Raising Brave Kids: The Hidden Power of Courage

On the newest episode of The Still Waters Podcast, Teri explains that the courage young people most need is the everyday strength to do what’s right under peer pressure. She defines courage as choosing what’s right despite fear. Using biblical examples, historical figures, and modern day examples, Teri frames courage as a trainable muscle rooted in character.

00:00 Welcome and Why Courage
01:19 Courage Defined for Teens
03:03 The Current of Peer Pressure
04:40 Social Media Amplifies Pressure
05:57 Research and Universal Standards
07:12 Young Heroes in Scripture
07:52 Daniel Purposeful Boundaries
09:58 Joseph and Integrity Under Fire
10:44 David Private Character Public Courage
11:57 Purpose as a Courage Predictor
12:44 History Lessons Ruby Bridges
15:09 Modern Courage Malala Story
18:57 Courage in Kids Today
21:37 Roots Character and Self Worth
23:37 Modern Mentor King Randall
26:02 Practical Ways to Build Courage
30:16 Closing 

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• Rufus@stillwaterslife.com
• Teri@stillwaterslife.com
• Abrielle@stillwaterslife.com
• Melissa@stillwaterslife.com
• Chris@stillwaterslife.com

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello and welcome back to the Stillwaters Podcast. I'm so glad that you are here today tuning in on May 28th, 2026, because we're going to talk about something that I really feel is desperately needed when it comes to our young people, the young people that are in our lives. We're going to talk today about the concept of courage. Not the courage like you think of when you think of soldiers on a battlefield or the courage of firefighters that are running into burning buildings. The courage I'm talking about is one that doesn't get noticed much, but it's equally powerful. And that's the courage that shows up in the middle school hallway. The courage that a 12-year-old holds in her mind when everyone around her is doing something that she knows is wrong. The courage that's in the mind of a teenage boy when his whole friend group is pressuring him to cross a line that he has promised himself he wouldn't cross. That's the kind of courage that we're going to talk about today. So hear me out because courage is not the absence of fear. Courage is feeling that fear, feeling the pressure from others, feeling that pull of wanting to belong, but choosing to do the right thing anyway. So you've probably heard of that ancient Greek philosopher known as Aristotle. He called courage the first virtue. Because he argued that without it, you can't practice any of the other virtues. So think about that. Without courage, honesty becomes an issue. Without courage, integrity becomes an issue and harder to maintain. Without courage, all the other things that a young person would learn in some type of character education becomes useless rather than becoming the armor that they need to face day-to-day pressure that they experience. So today we're going to look at what courage actually looks like for our young people. We're going to look at it through a historical lens, we're going to look at it through a biblical lens, and we're going to look at it through some inspiring stories that are happening right now in schools and neighborhoods across this country. And we're going to talk about what we, as the adults in the lives of young people, can do to help build that courage. Okay. First, we've got to understand the world that our kids are in. We have to be honest about what we're asking kids to be courageous against. If you've ever tried to swim upstream, you know that that's not completely impossible, but that it's exhausting. And if nobody ever taught you to swim, or if you've never built any strength in your arms and your legs, that current is going to take you wherever it wants you to go. So that's what adolescence feels like for a lot of our young people. The current is powerful. The desire to belong, it's one of the most fundamental human drives we have. There was this researcher you may have heard of. His name is Abraham Maslow, and he placed belonging or that feelingness of belonging right above survival in his hierarchy of human needs. So he put that right above physical needs, like the need for food and air and water and safety. That's how deep this goes. Our kids, they're not being weak when they cave to peer pressure, they're being human. And that's exactly why we must be intentional about giving them the proper tools and the language and the models so that they can swim upstream. Now add to that the force of social media. A generation ago, peer pressure happened in person between the school bells ringing, and it ended when a kid walked through their front door of their home. Today, it's not like that. Today it's 24 hours a day, seven days a week, in the palm of their hand, and that pressure never goes away. The audience is never smaller than the entire world. And the consequence of not conforming can feel to a teenager's brain, which we know now is not fully developed until they're much older, it can feel like social death almost. Research that has been published confirms that media use has a significant impact on the values, the norms, and the behaviors of children and youth. The screen in a child's pocket, it's not neutral. It's a pipeline of peer pressure comparison and influence that runs every hour of every day. Now, some of you who have listened to the podcast before have heard me talk about Ascend's Universal Standards of Optimal Sexual Development. This is a research-backed K through 12 educational framework that I use in my curriculum development and also just use as a guideline in teaching. But that, those universal standards, they specifically identify peer pressure as one of the most significant influences on youth behavior, including sexual behavior. And the research backs this up clearly. A study that was published in a journal found that peer influence operates powerfully across multiple adolescent risk behaviors, and critically that this influence runs in both directions. So that current we've been talking about, it can run toward risk or it can run towards positive health. And the adults that are in a child's life are the ones who help determine which way it flows. Okay, so now I want to take a moment and look at something that I think gets overlooked in conversations about youth development, and that's the young, courageous people that scripture shows us. The Bible doesn't primarily give us courage stories about middle-aged people who had it all figured out. Most of the most powerful courage stories in Scripture involve young people that were under enormous social, political, and sometimes moral pressure. And they chose to do the right thing anyway. Let's look at a few examples. So let's start with Daniel. Most biblical scholars believe that Daniel was a teenager when he was taken from Jerusalem to Babylon as a captive. He was brought into the palace of King Nebuchadnezzar, one of the most powerful rulers of the ancient world at that time. And what happened to him? He was given a new name, a new language, they educated him, and they gave him a new diet. So everything around him was designed to reshape who he was, to reshape his identity. But what did Daniel do? The Bible says in the very first chapter of Daniel 1.8 that Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with the king's food. That phrase, purposed in his heart, is worth taking note of. Daniel made a decision and he set a personal boundary for himself in advance. He didn't wait until that tempting food was in front of him to decide how he felt about it. He had already settled that question in his own mind. That is how courage actually works. It's not a reflex that takes place, it's a commitment you make ahead of time, and it's something that we can teach kids to do. Interestingly, going back to the universal standards that I just mentioned, in that framework, they make this exact same point. In its uh section on refusal skills, noting that developing and using skills to refuse or say no to unhealthy behaviors must happen before a young person is in a high-pressure situation, not in the middle of one. Well, Daniel understood that long time ago. Okay, and he and he exhibited that when he had that food put in front of him. Let's look at another example. Joseph. Joseph was a young man, sold into slavery by his own brothers, possibly in his teen years. He was falsely accused by a wicked woman, Potiphar's wife, and thrown into prison. At every turn, he had every reason to compromise, to do whatever it took to survive. And at every turn, what did he do? He chose integrity. He chose integrity even when it cost him. His story is the story of a young person who was squeezed by immense pressure from every direction and refused to let that pressure determine who he was. In other words, he refused to let it determine his character. Then there's David standing in front of Goliath while trained soldiers, trained military soldiers who were adults cowered behind him. What gave him that courage? Well, in 1 Samuel 17, he told King Saul directly that he had killed a lion, he had killed a bear, and the Lord who had delivered him from the lion and the bear would deliver him again. In other words, David's courage in the big moment was built on the small moments of faithfulness that nobody saw. Nobody was watching. His courage in public was the result of this strong character that was built in private. So that's a really important concept or principle. Character built in private, courage expressed in public. Going back to published research from a developmental psychology standpoint, we can find that a young person's sense of purpose, in other words, their deeply held conviction that something is important, that something matters. That's one of the strongest predictors of positive character development and courageous behavior. David had that purpose, didn't he? Joseph had purpose. Daniel had purpose. And purpose, the research tells us, is something adults can cultivate in children deliberately. All right, let's look at some other historical figures where we can see this. Because the Bible's not the only place where we can find these stories. History is full of them. Do you remember the little girl named Ruby Bridges? In 1960, she was six years old, and she walked through the doors of her elementary school as the first black child to integrate that school. She walked past crowds of adults that were screaming at her. She was escorted by federal marshals to get into that school. When she was asked later on when she was after she had grown up, what gave her the courage to do that, she talked about her faith, her mother's prayers, and the fact that her parents had prepared her for the hostility that she was going to encounter. They had taught her, they had told her what she was walking into, but they also explained to her why it was so important, why it mattered. She didn't face that hallway and that walk alone because she was equipped. Courage, it's not like this superpower that some kids are born with. Because I've heard people say, oh, that that child has a lot of courage, and this one doesn't. No, it's it's more like a muscle. And like every muscle, it grows when it's exercised, and it atrophies when it isn't used. Ruby Bridges' parents were her personal trainers. They built that muscle before she even knew she needed it. This too falls in line with psychology research that tells us about character strengths in children and adolescents. Character strengths are not fixed traits, but they are things that can be developed. And when there is intentional investment by an adult. Ruby's parents were doing, they were they were practicing positive psychology before he even had a name. They were investing intentionally into her. Okay, now let's jump more towards more recent history. In 2012, there was a young girl, I believe she was 15 at the time, named, and I may butcher her name, so I apologize ahead of time. Her first name was Malala, and her last name is Yusuf. Yusuf. I think I said that right. Malala Yousafe. And this young woman, when she was 15, was shot in the face or in the head by Taliban gunmen on her school bus that she was riding in Pakistan. And the reason that this happened is because she had publicly advocated for girls' rights to an education. Now, thankfully, she survived this act of violence, but rather than going silent on it after this horrible incident, she became even louder. She later addressed the United Nations when she was just 16 years old. And eventually she won the Nobel Peace Prize at 17 years old. If you want to know more about her, her story is told in her own words in a book that she wrote that's called I Am Malala. I read it several years ago. It's very interesting. And one of the most striking threads running through that book is the role of her father. He was a teacher and he was a passionate education advocate. And he shaped her values from childhood. He talked to her about ideas, he modeled conviction, and he created an environment in their home where principles were discussed openly and seriously. Now, don't misunderstand me, I am not asking for your kids to face gunmen or for my kids to face gunmen. But the principle that Malala embodied is one that we absolutely can and should cultivate. And that's the belief that something matters more than my comfort, more than my safety, and more than my social acceptance. That's the root of courage. It's a value, a deeply held conviction that something is worth standing for, even when standing is costly. You as a parent, you don't have to be raising a future Nobel Peace Prize winner to apply this lesson, okay? Every parent, every teacher, every church member that works with young people, every sports coach or any type of coach that's listening to this podcast has the opportunity to plant those seeds in the hearts of the young people they work with. Research found that positive parenting, that is characterized by communication and deliberate value transmission improves multiple aspects of health and well-being well into young adulthood. Malala's father was a prime example of this. This wasn't an accident on his part, but rather a strategy that he used to equip his daughter to adulthood. All right, now let's look at what courage looks like in real kids today. Let's bring this all the way back home to us. Because I don't want this to feel like it's out of reach. I want you to recognize courage when it shows up in the regular lives of the kids that you're around. Courage looks like a 13-year-old boy at a sleepover who says to his friends that he's not gonna watch that when someone pulls out a phone to show a clip of pornography. And then he sits with that awkward silence that follows afterwards. That boy's refusal in that moment is a genuine act of courage. Courage looks like a 15-year-old girl who tells her parents she's not gonna go to the party because she knows what's gonna happen there. And instead she spends Friday night feeling lonely and wondering if she had made the right call. Boy did she make the right call. That loneliness is the price of her integrity. But you know what? That's it temporary. Courage looks like a young man who walks away from a conversation where his friends are mocking a fellow classmate. He doesn't give them a speech, a lecture, he simply walks away and refuses to participate in that unkindness. Courage looks like maybe a ten-year-old that tells a trusted adult that something happened to them or something happened to a friend of theirs that shouldn't have. Even though they were told to keep it secret. Going back to those universal standards that I talked about earlier, these standards specifically address this in the section of the standards on sexual abuse prevention. And they note that students at every grade level should be able to explain the importance of reporting actual or suspected sexual abuse to a parent, trusted adult, or a local authority. That report that takes much bravery and is terrifying to disclose is one of the most courageous acts a child can perform. And sometimes our children have more courage than adults do when it comes to that. Reporting. These are not moments that make the news. Nobody's gonna write a book like Malala about the eighth grader who declined to send a compromising photo even though everyone else was doing it. But those moments are shaping a human being. Those moments are the practice field for every major moral decision that they will face as an adult. Think of it like a tree in a storm. The branches of a tree bend dramatically when the storm is raging. You can see the pressure from the rain and the wind, you can see the struggle of the tree. But whether the tree survives, The storm depends on what? It depends mostly on what's happening underground in the root system where nobody can see. Character is that root system. That courage is what keeps that tree standing when the storm comes. There was a study that done that showed that low self-esteem during adolescence predicted poor health outcomes later on in life, criminal behavior, and limited economic opportunities in adulthood. The inverse of that is true as well. Young people who know their worth, who have a strong sense of identity and self-respect are significantly more resistant to the pressures that lead to those outcomes. So building self-worth builds the root system. Building the root system builds the courage. Another thing the universal standards bring out is the importance of resilience and refusal skills as being core competencies that need to be developed before young people need to use them. That's the key phrase I want you to remember before they need them. You don't train for a marathon the morning of the race. You train months ahead of time so that when the race day comes, your body already knows what to do. All right, I want to take a moment to highlight something that's happening right now that I think is absolutely wonderful. And it's a modern example of courage cultivation in young people. There's an Instagram account called New Emerging King. Maybe you're familiar with it, but if you're not, let me tell you about it. It's run by a man named King Randall, and I believe that he's out of Georgia. He's the founder of an organization called The X for Boys. He has over a million followers, and he creates content specifically designed to equip boys and young men with practical skills and character. His videos have titles like Boys Should Know Hotel Checkout and Boys Should Know Handling Hotel Issues. Boys should know fire safety. Boys should know how to treat people that are different than them. These videos have millions of views. Meaning millions are watching an adult invest in their competence and confidence. What King Randall is doing, whether he would use this exact language or not, is building that root system that we've been talking about. He's giving young men the confidence that comes from competence. And confidence is one of the building blocks of courage. That too is not an accident. King Randall is an architect of character. Research on character strengths found that character strengths are significantly associated with reduced sexual risk behaviors and greater resistance to negative peer pressure amongst adolescents. When a young man knows who he is and has adults in his corner reinforcing that identity, the pull of the crowd loses some of its power. So go check him out. King Randall. Okay, so what do we actually do with all of this? Let me give you a few things that you can start doing this week if you're a parent, a grandparent, a teacher, a coach, a Bible class teacher, anybody that's working with young people. First, name courage when you see it. When a child makes a hard right choice, say that out loud. Tell them that was courageous. Tell them that you saw them do that. Tell them that you know that wasn't easy. Naming and affirming positive character strengths in young people is one of the most effective ways to develop those strengths over time. You're labeling the muscle so that they know it exists. Number two, tell them some stories. Tell them about Daniel. Tell them about Ruby Bridges. Tell them about the kid in your own life or your own past who stood up when it was hard. Stories are how human beings have always transmitted values. Do not underestimate the power of a well-told story. Third, rehearse different scenarios. Role play is powerful. It is preparation. You can ask your child, what you know, what would you say if someone offered you something you didn't want at a party? Practice the words verbally. Don't just tell them what to do, but role play it with them so that they can verbally practice how they would respond. The U.S. Preventative Services Task Force, in its recommendation statement on behavioral counseling to prevent sexually transmitted infections, confirms that behavioral skill building, including rehearsed refusal skills, is among the most evidence-supported interventions for reducing adolescent risks. So that is something that I have in my education program. We talk about refusal skills, and kids practice doing that. Kids who have practiced saying no are significantly more likely to actually say it when they're in the moment they need to say it. Fourth, make your home a safe place for failure. When a child comes home and admits that they cave to some sort of social pressure, the worst response is shame and punishment. The best response is to listen thoughtfully without getting angry and extend some grace to them. I mean, they are kids after all. Ask them what happened. Ask them what made it hard. Ask them what they would do differently next time. Because there will always be a next time. But rather than shaming them, once again, equip them to do better in the future. Fifth, model it yourself. Let your kids see that you have to make hard choices sometimes. Let them hear you say that was not the easiest choice, but I knew that it was the right choice. Parents and family are the primary influence on their children's values, their attitudes, and their behaviors. So, as much as I would love for you to use the curriculum I've written, I want you to know that you as a parent are the most powerful curriculum. As we conclude today, let's remember that courage in kids, it's not a personality trait reserved for just the bold and the fearless. It's a skill that is built slowly over time and deliberately. It takes place in our kitchens, in classrooms, in car rides, in bedtime conversations, in Sunday morning discussions, or in my house, they took place at midnight sometimes. It's built by adults who believe that young people in their lives are capable of more than the culture says they are. It's built by parents who pray over their children before the storm arrives, and it's built by teachers who call a student's character by name. It is built by coaches and mentors and trusted adults and youth workers who see a root system worth growing in that child. Aristotle told us courage was the first virtue. Daniel showed us what making a commitment ahead of time looks like. Ruby Bridges showed us what a prepared child can walk through. Malala showed us what a value shaped child will stand for. And King Randall right now is showing us what intentional investment in young men looks like. The tree will bend in the wind, but the roots will hold. That's what courage looks like in kids. And you right now, in your role, in your home, in your classroom, you are the one who's building it. Thanks for being here today. Please share this episode with someone raising kids or teaching kids who needs this reminder. Until next time, may you find healing and wellness at the Still Waters.