The Difference Between Confidence and Self-Esteem: How to Build Both in You and Your Kids

In this episode, Kaley sits down with confidence coach Brooks Wilkening to talk about what it actually means to raise confident kids, and why it starts with understanding the difference between confidence and self-esteem. Through real, practical conversation, they explore how the way we talk to our kids shapes the way kids see themselves, and why stepping back and letting them figure things out on their own is one of the most powerful things a parent can do. Whether you're in the thick of the toddler years or navigating bigger kid moments, this conversation will shift the way you think about showing up for your children.

Brooks Wilkening is a confidence coach dedicated to helping parents raise kids who feel secure, capable, and grounded in who they are. With a passion for bridging the gap between confidence and self-esteem, she offers practical tools and insight that meet families right where they are, from the small everyday moments to the big ones that shape a child's sense of self.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:13

Well, welcome back to Reality Renewed. Today we have the wonderful Brooks Wilkening with us today, who is uh an amazing confidence coach for kids. And I came to meet uh Brooks. Gosh, I think it was last summer I got your information through someone uh because I wanted to do some coaching for my daughter because it's such an important life lesson, I think. And so obviously summer got busy, but now we're gonna do it this summer, which I'm I'm very excited about. And I just think uh raising resilient kids, especially in this day and age with social media and all you know the extracurricular activities and all the different things kids are going to, uh, I think it's just it's so important uh that we do that. So I'm so happy to have you on, and we can talk more about this because I know a lot of our listeners have kids, and so um I know this will be very helpful for them. So why don't you tell us a little bit about uh yourself and and your role?

SPEAKER_01 1:24

Great. Well, thank you. I am thrilled to be here. This is a passion of mine, and it's just really fun to be able to share it with eager learning listeners. So thank you so much for thinking and taking the chance. Yes. Um little bit about me. I have a master's in family therapy, started in a clinical setting. Uh, about that time I had my fourth child and kind of had my own sense of I can't do this all, um, and left the practice. And months later, people contacted me and said, Would you please come back? Would you please see our children? Would you please? And I kept saying, I can't, I don't do it anymore, raising my own. Right. And um, I kept getting called, which I loved it, it was great. And I learned if I changed my my niche from therapy to coaching, it allowed me to do things a little bit differently, and I began doing some research and learning what the difference between therapy and coaching was, and it's great, both are wonderful, but coaching allowed me to meet students at Starbucks or at their home or at the park, and I have a love for teenagers and young people, and so I was able to create a little niche of confidence coaching for young young people.

SPEAKER_00 2:40

I love that, I love that because it's so in it's just so in demand and something like you don't really think about, you know. I remember when my daughter last year was going through some personal stuff, you know, you think about you know what therapy to go to, or you know, there's all these different therapists and all these different places, and for you to have this for kids to be able to go to is just it's amazing. So thank you for that. Uh, what would you say the biggest misconception parents have about confidence?

SPEAKER_01 3:15

Yeah, that's a great question. Confidence is an interesting trait, one that we all I think desire. Maybe no matter how much we have, we kind of desire a little bit more, or do we like to grow it? I think the misconception is that we have a finite amount of confidence in what you were born with is what you were given. And I like to think of confidence as a muscle that we can grow. Where uh I might not have big biceps, but I can grow them. I might not have the strength of confidence yet where I would like it to be, but I can grow it. So you might have multiple children and some come out more confident. Right. They just do. That's just the disposition they were given. But some come out with more math skills, and some come out, you know, are born with more English skills, and we can learn all of those. So confidence is something that we can learn and we can grow. The other misconception that I would say is that confidence, in my opinion, is everybody's game. It's not like a skill set we can say no thank you to. I'm not great at science, and I can I can be in the social emotional world and not have to do a lot of science. Right, right. And that's worked. Okay, there's a lot of opportunities, but confidence isn't one I can just pass on. And it's certainly not one we now want our children to pass on. No, absolutely not. It's just not okay, and we know that we want that for them, so it's just a critical life skill.

SPEAKER_00 4:41

That's amazing and beautifully said. Uh, well, and kind of to tie into that, what would you say sort of the difference between confidence and self-esteem, and then sort of that fine line between confidence and arrogance?

SPEAKER_01 4:59

Yep, yeah, great question. Self-esteem, I would say when I started coaching, I kind of thought it was a self-esteem coach. And what I've learned is that self-esteem is really how we feel about ourselves now. I feel happy with my hair, I feel happy with my friends. Self-esteem is a current state of feeling about ourself. Um, confidence is more of a future state, it's more of a moving feeling. I can A, B, or C. I will try, I can do it again. So confidence has more movement in it, it has more tenacity in it, self-esteem is how we feel right now. That's what I would say the biggest difference is. Again, confidence can grow. Both can change as we age. The difference between confidence and arrogance, this is my opinion. Arrogance, I would believe, is a false confidence, where we put our confidence in possibly like a skill or a trait rather than in our ability to do that skill. So sometimes we might feel arrogant because we're naturally good at something or something happened for us. That's different than feeling confident because we solved a problem or learned a new skill or found a new passion that we are excited about. Arrogance is not earned, confidence is earned.

SPEAKER_00 6:22

Gosh, that should be like a bumper sticker. That's so good.

SPEAKER_01 6:27

And arrogance goes away, it's only skin deep. Yeah. Right. So that's a big difference, too. Confidence is something you muscle.

SPEAKER_00 6:35

Yeah, that's amazing. Um, so you know, we're talking, you know, to keep talking about confidence, and how would you say, and I know we're we talked about this before, but you know, confidence and resilience in kids really goes hand in hand. Uh, and you know, just from even talking about this podcast with you before we went live, I've honestly learned so much about that. But what would you say like is the best way to raise resilient kids?

SPEAKER_01 7:12

Great question. And our world requires a lot of resilience right now, and as you grow up, you'll you only need more. Resilience is another skill that we can learn. It's a practice, uh a muscle-building experience. Um, research right now shows that parents who solve problems for their children increase their sense of anxiety and their ability to need help. Confidence is the opposite of that. So if anxiety says, should I, could I, would I, confidence says I can, I will, I'll try. Right? So the resilience part is the practice part of I tried and failed and I'll try again. Or I tried and I learned and I'll try again. It's that muscle piece of um making the mistake, reframing it from how can I do it over again. If you think of an athlete right now, while we're recording this, the Winter Olympics are going on. Yes, and the Winter Olympics is a lot of like high extreme danger sports. And when you watch this kid, the kids, they're like 19 and 25 flipping through the air. Most of the time to learn those skills, you have to fall like a lot. They they don't land on their feet right away. When they get the skill is when they land on their feet. So resilience is the idea that you're you keep trying until you get it right. That's the muscle of I'll I'll figure this out. I don't know it yet. I'll figure it out. And unfortunately, the only way to learn that skill probably is to fall a lot until you know maybe a ski or their skis get underneath them and they finally land standing upright. They've fallen 1,000 times before. So same with resilience. We kind of have to let our kids feel that feeling of it didn't go right, so I can try again, try again. And in that trying, we're building this muscle of oh, I'm gonna figure this out.

SPEAKER_00 9:09

I love that because just listening to you, I'm like, oh, I definitely don't do that. You know, it's hard. I'm I'm such a mama bear personality, and so it's like when I feel like my kids have been wronged, or you know, I just I want to go right and just be like, I I got this, I got you, but it is such a good point. It's that they kind of have to figure it out too, because one day they're gonna be 18 and 19 and in college and maybe not down the street at the University of Minnesota, and you know, they I mean that'd be great, but they need to figure it out on their own too. And so I think having those less life lessons when you're young like that. I mean, I wish I had someone to talk to me about, you know, resilience when I was a kid, but you know, we I think there was definitely a little bit more of that, you know. I think it's we're a little bit more in the helicopter parent generation.

SPEAKER_01 10:04

It's really hard to see our kids um feel pain. It's really hard. None of us want that. And naturally, as parents, we run towards a hurting child, right? And what we have to learn is that sometimes we have them, we have then robbed them of the ability to figure out how to solve that pain. So when we do it for them, they don't they don't get that satisfaction, they don't get the win, they don't get the stamp of approval that I I solved this problem, right? It would be like taking the last puzzle piece from your child and putting it in and then being proud of yourself that you finished. Right. We would never do that. No, no, no, no. Right. We give them the last puzzle piece and then they have that sense of accomplishment. So as a parent, I have four children myself. I am constantly reminding myself, I need to step back so they can step up. I need to step back so they can step up. And not in every situation, not always, but more often than not, I need to step back so they can step up. Because I can step in. Right. I can solve it, and I know what I'm doing because I'm their mom. Right. But that's not the point. That's not the point of me raising confident uh kids who are part of this world and get to go do amazing things and try their skills and travel the world. Right, right.

SPEAKER_00 11:21

I love that. Uh I would love to talk about you know, this actually kind of goes into that. Uh is it kind of ne which I know this is something that unfortunately a lot of kids have had to deal with, but sort of navigating bullying. Yeah. And, you know, sort of the different types of bullying, how kids, to your point, can really be their own advocate, and when is it time for parents to step in? And when is it time, or when is it that you just need to let them figure it out?

SPEAKER_01 12:00

Yeah, those are great questions. And I unfortunately, most people I talk to, their kids have felt bullied at one point or another. We live in a very verbal world where we have learned that words have power and kids will use them sometimes unknowingly, sometimes knowingly. Um two different ways of looking at it. First, um, is this a bully that my child um feels threatened in their safety? Obviously, if that's a concern, then a parent needs to step in. A young child might not know the difference between safe and unsafe in emotional, physical, some of those realms. So that's a great thing for us to say. Are they physically safe? If they're not, I need to step in. Are they emotionally safe? Well, they're in the classroom. Yes, it's emotionally safe. They feel hurt. So are their feelings hurt or are they actually being pushed around or spoken down to? So the funny thing about bullies and confidence and all this put together is what we are dealing with is people's feelings. Feelings are wonderful. We need them as therapists, we encourage them, we talk about them, we lean into them, and then we have to move through them. We can't stay in them, we can't give too much life to them. The funny thing is we can't even always believe them. So feelings can be misguiding, and it's hard for us to know is this happening to my child or is this how my child is perceiving it? Now, as a young woman, um, most of us could say we felt like girls were mean at some point. Absolutely. We've all been still, I mean, I girls can still be mean. They they are. Girls are mean to each other. There's this period of time where they're developing and learning and growing, and they are their mouths are their weapon. And that is what they do. And when they're trying to find power or authority over other girls, I think that's what they use is their their mouth and their ability to leave people in and out. It's been going on for a long time, right? Um, is that bullying? Probably. Did we all figure it out and get through it and find a little bit of our own self in that space? Yes. And so um, it's both and we want to come alongside our child, we want to talk with them about it, we want to ask a lot of questions. Huh? What are you seeing? What's happening at the school? What are you feeling? If I work with an anxious child, which a lot of our students have anxiety right now, if they're an anxious child, a funny look feels really awful. And they feel like someone might be attacking them, but we don't know the accuracy of that because their feelings are very raw. So that's really hard. That's a really hard thing. So we have to get to know our child and how they perceive the outside world. That's a first step. Are they being spoken rudely to? Are they being called names? That's different, right? Um, are they being pushed on at recess? Are they being left out of games? So those are different feelings than then I feel, I feel like no one's talking to me. Those things, those things unfortunately do happen. So, what how do we handle bully? One, we ask our kids a lot, ask a lot of questions without emotion in our voices. Hardest thing we're gonna do. Totally, totally. We need to ask questions without leading for an answer. Did she say this to you again? They know how we feel. We need to ask questions without thinking we already know the answer. That's really hard. Because we we might. So we need to be curious. We need to always be curious, parents. We're learning. And then as we learn and we can decipher if this is threatening our child's sense of safety, emotional or physical, that might be a space for us to step in. I do think even before that happens, what we can always be doing is helping our children find language. But one, identify their feelings, and two, find language to speak up for themselves. It does not mean a bully will stop. Can't always stop a bully. But we can speak up for ourselves, even if it's just to ourselves. So here's an example. Um, I had a young, I had a mother say to me, uh, my son was teased about his haircut, and he won't, he's so scared to go back to school. He just one time somebody said one thing about his haircut, and we went and got it fixed, and now he won't go back to school. And that that was unfortunate. I wish he wasn't teased about his haircut. I also need this young man to learn. He doesn't have to believe it. He could like his haircut, he could not care what that other young person has to say. You and I get haircuts all the time. Right. And we don't we don't care if other people like them. Right. Right? We get new clothes or new makeup, and we like them. And not everybody else does, but it doesn't change our sense of self. Right. That's the learning curve. Okay. And that's hard. Yeah. And when you're a teenager, what is the most important thing is peers. So that voice is deep. So they have to figure out their own voice in that. I kind of like my haircut. Right. I I can I can be that way. He didn't like my haircut, that's okay. I kind of like my haircut. That's a different response than I'm not going back to school.

SPEAKER_00 17:05

That's so it's so interesting because it does seem like the kids, so I'll I'll give my example. One thing that has really bothered my daughter is uh a girl told her during the summer last year, you know, they're all on peripes, and which is a whole other thing, but on their iPads, and she said, you know, I can't, you don't have any eyebrows. And that was devastating to my oldest daughter. The fact that, you know, she which to me, I mean, I I have such thick hair and so much hair that you know to me, I I've never dealt with that, but she was so upset that someone would tell her that she has that she has no eyebrows. And so now every day since that point, and you know, she's only 11, she's going into my bathroom and taking eyebrow pencil and you know, filling in her eyebrows because that has that hurt her so much. And we had to have a conversation about it where I was like, Ruby, you're beautiful, you're smart, you're capable. You're I your eyebrows look fine.

SPEAKER_01 18:21

You know, I mean you you Ruby gets to decide what she thinks of her eyebrows. Yes, and then her power to anyone else, right? Especially eyebrow power. Right, exactly. It's not that important. Right. And it is it is okay to honor like that hurt. Yes. That was like a sting, like a bee sting. They hurt, they hurt for a second. And then we move through it. Yeah. And then those feelings move through. The other phrase I will use with kids sometimes is like, are you doing a U-turn with that? Are you making that about yourself? Because that was really about this other young woman. Yeah, right. That was a rude comment. Yeah. It was really insensitive. It says a lot about her. Yeah. But you've decided it would it's now your problem to solve. That's a great point. You don't need to solve this problem. You you get to pick and choose what you feel about yourself. Yes. And that but that's hard when we're young again, our peers mean so much to us that that voice is heavy. So we have to go back to building and making our own voice louder in our own head rather than just hearing the voice of that bully. Or that or that friend. Right. That's a friend one day and not a friend the next day.

SPEAKER_00 19:23

What do they call it? Frenemies?

SPEAKER_01 19:24

Frenemy, yeah. Yeah. Well, I always say to my clients, the um, you know, the hardest boyfriend to let go is the bad boyfriend. Like if you work with older people, older women in their 20s. We've all had one. We've all had it, and for some reason they're just we just hang on way too long despite the fact that we know. And sometimes I think that about our friends too, when we're young. We hang on to the ones that aren't we shouldn't, that aren't so helpful. And we really want their approval, and that's a statement on us. And so we have to learn to build our own sense of self-validation, yeah. Rather than waiting for that one person to make me feel good or validated.

SPEAKER_00 20:02

And I and I really think that is a good life lesson from kids to adults now, because you know, I've talked about on this podcast before, when I was going through my divorce, I would say 95% of my friends and of people were very supportive and kind and you know, want to be there for me, I want to be there for my kids, whatever you you know, what do you need? And I would say there was that 5% of people who were kind of just assholes. And I remember being really upset and just not understanding that you know why, and taking it so personal. And I think to your point, it's sort of like that's their that's their own problem, that's their own deal. That's they maybe are going through things that I don't know about, and so I've you know, kind of actually through this process and talking to so many smart people like yourself, it's been good for me to also be like, yeah, it you gotta I have to have my own confidence in myself to know that I'm a good person, and sometimes it's good to have breakups with people. You know, I was like, okay, it's okay. It's I was like, those people maybe are just not, they maybe just weren't meant to be.

SPEAKER_01 21:32

Right. So it's okay. We've grown and we've changed, which is exactly what we're supposed to do. Absolutely we're not the friends we were then, and that's okay.

SPEAKER_00 21:40

Yeah, okay. I would love to talk next about you know, what is our role and responsibility on helping to raise confidence kids?

SPEAKER_01 21:53

Yeah, good question. I think first of all, we need to remember that it's not our job, that our job is to come along. Alongside our children. So, how can we come along our side alongside our children? We can't do it for them. We would like to, but we can come alongside them. So here are things we can do. First of all, as a parent, we can have a mind shift in terms of thinking that part of my job is to help raise this child to let them go. So my whole job from the time they are a baby until they're in college is to raise them so they will leave. That doesn't feel very good. That's hard. That's a really hard concept. And of course, we hope that we have adult relationships with our children and they don't leave forever. But the goal is that they go and have their own life and that they don't need me, that they choose to be in a relationship with me. That's hard. I need my children to choose a relationship with their family and their parents not to be told that they have to have one. My adult children, I would say. So I think that our goal is to raise them to be able to make those choices. And that means we're constantly letting them go. The other s next thing I would say parents can do right away is to check our own temperature. I say this always at the beginning of all my parent talks. We can do our kids a favor by checking our own anxiety levels, checking our own frustration levels, maybe our own sense of competition or jealousy. It's easy when our kids are in athletics or in schools and in high pressure situations that we kind of know a little too much about everyone else's kids. And that just fuels us in a way that's probably not helping our own children. Their journey is their journey. It is not based on anyone else's. So we gotta do the same thing. If we're an anxious parent, we're gonna lead out of that anxious place. If we take off our anxious glasses, we see things differently because anxiety is very tricky. Very smart and very tricky. So that's a hard one to do because sometimes we we think our job is to be very protective, right?

SPEAKER_00 24:01

Oh well, yes.

SPEAKER_01 24:02

And we kind of like it. Some of us kind of like it. Yeah. Some of us that really like it, I would say. Yeah. Um, so I'll give you some practical ideas of ways that we can um help build confidence in a child. So when our kids are learning to do things, whether it's walking or skiing down a hill or picking a college, which is really hard, and we're not in charge of it. You want them to pick a place that they want. We praise the effort, not just the results. We focus on um how hard they tried. Go back to the skiers or think about a gymnast. My kids are a gymnast. They have to do that skill so many times before they get it right. You fail first. Nobody does a flip and lands on their feet, they land on their butt. And they have to keep trying and keep trying and keep trying. So we praise the effort. We find language around the effort. Wow, you were really determined today. Wow, you didn't give up. I like how you um bumped your knee and it hurt a little bit, but you're back at it. Way to go. Right? So we're we're noting things that are internal skills. We're not noting the result or the even the accomplishment. We're noting that they that they have they're building character. They're building internal strength. They're building this sense of like, okay, I can figure this out. Okay? I love that. We don't ever want our kids to think that their love for us is based on the results of their efforts. I think sometimes in high pressure situations and schools where kids are high achievers, that's what it feels like. I get the grade, I get money off of college, I get the grade, my parents and teachers are proud of me, I get a cord for graduation. This or that. We we don't want our kids to think that. We don't want them to, right? They're they're love no matter what.

SPEAKER_04 25:53

Right.

SPEAKER_01 25:53

They're doing a great job no matter what. So praise the effort, not the result. Results are fun. That's where we check ourselves. Uh, a second thing we can do, and this one, it'd be interesting to hear you talk about for your girls who are different ages. When I work with young people, I often give them mini challenges. So mini challenges can be anything from going into the grocery store and ordering your own Starbucks to going to the donut wall and picking out your own donut to learning how to drive a car. Big, wide range. Give age-appropriate responsibility so they can feel capable and trusted. Parents will do this by like one night a week, you're gonna learn to make dinner. And you're gonna pick it out, and we're gonna go to the store, and you're gonna find it.

SPEAKER_00 26:42

I love that idea. I can't even cook, so maybe if I can get one of my kids to start, that would be really helpful. I can't either. Yeah, we have no new tool of the colour. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 26:52

Someone like find their love for cooking. When kids are young, they learn to bake. Baking is a great way to build confidence because you get an immediate result and it's yummy or it's easy and it's yummy, pretty foolproof. Think of that kind of thing. How can I give my four-year-old little mini wins? So when they're four and a half and when they're five, when you let your child start biking away, they don't just bike down the street for the first time. You practice. You know, you go around the street, then you go around the block, then they go two blocks over. So we're thinking of small wins where they can feel like they're they're trusted and they're capable of doing things. If they were to bike around the street and the chain falls off of their bike, will they figure out what to do? Great learning curve. Right. They can turn around and walk back. They can ask a neighbor that they know. They can do a lot of things. So think about little mini wins that your child can do. It's a little challenging for us because it slows us down, and there's gonna be a lot of them that aren't wins. They're work their word and process.

SPEAKER_00 27:52

Well, and I think it's also, you know, building that independence. For sure. Which I think is so important, and I and I think in this day and age, we all, you know, the helicopter parent term, you know, I I really think and sometimes also, you know, it's like, am I being a bad mom or being a bad parent by not being so in up in everything they're doing? And to your point, I think that's only gonna be detrimental for them in the long term. I mean, they need to figure it out and they need to have those failures, and so I loved how you said about complimenting the effort and not complimenting the result because I think it's so easy to complement the result. You know, I have a my middle daughter is a competitive dancer, and you know, she this year she's doing six different dances, and you know, my first thing is I want to say, after every dance, oh, that was amazing, you did such a good job. I cannot believe you know, you did this, and your turns were great, and you know, I I loved everything about it, it's beautiful. Where instead, you know, there were a couple times when I when we were just when she was practicing where I saw her make a couple little mistakes, but she kept going with the dance. She corrected it, she corrected it, stayed in, stayed in, and so you know it's kind of almost rephrasing being like, I'm so proud of you. I could tell that maybe you had a little bit of a hard time there, but you corrected and it kept going, and you know, and I think just changing even a little bit of that is like it's kind of retraining their brain, but also retraining my brain as a mom, too. So I love I love what you said about that.

SPEAKER_01 29:40

Yep, maybe retraining that I don't know if we're looking for successful kids or confident kids. Because success doesn't always mean confidence, and success gets the quick praise, but it doesn't always mean that they worked hard or pushed through and um solved some of those problems, right? Yeah, was was offbeat or missed a turn and solved it, fixed it. That's tenacity, that's hard work, yeah, that's not melting down in the middle, right? And she could have done any of those things and they would have been okay. But she you saw that she like had the mind strength to kind of push through that, which is super cool.

SPEAKER_00 30:15

Yeah, each each so fascinating how you can raise you know, I have three kids, you have four kids. I feel like I didn't raise them that different. I mean, yes, things have changed in my life with each kid. Uh but in terms, I mean, they really truly are all such different kids. And I would love sort of to talk to you about that because I would say my oldest. I, you know, I would say with her, I really want to work on confidence with her. She is such an amazingly kind, smart, capable, wonderful girl. And you know, sometimes I just think, and that's why I'm so thankful that she's seeing you this summer, is I think she just need maybe needs to work on that confidence a little bit. Then I have my middle one who is just a little Spitfire, and that girl thinks she is the coolest thing, which she is, you know, all of my girls are amazing, but it is amazing how she'll she'll just walk into a room, she'll be like, Yeah, I'm I'm I'm great, I've got this, you know, it's different dispositions, such a different disposition. And then I have my third daughter who's just happy all the time, like those thirds. I mean, it it's unbelievable. She just is happy all the time. I mean, if she is upset, it's because something is seriously wrong. And so it's just it's so fascinating. So I would love to kind of hear from you how to sort of navigate that when each kid is maybe needs a different kind of parent.

SPEAKER_01 32:01

I love that. And um, ironically, your third probably did not get the parenting that the first did because they can't, right? Right. My fourth slept on the floor, a hard floor of a gymnastics gym for the first five years of his life, and he's my most independent. Yeah, that's so yes, but there's some funny things, and birth order could be a whole nother day. It is really real and very interesting. And God bless our firstborns that they are a unique breed in terms of sometimes how they're they're just wired a little bit differently. So that's those are just great questions. I think one of the things we can do, first of all, is recognize how different our kids are and know that uh what worked with one is not gonna work with another, and how we connect with one or how they feel connected to. A firstborn might naturally be very connected to their parent. They were the only child for a long time. They were parented as an only child, and along came the next one, and life changed dramatically for them. So the firstborn is always going to have that different sense of life as a firstborn. Um, the thing that I like to do for each child is to know what are you can um think about this for your children. What are some of the habits? I call it a habit of thinking. So your firstborn has a habit of A, B, and C. The secondborn has a habit of B, C, and Z. And the third is totally different every day. Okay, no habit is right or wrong. One might be um the firstborn. I like to do everything correct because that makes people happy, and then I feel happy. Firstborn's tend to be pleasers, they tend to be highly responsible, and that's not a bad habit of thinking until it's not so helpful.

SPEAKER_00 33:40

Right.

SPEAKER_01 33:40

Right? The person I need to be most concerned about right now is myself in a healthy way, taking care of my own mind and my body, and then I can come alongside others. Or the secondborn is like, huh? That's alright, we're all here. You know, it's like we're all good, it's happy. That's a great way of thinking, too. What's her habit? And maybe what's the backside of that?

SPEAKER_00 34:00

It's like they're either gonna be the CEO or end up in jail.

SPEAKER_01 34:04

Well, that's what the third and and so ask parents like, does your child have a habit of taking things personally? One of them, probably yes. Yes, is a third? No, it is not that big of a deal, right? Nothing's that big of a deal. Does one of them have a habit of um taking no blame? So no responsibility. No, firstborns, they're like highly responsible. They'll take blame for everyone else, right? Which is not a great habit, but they're helpful. So, what are the habits that your child, each specific child, a habit of thinking, like a pattern? And is that a healthy pattern, or could we just redirect it in one way to help it be a little more healthy? And another example might be you and I might walk into the same room, and your immediate pattern of thinking is like, these are awesome people, I can't wait to talk to them. And my habit is like everybody's looking at me. Same room, same experience, same day, and you and I experience it very differently. Okay, so how do we help help our children understand what their patterns are? And then note is that a helpful pattern? Can I tweak it a little bit? Each child will be different. And that's where we as a parent get to come alongside them and say, like, oh, I'm I notice sometimes. Is that how is that working for you? I never tell. I always ask. I love that. I never tell. Because if you tell your child anything, they don't want it. When we started looking at colleges with our oldest, um, the college counselor said, never wear the sweatshirt of where you want them to go. Because they won't go there.

SPEAKER_00 35:42

So funny.

SPEAKER_01 35:44

So we were like, okay, that's good at good advice. Oh my gosh, that's hilarious. So they need to make some of those decisions. We can we can ask, we can suggest, we can offer tidbits, but telling is really hard. It's hard for all of us. And plus, we want them to gain that muscle of their own.

SPEAKER_00 36:01

It's so funny you say that because you know, I was telling you that earlier that my kids were really sick this week. And my oldest, who's 11, and you know, kind of in the tween era, uh I took her to the doctor, and the doctor said, You need to make sure you're taking fluids, you need to make sure you're taking medicine, you make sure you're eating something. Stuff I've been telling her all week to do. She doesn't want to wait, she doesn't want to do it. I I don't want anything, I don't want medicine, blah blah blah. This morning, she's like, Mom, I should have a little snack because the doctor told me to. I'm like, well, that way if anything came out of it, it was just the fact that you know, it was like someone else had to tell her the age. And if I did, it I'm not listening to you, but the doc the doctor told me to.

SPEAKER_01 36:50

Well, if you think about that, our children, when they begin to disagree with us, are doing what they're supposed to do. They're beginning to think for themselves. And that's really hard because that we don't really like that at first. It feels like a disagreement. Right. Gosh, well, how come someone else said the pink shirt looks great? And when you said it, she took it off. Yes. But they're doing exactly what their brain is supposed to do. They're they're trying to separate from you in a healthy way, and at 11, they're not really sure how to do it. So we disagree, right? But by 15, they might ask your opinion. And by 19 or 20, they might ask for a little help. But they've been able to make their own opinion.

SPEAKER_00 37:30

A long row of rooks. A long road with three girls. You know what?

SPEAKER_01 37:34

They're all different too. And some of them want us next to them every single decision, and some don't want us there at all. And we're navigating that. And um, back to birth order, another interesting thing, our first were twins. Oh. So we felt like we raised them at the same time in the same way, in the same household, and they're very different. That's so interesting.

SPEAKER_00 37:56

So this did one come out like the one who came out first? Are they more of a small?

SPEAKER_01 38:01

People ask that all the time. They were seven minutes apart. Oh, okay. So they were pretty um, pretty close, but the one that kicked the most in the stomach is to this day a little more uh high energy. Oh my god. And the other one, they would always say, like baby B, she was baby B. Baby B was in a ball. Just baby B stayed in a ball, baby B was in a ball. She's a little bit more introverted. Um, she's in law school, very like not a critical thinker, but very highly intellectual thinker. Yes, she's just more that's so interesting, isn't it? Highly sensitive, like aware of her surroundings. I think she was kind of beat up in the womb a little bit. She would say that. But they're they're that's how they were made. Yes. So part of the fun is we get to help them figure that out so they can learn too.

SPEAKER_00 38:49

Well, it's so funny talking about that because my first, she was eight days late, like 41 weeks in a day. That's and I had like the heart, like a long labor, long induction with her. I mean, I was I joke, I'm like, she did not want to come out, you know. And then the second, who's my fiery, spicy kid, was a week early. I was the maid of honor in a wedding giving a speech. Went into labor and was like, I'm not feeling very good. And she was her time. She was like, I gotta get out here, I'm ready to party, you know. So that is so funny how birth orders with kids and it is.

SPEAKER_01 39:27

What we want our kids to learn is like these are great qualities I have. And is there a little backside that they can be aware of?

SPEAKER_00 39:33

Yeah, right. Yes, they can learn. Absolutely. Um, I would love to talk a little bit about social media and comparison culture that we're going through right now. Uh, you know, my oldest is 11. She doesn't have a cell phone yet. Uh she's on, she's an iPad, but you know, we don't we don't let her do kind of the Instagram and TikTok and Snapchat, and I don't even know all the different apps that are now. But eventually, as they all get older, it's just kind of part of the deal.

SPEAKER_01 40:08

Yep, it's how they do that.

SPEAKER_00 40:09

Would love to kind of hear about how to best navigate that.

SPEAKER_01 40:14

That's that's a great question, and one I don't think we've solved as a society. Pulling it, um, it's probably not gonna work because it is their form of communication. Um, delaying it is probably helpful in that they will grow as human beings and they will develop a little more maturity before they're given the keys to the world, which is what a phone feels like. The other thing is uh a couple other things. I feel like the phone has taken away some of our young people's ability to be with themselves. And this idea that when I was a child, I would go out into the backyard and I could just lay in the grass or play in the playground or take a walk down the street. I didn't have constant entertainment or the ability to even have constant connection. Connection is great, but not when I can't connect in my own brain with my own self. Wow. And we spend we're we're almost, I see this in teenagers almost afraid to be alone with their own thoughts. And so the first thing they do is turn on their phone. Right? I would challenge your child, no matter how old they are. It's like the quiet time for a toddler. Just spend 15 minutes to 30 minutes a day with no stimulation, learning how to be in your own thoughts. So that being said, eventually you're right, they'll they will end up uh on a phone and they will have lots of people to talk with and they will be exposed to a lot of things. We hope at that point they have some stability or some background on what's inappropriate and what's not, because that will happen immediately for young men. Unfortunately, pornography is just rampant, and they have to figure that out really quickly if they're going to partake in it. They don't even have to look for it, it kind of finds them, unfortunately. Um what do we do about it? Well, the first thing we can do is tell our kids over and over and over and over again that everything you see on the internet is not true. And I think we're still telling our adults that right now. If you were to look around at the state of affairs, we don't even know it's true anymore. We don't really know what's happening. Right. You kind of choose to believe what you see and some of not what you see. So they need to know that, and even though they know that it's gonna cause feelings. So even though I know that this girl posted a birthday party with six girls and I wasn't there, and there's 12 in the friend group, and her mother said only six could come. Right? Um, even though I see this and it feels like it was a personal attack, it wasn't a personal attack. So that everything I see is not personally aimed at me. That's such a great phones are brilliant at that. This is a weakness for you. I'm gonna just put it all over your feed or all over your you know, homepage or your your Instagram page. So think about depersonalizing what they're seeing on that phone.

SPEAKER_00 42:59

And that's even good for uh adults because we can go down that doom scrolling. Yes, and if we you know, we need to start.

SPEAKER_01 43:07

I mean, I even need to have that mindset sometimes when I'm on Instagram or one day of looking up on Pinterest how to organize my pantry, and I'm deep in everyone else's home makeover, yes, and it went from the pantry to I feel really bad about my house. Yeah, right. We can do that really fast all of us can. So helping them understand it is not a personal attack, and you're gonna see things that that cause feelings. And we have to listen and respond appropriately. Just because someone had a birthday party that you weren't invited to does not mean they don't like you. And that's hard.

SPEAKER_04 43:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 43:41

And when we were kids, we didn't know that. Right. Or maybe had a feeling, but we didn't always know. Now they know, and they have to choose how to deal with that. The other thing that I think is okay to do is limit in terms of teaching them that this is a device in a way to connect with people, just like a telephone was. When I was a kid, we had four in the household. And one phone, and so we had time limits. Right. Right. The landline. Good landline. I had to pull that cord into my room. But I had a time limit because my siblings wanted it. And so that's okay. And it's when we put it down, it's not a discipline. It's like there's other things to do. So taking the importance away, if you don't talk to your friends for 10 seconds, it's okay. Yeah, you'll be fine. Yeah, taking those feelings down. In general, one of the things I like to do with my students is like um acknowledge our feelings and then and then maybe just let them go or move through them. Or I'll tell my young people, flash them down the toilet. Every feeling is not an emergency. Every sense of anxiety is not a crisis. Every time I feel hurt does not mean I have to pick up the torch and run in. I just have to note those feelings and then figure out how to respond.

SPEAKER_00 44:48

I love that. The other thing that I always think of my dad with this is he's a criminal defense attorney. And he always tells me, he told me from a young age when I got, I wasn't that young when I got my cell phone, but he's like, every text you send is traceable. Yeah. Nothing is ever truly deleted. So you know that's intimidating, isn't it? Yes, and that's what I tell, that's what I tell my girls. I'm like, anytime you send a text message, anytime you send a message, be very, you know, careful with what you're saying. And because anyone can see that, and it can get misconstrued or not. And you know, I've gone, and I, and my kids know, I will look at their messages, and I have seen some messages that some of these kids send, and I'm like, oh my gosh. And I've talked to my kids about it, and I'm like, that's just that's not okay. And also, now that's in the universe, and that can be copied, screenshotted, and sent and whatever.

SPEAKER_01 45:52

Stories a year of students losing their college acceptance or getting kicked off a team because of something posted that they thought was funny. If we think of it like driving, that eventually we want our children to know how to drive and to safely drive. But when you drive, there are numerous, numerous, numerous problems to learn along the way or potential problems. And we're highlighting those so they avoid them. Right. Right? You need to stop all the way. You need to watch your speed, you need to be aware of other drivers. Those are things you're always doing. If we think of the phone as the same thing, this is an inevitable piece of life. It'd be great if it wasn't. We all would love it if it wasn't. Yes. But along the way, we're gonna learn some of the natural pitfalls so that we can do this as safely as possible.

SPEAKER_00 46:36

I love that. I that that whole that was very helpful. So, you know, we've talked a lot about like what parents can do. I would love to hear about what kids can do on their own time, like to do their own work without you know us kind of interfering.

SPEAKER_01 46:56

Right, because we know it's not our job, right? And we know that self-confidence is exactly that itself, and so it needs to become part of what they see as like growing up as part of becoming an adult, or these are things I do. But I have been working on a journal for kids that are kind of upper elementary, maybe middle school, things like activities and practices that they can do to build some of these mental muscles is what I call them. Mental muscles that then add up to being a confident person or growing in confidence. I don't know that we've arrived, but we we can keep growing. Yes, absolutely. So some of the activities would be like I right now I've I highlight three mental muscles that they can build, one self-talk. The idea of positive self-talk is one that we just can't have enough of. And learning that you get to become your own cheerleader. Um, when I ask even 18, 19, 20 year olds, how many nice things do you say to yourself on a daily basis? And it's like crickets. I know we we have some work to do on learning how to find our strengths. Positive self-talk is probably the first and most critical mental muscle we need to build because if we are not cheering for ourselves, then we are relying on other people. And in a social media age, we do not want all of our affirmation to come from the outside in. It's gotta come from the inside out. So that's one of the chapters. The other chapter is learning to handle comparison. Comparison and competition, which are two different things, but they are things that can really kind of eat at our soul. And so in some categories they're okay, in athletics, they're okay, right? They're supposed to be, but how do we not let our life or the way we feel about ourselves be determined by someone else's successes or failures? And that's hard, right? Still hard for grownups, yes, right? But again, then we're basing our sense of self on outside things rather than internal things, or materialistic things, correct. Yeah, that the result again, right? Which we know is really only so so um helpful. It only lasts so long. And then the last chapter is on something that I call the bounce back, which is that idea of resilience where we have to learn how to have some falls and bounce back, or have some stings and bounce back, or have some disappointments or failures, and we feel them, and then we we get up and we keep going, and we learn how to build the muscle of um trying again, maybe even building the muscle of that hurt. Like if you see some athletes there in um sports that it hurts. Oh my gosh, like Lynn poor Lindsay Vaughn. Oh it hurts. Yes, it hurts a lot, and she does it again, right? Over and over again. Yes, and I think almost every one of the skiers they interviewed had had some form of crash. So you're not in that sport and hoping it doesn't hurt.

SPEAKER_00 49:50

Right, yeah, right.

SPEAKER_01 49:51

I teach swimming lessons, which a lot of the viewers will know, and I tell every parent, like, you're gonna get some water in your nose. Your child's gonna not like it. They're gonna get some water in their nose. That's part of swimming. You can't swim without, you can't play soccer and not get kicked in the shins. Right. So it's it's okay to have that bounce back to feel a little pain and grow a little muscle there. So I'm working on this journal that they can do at home on their own time. And it talks them through some of um activities to build those skills so they can learn, like, hey, this is something I I didn't even know I wasn't doing or I'm sort of doing, but could do a little more or more intentionally.

SPEAKER_02 50:27

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 50:28

It's just like journaling, it's a great way of kind of walking them through what the what it looks like and how they can build it. That sounds amazing.

SPEAKER_00 50:34

Where can we find this?

SPEAKER_01 50:36

Yeah, great question.

SPEAKER_00 50:37

On my website. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 50:39

You can order a journal, so I'm sure it'll be linked in the notes. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 50:42

Yes, we'll have we have your website in this in the podcast. But so you can go on and just order directly. Yes. From that. Okay, wonderful. That's that's I mean, I'm gonna order three, even though Penny is still working on reading. Yeah, we can still I got a lot of pictures. Yeah, and I can still talk. I mean it's still just good to talk through it and like you said, start young. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 51:03

If you start young with feelings language and you normalize it, then when we have big feelings, they're not problematic. They're just feelings. And feelings can um ride in our life, they don't get to drive. And when they do drive for me or you as a parent, or for our children, it's probably not when we're our best selves. Yeah. Right? It doesn't matter what age we are, so we have to learn how to have the feelings, acknowledge them, and move through them.

SPEAKER_00 51:29

Amazing. Well, this has been such a wonderful, wonderful discussion. I really appreciate you. Not only has it been super interesting uh as a parent, it's been very helpful as a mom to three kids, and also as a woman. And talking about, I mean, I I think what you talk about really goes from you know very little to to adulthood. And uh I've learned so much from this conversation. So I really, really appreciate you coming on.

SPEAKER_01 52:05

Yeah, it's so fun. And I I think as women we need to remember we're on the same team. So I love that. We need to encourage each other and and do this well together. So thanks so much, right? Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 52:16

Thank you.