One of my main concerns as I raise my family is building confidence in kids. This past Sunday, I was teaching a class of 9 and 10-year-olds about Matthew 17:20, “If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place, and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.”

Imagine the setting. I brought a plastic mountain from my son’s dinosaur collection and a tiny Lego man.

I explained to the children that this man had a happy life. Things seemed great and perfect as he was walking through life and then… he comes to a mountain.

There’s no alternate route for him to go around the mountain.

He is at the bottom and has to figure out a way to either get over the mountain or move it.

Even at 9 and 10 years old, I knew these kids faced some super hard challenges in their life and I wanted to make a list of their “mountains” before moving on to how we can turn to our Savior to help us conquer or move these mountains.

I pulled out the chalk and asked them, “What mountains do you face in your life?”

Answers started with “School.” “Getting along with my sister.” “Doing my chores.”

And then from the girl sitting in the corner with beautiful long, light brown hair, a gorgeous smile and calm demeanor came, “Confidence.”

Time seemed to stop for a second as I was whisked away to my 10-year-old self.

Growing Up Shy 

Building confidence in kids is challenging, especially for shy children. Our family had recently moved to a new city, which meant a new school and starting over making friends. I was a very shy girl, very quiet and reserved and really saw no reason to assert myself into other’s lives.

Except for the fact that I sought connection.

I was not interested in being part of the large group of popular kids or any large group for that matter. My preference was to have a few very close friends that I knew I could rely on and they could rely on me. The end.

So when three other girls started including me in their friend circle, I thought that these must be my lifetime besties! We talked about boys and how to do our hair and then as they got more comfortable around me, started talking negatively about the girl in our class who was a bit overweight.

It never felt right.

Imagine me, the shy one, just going along because they were including me. But what started out as gossip, became a full-on song made up about being fat. The song even included a section that when you stood up, one of your pant’s buttons would pop off.

Matching outfits and some simple choreography and before I knew it, they were asking the teacher if we could perform our song in front of the class.

I did it because I thought the girl the song was inspired by would never realize we were singing about her per se, just being fat.

Maybe it would be funny.

A performance and a train wreck later, I watched as the exact girl we started gossiping about, started crying and asked to be checked out of school for the day.

My heart ached, no still aches for this girl.

It aches for my young self really.

I had stooped so low to think that it was ok to make fun of someone else and create a performance around it just to be included in a circle of friends.

School was out a few weeks later for summer vacation and I never hung out with that group of girls again. However, they still remain great friends with each other (or so Facebook tells me), even 20 years after graduation.

I muddled my way through junior high until I finally found a group of inspiring friends in high school that were also just striving to be positive, hard-working and focused on doing good and helping others to feel great about themselves. Truly!

And the girl we sang the song about? She is rocking adulthood and has found her confidence! No thanks to me.

How can we build confidence in kids, as young as these 9 and 10-year-olds or younger, to be resilient when others are harsh to them? Never to feel low enough that they feel like they need to make fun of others? To know that it’s alright, no, to know that it is great if their thighs or eyebrows look different than someone else’s?

How can we teach them that realizing their inner beauty and have true confidence will get them through even the hardest of trials in life?

Teach Them to Face Their Fears

Our journey through life is going to be full of pitfalls, snares, obstacles, and things that are so hard to deal with and face. The greatest gift we can give our kids (and ourselves) is to take the bull by the horns, stare it in the face, and conquer.

How do we teach them to face their fears?

As they have to make decisions, some easy and some more complicated, we need to teach them that there will always be forks or turns in our path of life.

There will constantly be decisions before us. And making those decisions is what will help in building confidence in kids of any age!

In order to make decisions wisely, we need courage.

We need the courage to say, “No” when it is needed and the courage to say, “Yes” even when it may seem hard.

Frankly, even the smallest of decisions can determine our destiny on our overall pathway.

When I was in high school, I was still a very quiet girl. Multiple times, I remember sitting in class and the very loud boisterous kids would occasionally say, “Do you ever talk?”

I had a lot to say, but I didn’t have the courage to say it.

More or less, I ‘talked’ through my accomplishments.

Pushing myself in sports or academics was my voice during that time in my life, but I always wanted to be the one that didn’t choke when she had to be in a large social setting.

Many nights I cried myself to sleep wondering why it was so hard for me to do public speaking or interact in large groups. Seriously, shy girls don’t always want to be just a fly on the wall.

When I moved away to college, I determined that I could be whatever I wanted to be. I could be confident and happy and outgoing. And I could start over!

Trying and trying again was what got me through each day. I even went so far as to completely get new roommates every single year in college in order to restart and push myself a little harder the next year. This was a huge test in building confidence!

Public speaking and being in large groups not only became less stressful, but I actually started volunteering for presentations and speaking opportunities.

For my senior project, I was assigned to work with five boys. We worked long hours for weeks on our project and with confidence, I added my expertise and knowledge to the presentation that we had to eventually give in front of faculty members.

When the time came to decide who would be presenting what, the team chose me to do the opening and closing remarks because “She’ll make it look good and summarize smoothly for all of us.”

That was a moment where I realized that with constant work, determination and lots of prayers, I was able to turn one of my greatest fears into an asset!

It didn’t happen overnight. And building confidence in kids doesn’t happen immediately. It is a process.

Their fears will be different as well. They could be struggling with being fit for instance, and you could take them on great family hikes to ease them into being active.  Or maybe it really is in ghosts and they have a fear that makes them feel paralyzed at times. You could possibly teach them of the history behind stories and introduce them to ghost towns of America that aren’t scary per se, but more intriguing. 

Facing your feels can be long, rigorous and challenging, but it is so worth it!

Look For Friends That Lift

When Dorothy was whisked away to Oz, her only concern was to get back home. She didn’t know how and was told that the only person who would know how to return was the Wizard in Emerald City.

To find the Wizard, all she had to do was “follow the yellow brick road.”

This story of the Wizard of Oz is a classic because we have all been Dorothy. We have all wanted to know how to accomplish this one thing or get to a certain goal.

Just give me the answer and stat!

As the story continues, we learn that the Wizard is a hoax and Emerald City does not incredibly hold the solution to every problem. Once she realizes this, Dorothy thinks all is lost.

Until she realizes, she had the ability that she wanted all along. She learned that it is not the destination that we are truly after, but the journey along the way.

The real story of the Wizard of Oz lies in the friends Dorothy makes along the way and how each of them is searching for their own answers to their individual problems.

Does the Wizard solve their problems and give them exactly what they want? No! They teach each other the skills they were in search of. From each other and the experiences they have together along the yellow brick road, they learn courage and love and knowledge.

When we truly understand that the friends we surround ourselves with are the ones who shape our learning and destination, then we strive to spend our time with people that we lift and in turn lift us as well.  Friends can truly be a huge stepping stone in building confidence in kids.

Teach Them to Be Virtuous

The world places so much emphasis on physical attractiveness. It is everywhere! What you fad diet you’re on, the style of clothes you wear, having just the right eyebrows, etc. Girls as young as 5 are hearing this!

We need to teach our children that they are each uniquely beautiful and not to set their standards against what a magazine or video is telling them. They need to determine for themselves what is healthy and good for them as an individual. They actually have a lot to teach us as well!

Beyond that, as we teach our children to be virtuous, chaste, and morally clean, then they can hold their head high and have their inner beauty glow in their eyes and in their face.

You’ve met the girls that are being virtuous, even against the odds. It shows in everything they do, in what they wear and how they carry themselves. If girls have the confidence to treat their body with respect and love, they truly do shine.

When he was a young man, King Louis XVI of France was kidnapped by the men who had dethroned his father, the king. These men knew that if they could destroy him morally, he would never realize the great and grand destiny to be heir to the throne.

These men subjected him to every vile thing life had to offer in hopes that he would become a slave to one of these sins. However, even under intense temptation, he never yielded under pressure. This truly puzzled his captors, and after doing everything they could think of, they asked him why he had such great moral strength.

His reply was simple. He said, “I cannot do what you ask, for I was born to be a king.”

When we teach our children that they are destined for greatness and when they honestly begin to understand what that means, then they will strive to carry themselves as such and let their brilliant inner light shine!

Faith Can Move Mountains

Back in the church class on Sunday, I wrote “Confidence” on the board with the other answers that had previously been listed when I asked them what ‘mountains’ they are faced with in life.

I then looked right at this girl who was brave enough to give a deep and honest answer and said, “Absolutely, confidence can be a huge mountain!”

I then went on to pass out seeds to the children and explain that if they have faith if they believe even just a small little bit (the size of this seed) that the Lord can help them move their mountains.

He will!

Help may come in providing a ledge to rest on after climbing for a bit, or a tunnel that leads through part of the mountain to another section, but He will help us conquer and overcome those hard things in life if we have the faith to ask and then to rely upon.

I’m not sure if any of the kids will remember that lesson about Matthew 17:20, but I know that this 10-year-old girl taught me that I have overcome so much from my own 10-year-old follies.

I haven’t done it alone and I still have more to conquer.

With family and friends lifting me along the way, stories of courage that motivate me and honestly, the Lord to help move so many mountains in my life, I know without a doubt that I can always overcome!

As I raise and teach my own daughter, building confidence is the main virtue I hope she takes from my home.

For when she has confidence, she can conquer anything!  

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