Fall flavor and confidence

I have two kids in two very different life stages. Both are growing up with different experiences and with different motivations. You can be the most consistent parent and yet your kids will turn out so incredibly different. The one very big difference in how I’ve raised my kids is I assumed Cameron had the foundation of confidence just because of the benefit of being a boy who has a loving household. In the years following, I’ve had to go further than just assume confidence. I’ve encouraged, I’ve taught, I’ve sought activities that bring him joy and motivation.

When Jordan was born I felt the inner need to turn up the parenting confidence meter. The moment I found out she was a girl in our 20 week ultrasound, I committed myself to offering Jordan the confidence she needed to be a girl in a male-dominated world. Then she was born with one hand and suddenly confidence was even more important.

Things I didn’t know that comes with raising two children who are confident (even if those confidences are very different styles):

1. Confidence is very close to traits that aren’t rewarded like argumentative and defiant. Teaching a child the fine line between those traits is a non-stop, constant training process. It’s exhausting.
2. Confidence is hard to maintain as kids get older. Parental influence can’t be the only way a child grows in confidence. Activities, friends and the school environment play a big part in this process.
3. Grandparents will look at your confident kids and mention how you were never like that. And it’s true. I was not raised as a confident child. It was assumed like I have assumed it for Cameron. Our culture didn’t make it easy for me to grow up confident. I was (and remain) a very type-A perfectionist. Confidence didn’t come easily for me. I was always striving to be better and worried about failure. (And sometimes I still battle that challenge.)
4. Purposefully raising a confident child means you focus on activities and skills differently. Priorities are different.
5. There is no guarantee that raising a confident child will lead to a confident adult. That fine line challenge… If you can’t teach the difference between jerk and confident, you could end up with a jerk adult. I often worry about that.

All these thoughts on confidence happened after I took the world’s fastest evening fall photos with the kids yesterday evening. I wrote earlier this week how I worried I wouldn’t get it done. But I did. (Darn that type-A tendency.) And then I stared at the pictures last night. Look at her. That confidence. Every time I see it, I want to bottle it up and hold onto some of it for later… just in case there is a later time when the confidence starts to wobble.