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Boosting Your Teen’s Confidence: 5 Powerful Tips

Teenagers are at a stage in life where they discover who they are, where they fit in the world and their purpose. It’s a time when their self-esteem and confidence can be easily shaken, leading to self-doubt, anxiety, and even depression. As a parent, caregiver, or educator, it’s important to foster their self-confidence and help them build a positive self-image. Here are five ways to do just that:

  1. Encourage their passions and interests.

Teenagers are exploring their identities and interests, and it’s essential to support and encourage their passions. Whether it’s music, sports, art, or any other hobby, show interest in what they enjoy doing and help them pursue their interests. Encouraging their passions will help them feel a sense of purpose and accomplishment and give them a positive outlet to express themselves.

  • If your teenager loves playing guitar, encourage them to join a local music club or take lessons to improve their skills.
  • If your teenager enjoys drawing or painting, provide them with art supplies and encourage them to participate in art contests or showcase their artwork in a local gallery.
  1. Praise effort over outcome

It’s important to celebrate the effort teenagers put into achieving their goals, regardless of the outcome. Focusing solely on the end result can lead to anxiety and self-doubt if they don’t achieve the desired outcome. Praise the effort and hard work that they put in, and emphasize the value of the learning experience that comes from trying something new.

  • If your teenager studies hard for a test but doesn’t receive a high grade, praise their hard work and effort instead of focusing on the grade.
  • If your teenager participates in a sports game but their team loses, praise their teamwork and effort rather than focusing on the loss.
  1. Encourage healthy risk-taking

Taking risks can be scary, but it’s essential to building self-confidence. Encourage your teenager to step outside their comfort zone and take healthy risks, such as trying a new activity, speaking up in class, or joining a club. By taking risks and facing their fears, they’ll gain confidence in their abilities and learn that failure is not the end of the world.

  • Encourage your teenager to try a new activity or sport that they’ve been interested in but are nervous to try.
  • Encourage your teenager to speak up in class or share their opinions with their friends, even if they’re afraid of being judged.
  1. Focus on strengths, not weaknesses.

Getting caught up in our flaws and shortcomings is easy, but focusing on strengths can boost self-esteem and confidence. Help your teenager identify their strengths and celebrate them. Encourage them to use their strengths to overcome challenges and achieve their goals. By focusing on what they’re good at, they’ll feel more confident in their abilities.

  • If your teenager struggles in math but excels, focus on their writing skills and encourage them to enter writing contests or start a blog.
  • If your teenager is shy in social situations but is a great listener, praise their listening skills and encourage them to join a listening and counseling club.
  1. Practice positive self-talk

Our thoughts have a powerful impact on our emotions and behavior. Help your teenager develop a positive self-talk routine by encouraging them to challenge negative thoughts and replace them with positive affirmations. Encourage them to focus on their strengths, accomplishments, and progress. Positive self-talk can help build resilience and self-confidence and can also help combat negative self-talk that can lead to anxiety and depression.

  • Encourage your teenager to write down positive affirmations, such as “I am capable and strong,” and repeat them to themselves every morning.
  • Encourage your teenager to challenge negative self-talk, such as “I’m not good enough,” and replace it with positive self-talk, such as “I am unique and have my own talents.”

In conclusion, building self-confidence in teenagers is essential to helping them develop into healthy, happy adults. Encourage their passions, praise their efforts, encourage healthy risk-taking, focus on strengths, and practice positive self-talk. By doing so, you can help your teenager build a positive self-image and develop the self-confidence they need to thrive in life.

If you would like help with your teenagers, consider scheduling a session with Ron Huxley, LMFT. Ron has 32 years of experience in child and family therapy. Click here now!

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Love Never Gives Up

By Ron Huxley, LMFT

A recent article by Scientific American reviews desperate attempts to change unruly teen behavior around. One of the toughest challenges is to reach an adolescent who is angry, defiant and acting out in destructive ways. Confrontational strategies and harsh punishment, the article explains, has only short-term benefits. No studies prove lasting results from this type of “scared straight” intervention. So what does work? The article ends with this summarization:

“…results show that merely imposing harsh discipline on young offenders or frightening them is unlikely to help them refrain from problematic behavior. Instead teens must learn enduring tools—including better social skills, ways to communicate with parents and peers, and anger management techniques—that help them avoid future aggression. Several effective interventions do just that, including cognitive-behavior therapy, a method intended to change maladaptive thinking patterns and behaviors, and multisystemic therapy, in which parents, schools and communities develop programs to reinforce positive behaviors. Another well-supported method, aimed at improving behavior in at-risk children younger than eight years, is parent-child interaction therapy. Parents are coached by therapists in real time to respond to a child’s behavior in ways that strengthen the parent-child bond and provide incentives for cooperation [see “Behave!” by Ingrid Wickelgren; Scientific American Mind, March/April 2014].”

What can you do to strengthen your bond with your child? How can you reach his or her heart, locked behind a wall of pain and anger? Don’t expect overnight miracles. Turning your defiant teen around will require consistency and continual micro-shifts of change in you and your child. You will probably blow it on days and be exhausted from the effort on others. This is a marathon, not a sprint. Focus on who the child will be and not on who they have been or what they are doing. Consequences are natural and necessary. Boundaries are even more important! Just don’t equate your love with positive behavior. Nothing your child does should make you love him or her any less and nothing can make you love them more. 

“Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.” I Corinthians 13:7 (NLT)

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It is easy to see how parents of teenagers can become so frustrated with them. It seems like every word that comes out of their mouth is defiant and demanding. Every interaction is selfish and narcissistic. What if every time your teen talks, it was an open window to their heart? Ignore the sounds of what is coming out and use this opportunity to speak words of grace, love and kindness. Pretend they are speaking a language your don’t understand and the only language you know how to speak is positive affirmation. Blow their minds with this strategy and transform their heart as well. 

Learn more power parenting tools with Ron Huxley’s parenting book: 

Love and Limits: Achieving a Balance in Parenting

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Nagging Never Works

By Ron Huxley, LMFT

Parenting teenagers can be a frustrating time for parents. They feel the need to nag, threaten, lecture and even yell to get them to be compliant. Research shows that this parenting actions create oppositional and defiant children. This is the opposite of what parents want. They desire compliant, fun-to-be-around children. 

Of course, no one likes to be nagged. Parents do not like it from their spouses or employers, so why would we think that children like it? How you show a child to do something and ask them to do it makes a lot of difference in how motivated they are to comply with you. 

Dr. Kazdin, Ph.D., author of the book The Kazdin Method: Parenting the Oppositional and Defiant Child, suggest parents have their practice the behavior they want when they parent is not frustration (which could be a rare moment). This practice is fueled by the parent being playful about it and using praise in very specific ways. Humiliation and shame is not the motive here. Even though Kazdin is more focused on behavior than attachment, the reparative actions of practicing in a playful way mimics what parents would do with younger children in a natural way which is typical of therapeutic work with traumatized children. 

What can you practice with your defiant teen that would build skills and not resentment? How can you increase cooperation with specific praise of your teens efforts to be helpful instead of argumentative? How a parent parents is a more powerful method than what tools a parents uses. 

Learn more power parenting tools with Ron Huxley’s parenting book: 

Love and Limits: Achieving a Balance in Parenting

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Avoiding the Parent/Teen Torture Chamber

By Ron Huxley, LMFT

Sweat streamed done his face as the heat from the lights glared on his face. His head swayed heavily forward, weary from the uninterrupted hours of questioning. The voices shot from the either side of him, out of the darkness: “Where were you till two in the morning? Why is there mud on the care tires? Whose sweater is in the back-seat? Why are your pupils dilated like that? Is that cigarette smoke I smell? Why didn’t you call?”

This could be a scene from a movie about an enemy spy being interrogated for unknown crimes. Or it could be a fictional account of innocent child tortured at the hands of sadistic tormentors. Instead, it is a dramatization of two parents questioning their teenager for coming home past curfew. At least, this is how a teenager might describe the experience. Teens often feel parents overreact or assume the worst case scenario. They don’t feel parents understand what it is like to be a teenager today. And, they feel that parents don’t give them enough freedom. No matter what a teen does, he or she winds up violating some new rule, like hidden trip wire strung about the house, waiting for an innocent victim. And the rules! Barbaric remnants from there parents generation as children, totally unrealistic for a teenager today.

Parents don’t want to torture their children. They describe their feelings of fear and horror when they don’t know where their child is late at night or early in the morning as the case might be. They know all too well the world a teenager must live in. That is what scares them, motivating their “barbaric rules.” They fear their teenager hides their behaviors and friends from them. They worry that they will be influenced by peers and fall snare to various social evils. They question their child’s ability to make good judgments and take care of themselves in a crisis situation.

So where is the middle ground? How can teenagers feel as if they are getting the freedom they need and still keep mom and dad secure? How can parents learn to trust teens, so if possible, they can meet the teenager half way? Here are some tools that may help teens and their parents avoid the torture chamber:

Things Teens Can Do:

Give parents information. They have a legal responsibility for their child’s safety and behavior, so they have a right to know a child’s whereabouts and activities. Teens who accept and acknowledge this fact can move a great distance along the road to independence. They also want to feel a part of your life, so share with them what is going on in it. They had you because they wanted a family. You need a family for survival (for a while yet, at least) and a sense of personal identity.

Take their perspective- in other words, do a Role Reversal. Take a look at the situation as if YOU were a parent- a person responsible for their child’s safety and well being. See YOURSELF from your parent’s perspective. Do YOU see someone who is responsible and trustworthy? What limits would you set for you if YOU were your parent? Next, look at the world the way a parent looks at the world. Good kids get hurt in this world too! Now, tell yourself the truth. Then, you will be ready to:

Negotiate. Accept compromise as being a reasonable tool for establishing mutually agreeable boundaries and limits. If you are unyielding with your information (tip #1), and unable to accept the fact that parents have to be responsible about their children (tip #2), you are doomed to trouble with the folks. Yielding in areas where maybe they have reasons to set limits and boundaries (areas where your choices have not been the wisest), will give you the opportunity to earn their trust. In time, those areas can get larger as you show you’ve learned to be responsible for yourself and earn the privilege of freedom.

Things parents can do.

Give teens information. Their minds are able to process intelligent reasoning, and understanding why you make the choices you do will open them to adult perspectives and responsibilities. They also need to feel a part of your life. If they have a sense of belonging at home, they’ll
be less likely to seek acceptance with an inappropriate peer group.

Take your child’s perspective. You can do this Role Reversal more easily than your child can, because after all, you’ve been there! Look at yourself through your child’s eyes. Are you reasonable with boundaries and limits? Are you intrusive or disrespectful of, your child’s growing needs for personal privacy, independence and freedom? Do you give your teen opportunities to be responsible, to demonstrate trustworthiness? Do you give them the supports they need to learn and make mistakes? Do you remember what it felt like to be that age? After being honest with yourself, you then are ready to:

Negotiate. Ask your teen what they feel are reasonable limits and boundaries. State what yours are. Then reach compromise. Be willing to “back-off” some in areas where your teen needs to grow. Be specific in what is expected behaviorally, and with what consequences for poor choices will be. Help each other clearly understand the expectations you each hold for the other and the reasons for them. Finally, be willing to follow through with consequences when necessary, both with the lowering or raising of those limits and boundaries in accordance with your teen’s choices.

Ron Huxley is a child and family therapist and the author of the book “Love & Limits: Achieving a Balance in Parenting.” You can order his book online or request it through your local bookstore. The ISBN number is 1-56593-936-0.