How to Raise "The Confident Kid"

Over the years, I’ve heard myself—a devoted rule breaker—recite rules to my kids. And at some point, I began to wonder why I did it. Why did I need them to finish their homework before the morning it was due? And why did I really care if they ran shoeless on decks?

My generation has been accused of being helicopter parents, solving our kids’ problems before they ever have the chance to feel fear, anxiety, or splinters in their feet. Because why would we want our kids to experience anything negative, if they don’t have to?

But despite our best efforts at this… it just doesn’t work. Our country is facing a crisis of confidence with over 65% of 8 to 10-year-olds reporting low confidence and nearly 60% of parents ranking it as their top concern. Low-confidence can lead to high anxiety, low-self esteem, and depression. These statistics keep me up at night—because they’re not just numbers. They’re my kids and yours.

So to help me sleep, I called up beloved Duke Dean of Students and personal witness to my lifelong rule breaking, “Dean Sue” Wasiolek. I asked her what she learned from living with freshmen for over 40 years. (Yes, literally.) As a problem-solving fanatic, I needed to know what I could do to prepare my kids for the future.

But she wouldn’t give me a straight answer. She Mr. Miyagi'd me, telling a story of a parent who called a pharmacy eight states away to get a prescription filled for their 20-year-old son. It’s as if these kids are cosplaying as adults. They can get As in neurophysics or print remarkable fake IDs, but at the core, they’re crumbling under pressure in record numbers and turning to “real adults” to save them. “They lack the self-confidence they need to take on the world,” she said. So in other words, my well-meaning hovering isn’t just not helping. It may actually be hurting.

So I wondered–what makes someone confident? We’re accustomed to using the word “confident" to describe charismatic, well-groomed dinner hosts or accomplished world leaders—but were they just born that way? Were some kids blessed with good hair and good self-esteem and others doomed to a life of low-confidence?

The research says no. Though it’s not taught in Duke or any other school, it turns out that confidence is a skill not a trait—just like karate. And if it’s a skill, then with the right help, it can be practiced and improved. Legends is that help. It’s the confidence coach they need, their personal Mr. Miyagi.

The truth is that I don’t care if my kids get invited to fancy dinner parties or to the oval office. I want them to understand who they are and trust it. To determine the person they want to be and become it. And to understand that ultimately…

And that’s what’s so cool about confidence. The best form it comes in is the one that looks just like them.

• Taylor Swift on giving yourself permission to fail

• Speaking of: Museum of Failure, an exhibit celebrating failures is in NYC

• Our Legends’ developer Harry’s wild camcorder redesign

• Taco Bell has 60 people on its innovation team

• New co. that lets you save articles and listen to them

• App that auto-generates communications as you speak

• Jay-Z talking the importance of ultimate confidence

How to boost your kid’s confidence today

I’ve been a teacher, a summer camp counselor, a coach. I’ve built leadership development, service-learning, and bullying prevention programs that have been used with kids around the world.

But more than any of that, I’ve been a kid who was picked on at school, and needed a confidence boost.

We know that building confident kids takes more than just a coach—it takes a team. Every adult in a child’s life, and especially a parent, will have a significant impact on a kid’s confidence and you’re in charge of what kind of impact that will be. Here are three tips to get you started:

1. The biggest confidence-killer is criticism. That doesn’t mean the biggest confidence-booster is praise.
   Praise has its place— and its risks. Research shows that kids who get too much praise—especially praise focused on outcomes rather than effort—become dependent on it, and they need others’ approval to be satisfied.
   
   So try this: Instead of praising directly, describe the praiseworthy behavior and let your kid praise themselves. Next time you’re tempted to say, “That’s so amazing that you got an ‘A’!” Say something like, “I noticed how hard you were focusing on your homework this week— looks like that paid off.” Your kid will likely tell themselves, wow I did a good job. And the more that they can practice validating themselves for a job well done, the less they’ll have to look for validation elsewhere.

2. Your kid will do what you do— not what you tell them to do.
   Research (including this study from Dr. Emily Conder, one of our expert advisers!) shows that kids are more influenced by what they overhear and witness their parents saying and doing than what their parents directly tell them to do or not to do.
   
   So try this: Get caught using resilient self-talk. The next time you make a mistake that’s a clear stressor, make a point of saying out loud something along the lines of, “That’s frustrating, but it’s fixable. Let me figure it out.”Will it be awkward to narrate your inner monologue? Always. But seeing you practice resilience once is as good as reminding them to practice theirs ten times.

3. Practice makes painless.
   Research shows that mentally rehearsing a situation can help build kids’ confidence. Just like the Army uses war games to help cadets build confidence, or Kobe Bryant played games in his mind before the real thing, you can de-risk potentially stressful situations by giving them a run-through at home.
   
   So try this: When your kid is feeling intensely nervous about something—whether it’s an upcoming test, a music recital, or an interaction with a friend— run a “dress rehearsal.” Ask them to imagine they’re where the event will take place and try to add some verbal or visual touches—these can be silly - like an impression of their teacher! This role play will help them step into their role when the time comes.

A Crisis of Confidence

According to Monitoring the Future, a study that’s been tracking 8th-graders’ behaviors and attitudes since 1991, the percentage of kids who take a positive attitude toward themselves, believe they are a person of worth, or think they can do things as well as others has been on the decline over the past ten years, and taken a complete nosedive over the last five. With low confidence comes serious mental health challenges among children, which have increased rapidly over the last decade.

What’s caused this drastic drop in confidence after decades of predictably high positive attitude scores? Social psychologist, Jonathan Haidt, has highlighted three causes:

1. How we parent is different. Kids have been losing their autonomy as there is less unsupervised play today than in the past.

2. How kids interact with the world is different. 2009-2011 marked the beginning of smartphone and social media use amongst kids, and this has only increased over time.

3. It’s only getting harder out there. Rising inequality and economic crises have fueled more intense and competitive parenting. Just think about how much harder getting kids into college is today than 20 years ago.

There’s not a lot to feel great about in this study, but as a researcher and parent myself, I’m optimistic we can turn things around for two reasons.

First, kids have incredible potential. And that’s not just a nice bumper sticker sentiment. The academic term for this potential is plasticity, or the potential for systematic (not random) change.

Everything we know about human development, from genetic changes all the way to social ones, underscores the fact that the individual and their environment have a mutually influential impact on one another. It looks like that relationship has been a drag on a lot of kids lately, but if the arrow can point down, then it can also point up. It means that if we give our kids the right training and motivation, then they can learn to be more confident again.

And the other reason we can be optimistic about restoring our kids’ confidence? They can improve it. 2023 might not look great on that graph, but it also brings an opportunity to use advances in technology to reach more kids in more creative and personalized ways, and ultimately put them all on a path to more confidence.

For 42 years, I had the good fortune of working with college students and their parents as a dean of students. I got to know thousands of college students and their parents. And, for eight of those years, I lived with 200 freshmen in a residence hall, sharing their lives 24/7. It was magical to get to know these 1,600 students. Frankly, this “work” consumed my life, and I loved every minute of it.

What this “way of life” allowed me to do was observe, first hand, students and their parents. Many of these parents I knew as college students. Over these four decades, what I witnessed was a shift in the child/parent relationship.

Some have described this current child/parent relationship as “the closest” and “best ever”, with many students sharing that their parents are their best friends, even their heroes.

This begs the question: is this a good thing?

In college, what I’ve observed way too often is that students are rarely prepared for the adult responsibilities that confront them. Why is that? These are smart, young people who are ambitious and achievement oriented, yet they often lack the confidence to take care of themselves and help those around them. More than any other skill, confidence is what students need the most to make decisions, to push through tough times, to take on adult responsibilities, and to lean into the many opportunities that present themselves during a lifetime.

Whether it’s talking with a professor, deciding to join a club, applying for a job, or simply making friends, confidence is the skill that is most important and least developed. That’s been my experience.

I now feel so honored to have a chance to help change this trajectory, as I commit to working with Legends Lab. Instead of doing “downstream” work, intervening and helping young people and their parents to resolve problems, I can now dedicate my life’s work to “upstream” initiatives, working with children and their parents to prevent these problems from happening in the first place. I’m excited to move from a life of intervention to prevention and believe that this work can truly change the health and well-being of people around the world.