Why you should NEVER say "You can do that"

Have you ever realized how pointless it is when someone tells you that you will be able to do something?

Because to be honest, do you believe it when someone says to you: "You can do this"?

Bet you will immediately come up with a cool "Yes-but"?

In itself, it is not bad at all if there is some resistance to a comment from someone who believes in you, while you do not yet believe it.

Were it not that things often go wrong there because the other person has the tendency to convince you.

And convincing someone is completely pointless. It rarely happens that someone will agree with you. If you do agree, it has often taken a lot of time and you have often forgotten the original story.

My child has little self-confidence

The foregoing is exactly what happens in children with low self-esteem. If something is exciting for a child, this child sends out a signal.

Usually comments like “I can't or I don't get it” and more often “they don't like me, I'm doing it wrong anyway, they don't want to play with me or a blunt NO”.

What we do is go against it and come up with all kinds of arguments why the child should do something. To begin with, we do not listen very well because a child will of course never say that it does not dare something and has too little confidence. Instead, there are all kinds of excuses and arguments that we oppose.

In the end, usually with the deadly remark: “You can do it”.

Recognizable?

What happens to a child with low self-esteem?

A child who finds it (still) exciting to do something that he or she has had no or negative experiences with, will often not be eager to take on the new challenge. Especially the children, who are naturally somewhat risk-averse and conservative, withdraw themselves more easily with new experiences.

That withdrawal movement usually means that there is some form of fear.

And since no one wants to be seen as a scaredy-cat, you are going to come up with something to disguise your fear and stay away from the experience. You come up with reasons and arguments that are valid or not.

And imagine that your parent or teacher then says that you can do it and often superlatively that you will really like it. It is more than perfectly logical that a child does not fall for that?

Even we adults usually really do not agree.

What happens in children is that they go a step further. After all, their fear and refusal are not taken seriously, so the squeaking, whining, arguing and, if necessary, crying and screaming becomes a bit worse. And if the parent or teacher comes up with even more arguments, the noise gets bigger and more.

I call that “this fist on this fist”. And if this happens regularly in difficult situations, then you just have a pattern.

What does a child with low self-confidence really want?

If you just think about yourself when you don't dare to do something well and someone says you can. What do you really want?

Right! Taken serious.

And you certainly won't do that if you say that the other person can.

In fact, that's a blunt denial of someone's fear.

How do you take a child seriously who does not dare, cannot or does not want to do something?

When a child makes noise when he has to do something like give a talk, get a grocery shopping, make an excuse, make up for a fight, bake a cake, build a tower, do a difficult math problem or whatever, then we should don't say it can.

What is really helping this child is someone who gives credit for how difficult it is right.

So not: "you can do it and you will like it later", but rather "well, that is also difficult and quite a bit scary".

The difference for the child is that he is really listened to and that the other sees how difficult it is.

Then you can start asking questions to discover that the situation may not be creepy at all.

This involves questions such as: “How did you manage last time? Have you already tried it and what went well? What could you say or do now?

This concerns information from the past, which provides guarantees for the future.

Just the other way around than with the banks. :-)

The result of these questions is that the other has to think and can think that something can be not too bad and can also think about how to handle the difficult situation. As a result, the self-confidence grows so that afterwards you can very well say: "See, you could do it".

And then do the child a favor by specifying exactly how it turned out so that this is already ingrained for the next time.

Another tip for self-confidence learning

And finally, another tip: If you have already shouted: “You can do it”, then there is no man overboard. My rule is that you can reassure three times. Does it work but not yet, then it is wise to proceed to the recipe of giving recognition and asking questions and then of course gently nudging and encouraging them to do the tricky thing.

The advantage is that you will not end up in a discussion and have the child on track in a short time.

And… let's stop telling each other and especially children that something is a piece of cake while for the other person it is just a miserable situation ……