reality (the one in which 'they're crap') to something closer to what a loving parent can see ('you're really good at so many things, and you're too hard on yourself when you try things you don't know how to do') the tendency is to try to directly over-write the child's map, and that can't really work.

Everyone knows from experience that it doesn't work: However hard anyone else has tried to over-write your knowledge of the world, your experience, and your beliefs, you perceived it as wrong (or obnoxious,) not convincing.

So, first I'll suggest parents step away from 'trying to show a child how wrong they are.'

Yes, sorry. I guess you didn't really think of it that way before --but that's exactly what those experts are suggesting you do: try to talk over them and convince them that you're right.

So, that's Seeing, Lesson 1.

Seeing, Lesson 2. What is the child telling you about their inner world map?

Oh, did you think I was going to tell you what their world feels like from the inside?

Oh, no, no... I am here to help you learn to see for yourself. I'm amazing and talented and know a lot about how kids see the world, but your child is a bit far away from me to guess accurately.

What I can tell you is that if your child says, 'I'm stupid and nobody loves me' it's because something in their perception of the world and themselves has crystallized into feeling inept, and because only winners are lovable (their inner map's rule), that means unlovable.

A child's map is often brutally simple. If that's the map they're living inside, every failed attempt hurts twice: once because they didn't succeed, and again because it feels like evidence that they don't deserve love. (But aren't they remarkably diligent to keep trying, even after all that?)

What else do you think might be 'true' in their view of the world, that might make them feel so hopeless?

Meet that map where it is. As uncomfortable as that may be for a loving parent who hates to see their child hurting, you can't give a person a hand up out of where they are if you can't reach them there.

When you come alongside your child in their anguish, and understand how they are seeing the world, then (and only then) you can help them see more of your map of the world. Your map, where they have already learned so much, and where they are lovable because they exist...

When you can see that is the task: coming alongside them, seeing their version of reality, and then helping them see more of your version, you don't really need much in the way of scripts or words to say...