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In my role as Head of School I take part in admissions’ student/family interviews. At each interview, one of the questions is designed for parents. We ask, “What are your hopes and dreams for your son/daughter during his/her high school years?” A very common response from parents is “to grow in self-confidence.”
Parents and teachers across the country are reading Jonathan Haidt’s Anxious Generation. Haidt places significant responsibility for the youth mental health crisis on a decline of play-based childhoods and smartphone overuse. Although I agree, there is another variable that deserves attention – the relationship between self-esteem (what I’ll call confidence) and positive mental health. I believe that strengthening confidence in our youth is an antidote to teen anxiety.
How do teens grow in confidence? What can parents and schools do to help? Recently, I met with a group of eight 9th grade boys and asked, “How do you gain confidence?” A few of their responses follow, with some paraphrasing, as I jotted down notes quickly.
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We need to be seen and known in a community. We need people in our corner – parents and teachers. We gain confidence by observing the confidence of 11th and 12th graders – some of whom are our role models.
- We need difficult challenges. We need to do hard things. We need to be given adult responsibilities.
- We need to find our own voice and advocate for ourselves and our friends. We need to care less about what others think about us and just be ourselves.
Let me address some of the core ideas behind their responses.
- A healthy community can be likened to a petri dish where confidence can grow. Confidence is contagious. When an adult expresses confidence in a teenager, the teen grows in confidence.
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Identity formation is core to healthy adolescent development. To form identity, teens need to explore and discover who they are and how they fit into the larger world. We need to give them more opportunities to serve and lead and to make mistakes along the way. Those experiences provide the context for a teen to explore his or her unique identity and purpose. Summer programs like Students Shoulder to Shoulder provide a great opportunity to develop identity through service learning.
- For many teenagers, the COVID era atrophied some of their social skills, but they can learn and regain those muscles. Adults in teenagers’ lives should praise them when they observe advocacy for self and others, or when they step outside their social comfort zones.
Returning to those admission interviews I mentioned earlier, what’s interesting is that after parents answer the question, I ask the student the same question, “What are your hopes and dreams during high school?” It’s not unusual for them to answer, “more confidence.” My hunch is that those 9th grade boys whom I met with want more confidence, too.
For those of us with teenagers in our lives, what might we do to help each of them grow in confidence? Like a plant, if we provide the right nutrients and environment, confidence will flourish.
Steve O'Neil
Head of School
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