Parents Who Raise Confident Kids (Not Just 'Successful' Ones) Do These 3 Essential Things
GlobalStock | Canva Everywhere you turn, someone is talking about how to keep kids safe on social media, often by encouraging parents to keep them as far away from it as possible. But social media is here to stay, and confident kids are not raised by avoidance alone. Parents who raise confident kids understand that their role is not just to protect their children from the world, but to help them navigate it with emotional strength, self-trust, and resilience.
While serious risks like bullying and predators deserve attention, many of the daily hits to a child's confidence come from smaller, quieter moments. Feeling excluded after seeing constant highlight reels, tying self-worth to likes, or comparing their real lives to curated online moments can slowly chip away at a child's self-esteem. Parents who raise confident kids focus less on controlling outcomes and more on teaching their children how to understand their feelings, talk about them openly, and stay grounded in who they are.
Parents who raise confident kids (not just 'successful' ones) do these 3 essential things:
1. They take their child's feelings seriously when they feel left out
Let's be honest — even adults struggle with FOMO (fear of missing out) when they're on Facebook, so why would we expect our children to feel the effects? Listen carefully when your children tell you their feelings, particularly those surrounding social media. Don't judge, don't lecture, but instead listen and empathize. Their feelings are perfectly normal!
Suggesting they stay off social media and just not look at it anymore is unlikely to work and leaves your children feeling dismissed as a result, as if you don't really understand them. Instead, ask them open-ended questions: "What about this makes you sad?" "Why are your feelings hurt?" "What can you do about it?" Empathy (versus problem solving) goes a long way in helping your child come to terms with their feelings and then begin the process of deciding how they want to handle those feelings.
When parents validate their children's emotions instead of dismissing them, kids show way higher persistence and resilience when facing challenges, studies have shown. Emotional validation literally teaches children their feelings are important and helps them develop better coping skills because they learn it's totally okay to have those emotions.
2. They share their own experiences with feeling excluded
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Tell your kids ways in which you've learned to handle experiences of feeling excluded and what you've learned from them. We've all felt left out, hurt, alone, etc. It's important to teach your children that these are natural feelings, but not necessarily helpful feelings.
My kids learned that by taking breaks completely away from their technology (phones, laptops, and so on) and doing things that are meaningful and fun, they care far less about what others are doing on social media. They also understand that the kids who document every moment of their "fun day" probably aren't actually having all that much fun. I knew I couldn't ban my children from social media once they're old enough to leave my sight, but I can show them that a busy, engaged life is a joyful one.
Research shows that parents who model emotion regulation by talking about their own feelings actually teach their children way better emotional skills. When you share how you've handled stress or disappointment, your kids learn from literally watching you show them what healthy coping looks like in real life.
3. They help kids reflect on why they post and how it makes them feel
If a child or teenager needs to document each moment of their day, each social interaction, and each thought for others, they're probably struggling with feelings of insecurity and a lack of confidence. Happy, confident kids don't feel the need to constantly prove that they're having fun.
When teens tie their self-worth to social media engagement like likes and comments, it seriously reduces their self-esteem and creates anxiety, researchers have concluded. This external validation-seeking creates a cycle where kids feel worse about themselves and keep posting more, trying to feel better, which totally never works.
If you're out with friends and you need to stop every couple of minutes to take a Snapchat video, are you really having all that much fun? Ask your child if they are enjoying themselves.
Ask your kids if they have a good, committed friend group or are they're actually worried that they're being left out? Do they truly feel better about themselves each time they post something (so others will hopefully envy what they're doing)? If so, that's a very fleeting and miserable happiness.
Social media is here to stay, and it's how this generation of children will interact with the world. Feeling left out is more painful than ever, in that evidence of it ends up plastered all over social media.
As rotten as this is for our children, they do ultimately need to face it and learn how to handle their emotions around these issues. So, keep a solid line of non-judgmental communication open with your child to help them through this new and rather scary right of passage.
Lisa Kaplin is a psychologist, certified professional life and executive coach, and a highly experienced corporate speaker. She helps people overcome stress and overwhelm to find joy in their personal lives and success and meaning in their professional lives.
