Raising a Confident Kid

There’s a lot of things you have to teach your kids when you’re trying to raise them right. The best news? You’re going to screw up. If you spend your time wallowing in your failures instead of celebrating their successes, you’ll teach them to hate themselves. Instill some confidence in your kids before it’s too late.

The moment anyone exudes the slightest bit of confidence, we work to crush it. We should want our kids to be confident people. They should trust their instincts. They should carry themselves with their heads held high.

I’ve been watching the PBS series The West over the past few days (if you haven’t seen it, it’s a must watch). There’s a great quote from a woman by the name of Charlotte Black Elk.

“The Cree people in their stories would say, ‘When the Crow were coming to fight, we sent our little boys to fight. When the Mandan were coming, we sent the old men. When the Sioux were coming, we painted our faces for death and prepared to die.'”

I want C to be a Sioux. I want people to know she’s coming. Not that I want anyone to worry that they’ll die if she’s there, but I want her to face any challenge as if she’s off to submit it into total defeat. Maybe she’ll be afraid, but I want her confidence to be so high that she won’t care.

Too many of our kids are the Crow. They’re handled like fragile packages and carefully protected through life’s different bubble wraps. Eventually, one or two bubbles pop and things get broken. The cracks will show, and we don’t know how to handle it. I don’t want C to be so protected that she can’t handle the negatives in life. I want my Sioux warrior to be confident enough to handle the ups and downs in her life.

Life is hard. If you haven’t figured that out by now, well, you’re in for a rude awakening. If you are as confident as a warrior, you will not fear the life around you. We should all want that for our kids.

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