Teaching Children the Skill of Confidence
By Irene van der Zande, Kidpower Executive Director
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Sometimes people ask me, “Why do you keep saying that Kidpower teaches confidence? I think of confidence as meaning that you believe in yourself, and that’s a feeling or a belief, not a skill that is taught!”
The reality is that confidence can be many things – a feeling, an attitude, a belief, a decision, and a set of skills that can be learned.
The feeling of confidence comes from believing that we are powerful, valuable, and competent. Some lucky people seem to feel confident just naturally most of the time. However, in working with thousands of students from all walks of life, we have found that people of all ages and abilities can learn to develop the skill of Showing Confidence, no matter how they feel inside.
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We tell our students that, “People will listen to you better and bother you less if you Act Aware, Calm, and Confident.” We then coach our students to practice sitting, talking, and walking while they Act Aware, Calm, and Confident by:
- Making their bodies tall and open with their shoulders down, their backs straight, and their heads up
- Using a “soft eye” as they look around rather than glaring at someone or acting timid
- Keeping a peaceful look on their faces and calm strong body language
- Using a “regular voice” loud enough to be heard easily
- Speaking up about what they do and don’t want using clear polite words
- Staying centered while the teacher pretends to be someone acting rude or scary
People can also learn the skills necessary to protect themselves from most experiences that can damage their feelings of confidence, to deal with problems in a way that develops their feelings of confidence, and to create experiences that will build their feelings of confidence.
One of my favorite insights from Stephen R. Covey’s wise book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, is that love is not just a feeling; loving someone is actually a decision. You can show love to another person if you have decided to love that person, even when you don’t feel love towards that person at that moment. By doing so, you can often create the conditions that will lead more feelings of love between you and this person. (Making Safe Decisions About Love and Showing Love in Healthy Ways are also skills that we can learn, but that’s a different article.)
The same thing is true with Confidence. You can learn how to Show Confidence and decide to use this skill no matter how you feel inside. By doing so, you are more likely to have experiences that will lead to your feeling more confidence. Acting with a lack of Confidence is likely to cause you to doubt yourself even more and to cause others to treat you with less interest and respect, which often leads to your having experiences that can increase your feelings of doubting yourself, creating a downward spiral leading to loss of feeling confident.
Often, developing the skill of Confidence is connected to the skill of Persistence, which means not giving up, even in the face of obstacles, and to the skill of Asking for Help, even when you feel embarrassed or shy. Overcoming feelings of insecurity and self-doubt is hard work. We believe that everyone deserves to have the help they need in learning to Show Confidence as well as to solve problems. This is why we have our students practice the skill of Being Persistent in Asking for Help, while the instructor pretends to be someone who is busy, intrusive, or impatient. We also teach our students that, if one person doesn’t help, it's their job to keep asking different people until they get the help they need.
Learning and deciding to Show Confidence is not a new idea. In the 1951 musical by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein, The King and I, the governess Anna sings the song below to the children in her care. I know that this play caused a lot of controversy because of the many historic inaccuracies about the people of Thailand. However, these lyrics were not the problem. I wanted to share this for those of you who might not know it, because humming this song in my head has helped me at times in my own life when it was really important to face something that scared me. Actually, when we Show Confidence even though we feel frightened or nervous, we are not “making believe” we are brave, we are being brave!
While shivering in my shoes
I strike a careless pose
And whistle a happy tune
And no one ever knows
I'm afraid.
Make believe you're brave
And the trick will take you far.
You may be as brave
As you make believe you are
You may be as brave
As you make believe you are
Please visit stlyrics.com for full lyrics and music.