Ever feel like you’re running a race you didn’t sign up for? For the younger lot, it’s the pressure to have the perfect grades, the perfect friend group, and the perfect Instagram feed. On the flip side, for parents, it’s the pressure to raise the perfect kid who does all those perfect things. It’s exhausting!
Imbuing confidence in your child is pivotal, even more so from an early age. Confidence isn’t an innate characteristic but is an acquired trait that needs to be assimilated through concerted actions and behaviours that enable a growing personality to be independent and self-assured. Children in this generation aren’t short of confidence since the dynamics and paradigm of parenting, schooling, and society in general have changed, but how they carry the confidence with assurity, building their self-worth and sense of self is what matters.
The environment a child opens their eyes in shapes their personality and confidence, which includes an array of external factors. From parenting techniques to household dynamics, exposure to different personalities, the child’s alma mater, to the emotional intelligence of adults in their life. A household shapes a child’s ability to view the world. This can take any route, but it is incumbent upon parents to know the part they can play in bolstering their child’s mental faculties and horizons.
Gone are the days when teachers and parents could give an official edict that had to be followed with no questions asked. A glaring gaze was a sufficient rebuke without having raised a voice from a parent to calm and quell a child. With all this being said, building confidence has to start from an early age, that too without the parameter of pressure. Pressure intertwined with the urgency to achieve, to get the best results, to be a top student, to become a top sportsperson, can result in a child, adolescent, and a teenager getting overwhelmed with a litany of emotions they do not yet perceive and understand. From early years to older students, building confidence is key, but in the realm of realism and not perfectionism. With the urgency to achieve comes the inevitability of making mistakes and failure. The mindset of coping with failure, accepting it, and allaying your apprehensions by taking it head-on is what should be taught. We should classify failure as a different vantage point of success, from where you learn and tread on an alternate path to succeeding.
The problem is, we’re often given the wrong workout plan—one that’s all about ‘perfection’ and never, ever failing. Let’s be real: that’s not just impossible, it’s a recipe for burnout. This guide is about finding a better way to build real, lasting confidence—the kind that can handle a bad test grade, a social media snub, and whatever else life throws your way.
Gen Z is most susceptible to the mounting social and academic pressures there are today, with technology and ubiquitous social media presence, the pressure to keep up, be perfect, and not fail is at an all-time high.
Today, the world is viewed through a lens of perfection. The glossed-over plush life of people on social media does a disservice to most people, especially Gen Z, who are bombarded with unrealistic visuals of levity, happiness and what an ideal life is. From Instagram stories showing pictures of gourmet food that make you salivate to travel posts of a friend visiting the Colosseum in Rome, we see a veneer of perfection, a facade masked by what may be, instead of what actually is.
Perfection isn’t being taught per se, but the idea of being perfect is being vicariously learned through unrealistic expectations of life, of studies, of materialistic desires, and grades slathered all over social media. This leads the younger lot in an interminable race to be and look perfect, neglecting mental health and self-care while internalising emotions that need to be tended to, all the while avoiding the possibility of making mistakes and failure, just to be picture perfect, a guise you put up for the world.
Participation in school activities, applying for universities, scoring the best SATs, and trying to be the best versions of yourselves, not because your parents ask for it, but because your peers and cohorts are achieving it, is the galvanising force behind it. Keeping up with everyone makes it a race you can’t fall behind in.
Perception is the keyword here. The reality veers far from it. Looking confident isn’t the goal; having the emotional intelligence to tackle real life and daily issues is what matters. An overconfident person’s perception will vary from the rest, not taking into account the possibility of potential failure or overlooking it. There are two sides to a coin, and both scenarios are closer than ever for change to occur.. Here’s a secret weapon: Failing Forward. Think of mistakes not as a ‘Game Over’ screen, but as collecting Experience Points (XP) for your next level. Failure isn’t the opposite of success; it’s a part of the process. It’s the universe’s way of saying, ‘Okay, that path was a dead end. Let’s try another route!’ When we embrace this, we take away failure’s power to scare us. We learn, we adapt, and we move on, stronger than before.
Not to sound too preachy and pedantic, Gen Zers, you’re doing a good job of adapting to the circumstances! When you’re inundated with brain-bludgeoning information, visuals, videos and news of the youth partying, being achievers, and when you see Gen Z vloggers, bloggers, chefs and others achieve wonders at that age on social media sets the bar up for perfection. Doing this requires confidence and the self-assurance to shoot for the stars.
With so much in the fray, treading through life is most definitely not a box of chocolates. Every step forward may seem like precariously dangling from a precipice for Gen Zers. Life is literally throwing all it has at you, from studies to friendships, to becoming your own person, to juggling family dynamics, tackling loss, to looking for universities; the weight of it all may seem insurmountable. It’s time to heave a sigh of relief; it all gets better.
Here’s the deal: Your worth isn’t measured by someone else’s highlight reel. Meandering through the maze of growing up is tough for everyone. The true superpower isn’t avoiding failure; it’s learning how to look at a setback, shrug, and say, ‘Well, that was interesting. What did I learn?’ Your journey is your own. Don’t let someone else’s finish line define your race.
There is no guidebook to being perfect because none of us are, and can ever be. The goal is to equip our children with enough emotional support and empathy; understanding their needs, questions, concerns and objections, having open, unbiased and non-judgmental dialogue on a myriad of issues can help foster a safe environment where the child or teenager will feel safe enough to express themselves fully and completely. Parenting is hard! It’s not the hedonistic life portrayed in a picture-perfect sitcom where everything falls into place at the opportune moment.
The focus should be on quality and accepting failure as part of life, whether it pertains to grades or extracurricular activities. Pressure to get grades isn’t the goal; the ability to learn and try your hardest should be what parents should instil in their young. Teaching how to cope with mistakes and failure is a prerequisite because creating expectations of perfection isn’t going to help either, because not every child will be a high achiever. We all have our skill sets and competencies, and we excel in different areas. The goal is to identify and discern their skills and what they excel in, and build their self-worth and confidence from there.
If perfection is the pursuit, it can be the road to perdition.
Parenting is a tough job in today’s day and age. Slogging through difficulties on a daily basis is their modus operandi. Here’s a guide to what parents can do to build confidence without pushing for perfectionism.
Middle Years (Grades 3–8)
