Are We Raising Confident Kids at the Cost of Humility?
I had a really interesting conversation recently about raising kids in 2026.
Someone pointed out to me that many of us currently raising kids focus really heavily on increasing our kids' confidence. And they were right. We do. But they also expressed concern that our kids may not be as humble as we intended or would like them to be. And they wondered aloud if that lack of humblness may have a negative impact on them as this generation grows and enters the work force. I’ve been thinking about that conversation in the days since.
Why do we care so much about our children's confidence?
It makes sense our generation is trying to find this balance. After all, most generations find the biggest criticisms they have of the previous generation and swing far in the other direction.
Many of us struggled with confidence. It was almost a foreign concept for us growing up. Our parents loved us and wanted what was best for us, but confidence wasn't the top priority.
We grew up in a time where everything we saw focused on looks. TV ads we couldn't fast forward past. Magazines. Newspapers. And certainly our own parents. We grew up hearing about diet products, liposuction, and other things focused on weight. Like most generations, there were fads tied to appearance too: glamour shots, perms, and all the rest. Tanning salons were popular, and eventually we started seeing ads for these "new" teeth whitening products.
But it wasn't even just that. It was the kids at school. The bullying nobody noticed back in the 80s and 90s. It was well meaning parents saying, "Big girls don't cry" or "Be a man" or "suck it up." It was latchkey culture, as our moms showed us the strength of a woman entering the workforce while dad was often still the breadwinner.
We grew up in a generation where, by high school, most of us knew someone with a full blown eating disorder. Many, many of us suffered for years, or still suffer, from anxiety and depression. Often that anxiety and depression is hidden. Everything looks fine. We're considered "successful" or "high functioning," but we spend thousands of dollars on mental health treatment and take SSRIs daily.
So it's only natural we wanted something different for our children.
Like many people in my generation, my kids are growing up repeating beautiful affirmations every single night. We meditate. They've done yoga, and they see me prioritizing yoga. They know they're loved. Perhaps I go a bit overboard sometimes trying to know what's going on in their lives. When they get upset, I try hard to listen to their feelings first, though I won't pretend I'm perfect, especially when we're in a hurry. I tell them they matter. Their feelings matter.
I remember one time I told my daughter I was sorry she was upset, but we needed to get out of the house. She yelled at me, "But you said it's ok to cry and I need to cry!" Both of my children have often expressed, “I could be a _____.” They repeat these beautiful big dreams with such confidence and excitement.
Has all that confidence actually worked?
Hopefully it means our children are more confident.
On the whole, I think many they know they're loved. They know their parents want to spend time with them, even if they feel like they're competing with our phones. They believe anything is possible. They absolutely know they can do anything they put their minds to. All the possibilities out there seem real to this generation.
But I want to be honest about something, because sometimes I wonder if confidence is enough.
Maybe confidence was never the real question
Here's where I've landed after sitting with this for a while….
I used to think about this as a trade-off. Confidence on one end, humility on the other, like a dial we've turned too far in one direction. But now, I don't actually think that's right.
I think it’s more of a dialectic. More where two things that appear opposite on the surface actually can (and perhaps should) be true at the same time.
A kid can be genuinely confident and genuinely humble at the same time. Those aren't opposites. You can be proud of what you're good at and still say "I don't know that yet." In fact, the two tend to grow together.
So the real question isn't "did we give them too much confidence?"
I think the more honest version is this: we got really good at building our kids' confidence and self-esteem. We're a lot less sure how to build some other traits they may also need. The ability to be wrong, to not know, to sit in something uncomfortable, and to be okay anyway. Or to make a mistake and have the resilience to come back from it finding ways to improve and prevent the repeat of such mistakes.
That's the piece I keep coming back to. Researchers sometimes call it intellectual humility, which is just the ability to recognize you might be wrong and stay open to learning. And it matters more than it sounds.
Why "being wrong" is a skill worth building
Kids who can tolerate being wrong tend to stay curious. They ask questions when they hit a gap instead of freezing or faking it. They're willing to change their minds when a friend disagrees or when someone who actually knows more offers a better answer. This kind of humility is linked to curiosity, persistence, open-mindedness, and a real drive to master things. Those are the exact traits we want for our kids, and they don't happen without some comfort with not-knowing mixed in.k
And here's the part that surprised me. We assume kids are drawn to the loudest, most sure-of-themselves person in the room. But when researchers actually tested this, children by about age five and a half preferred a person who was intellectually humble over one who was arrogant, and that preference got stronger as they got older. Kids don't just tolerate humility in other people. They like it. They find humble people nicer, smarter, and more likable.
So this was never really confidence versus humility. Our kids can have both. What I'm not sure we've taught them is how to be wrong without it feeling like the floor is falling out.
The part I actually worry about: what happens when they can't be wrong
A kid who can't tolerate being wrong, or uncertain, or uncomfortable, is a kid who is set up to struggle with anxiety. Because so much of anxiety is exactly that. It's the discomfort of not knowing. It's the fear of getting something wrong. It's the urge to avoid anything that might feel like failure.
When we accidentally teach kids that they should always feel sure, always feel good, always feel confident, we can leave them without much practice at the harder skill. Which is being anxious, or uncertain, or wrong, and doing the thing anyway.
I see this a lot. Bright, capable, genuinely confident kids who fall apart the moment they might not be the best at something. Kids who avoid trying because trying means risking being wrong. Their confidence is real. It's just brittle, because underneath it there's very little tolerance for discomfort.
That's not a knock on this generation, and it's definitely not a knock on the parents. We were trying to give our kids what we didn't have. But I think the next layer of the work, the harder layer, is teaching them that being wrong is survivable. That not knowing is where learning starts. That you can feel anxious and still move forward.
How do kids actually learn to be okay with being wrong?
Mostly by watching us. They see how we as their parents or other involved adults handle difficult situations, mistakes and challenges.
This is the uncomfortable part for a lot of us, myself included. Kids pick up this skill less from what we tell them and more from what we model. When an adult is willing to say "I don't know," or "I got that wrong," or "good question, let me think about it," or “I haven’t learned how to do that yet,” kids can relax. They no longer need to know how to do everything themselves either. When teachers openly admit confusion or mistakes, students actually feel more accepted, more like they belong, and less afraid that failing means they're bad at something. The modeling does more than any lecture ever could.
That's a lot easier to say than to do. If you're anything like me, admitting you were wrong in front of your kid can feel like you're handing over some authority you're supposed to protect. But that's exactly the move that teaches them. When they see you be wrong and be okay, they learn that being wrong is survivable.
A few small ways this humility alongside confidence shows up in real life:
Saying "I don't know, let's look it up together" instead of guessing to seem sure.
Apologizing to your kid when you snap or get it wrong.
Letting them see you try something you're bad at and stick with it anyway.
Getting curious about a viewpoint you disagree with instead of shutting it down.
Naming your own discomfort out loud. "I'm nervous about this, and I'm going to do it anyway."
None of this cancels out confidence. It just makes confidence sturdier, because it's built on something real.
So what do we do with all of this?
Parenting is hard. There's no question about that. And unfortunately, there's no clear right or wrong.
I don't think the answer is to pull back on confidence. Our reasons for building it were good ones, and a lot of us are still healing from growing up without it. But maybe we can widen what we're aiming for. Not just confident kids, but kids who can be wrong, be unsure, be uncomfortable, and keep going anyway. That last part is what actually protects them.
What I can say is that at Aspire, our clinicians are really proud to support children and their parents. We have therapists in both Columbia and Lee's Summit who support children starting in elementary school, occasionally younger, all the way through young adulthood. And we often find it's most effective when another therapist can work directly with one or both parents as well. After all, your mental health matters too.
Therapy for Kids, Teens, and Parents in Missouri
If you're ready to get more support for your family, we're here to help.
Whether you're looking for help just for your child, or support for the whole family with therapists who will keep your child's confidentiality yet consult with one another for a unified approach, please reach out. We see clients in person in both Columbia, MO and Lee's Summit, MO, as well as online throughout the state of Missouri. A few of our therapists are also licensed to see clients virtually in other states, including Illinois, Kansas, and North Carolina, which helps with things like keeping care going when a client moves or heads off to college.
Call our Lee's Summit office at 816-287-1116 or our Columbia office at 573-328-2288. Both numbers reach the same caring person, so either one is fine.
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About the Author
Jessica Oliver (formerly Jessica Tappana), MSW, LCSW, is the founder and Clinical Director of Aspire Counseling. Early in her career, she spent years working primarily with children. For the last eight years, though, her clinical work has focused on teens and adults, and that shift happened right alongside raising her own kids.
Being a parent has changed how she sees this work. She's watched her fellow parents want so badly to do right by their kids, to raise them to be better than we were. And she's tried to find that balance herself, taking what she knows about mental health and using it to meet her own two children right where they are. Not perfectly. Just honestly.
At Aspire, Jessica and her team support children, teens, and adults across Missouri, with a focus on anxiety, trauma,OCD and grief. Her favorite part of the job is still sitting down for a real therapy session with a client.
