If you don’t make boosting your child’s self-esteem “one of your top priorities” as a parent, you could jeopardize their future success and happiness, says mental performance coach Cindra Kamphoff.
“Parents need to be more aware of the confidence crisis in America today, and they need to be really deliberate about increasing the confidence of their kids,” says Kamphoff, the founder of the Mentally Strong Institute, a mental coaching firm for business leaders and athletes.
Nearly half of all Gen Z workers in the U.S. struggle with inadequate confidence, including negative self-comparisons to those around them, says Kamphoff, citing a survey of 750 subjects in The 2025 National Research Study on Confidence, which she co-authored. Other studies have had similar findings, including that under 60% of U.S. teens feel they generally get enough emotional support, according to a 2024 report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Nurturing confidence in your kids helps them develop the independence and resilience they’ll need to overcome life’s challenges, learn from inevitable setbacks and continue taking necessary risks — all of which are key traits in happy, successful adults, research shows.
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“When kids are more confident, they’re less likely to second guess themselves [or] hold their opinions back,” says Kamphoff, who has a Ph.D. in sports and exercise psychology, and has worked as a mental coach with the NFL’s Minnesota Vikings and the U.S. Olympic Track and Field team.
“You’re setting them up for a lifetime of success when you’re deliberate about [improving confidence],” she adds.
The work of building long-lasting confidence in your children starts early in their childhood and can last well into their adulthood, says Kamphoff. And harsh criticism from parents often forms the basis of a person’s negative inner critic for years to come, research shows.
She recommends two specific strategies that parents should embrace to help nurture their child’s confidence, no matter their age.
1. Help your child recognize, and regulate, their ‘inner critic’
The majority of American workers struggle with a harsh inner critic, Kamphoff says — a negative internal voice that may doubt the decisions you make, potentially stifling your productivity or motivation.
“That voice starts when you’re really young,” Kamphoff says. It’s an evolutionary mechanism that elevates supposed problems to the forefront of your consciousness so they can be addressed directly, but when you’re not actually in danger, that constant self-criticism can cause undue stress, research shows.
Parents should “teach kids how to notice their negative self-talk and replace it with the truth,” Kamphoff recommends. She uses a tool that she calls “the Truth Meter,” a series of three quick questions:
- Is that true?
- Is that thought serving you?
- What would be a more empowering thought you could choose right now?
The line of self-questioning is effective because our harshest self-talk is often untrue — or a distorted version of the truth — and worrying about it won’t serve you positively, she says. Shifting your child’s focus to something more accurate and productive should help them pull themselves out of a vicious cycle.
You can use those three questions for yourself, too — particularly because parents should generally try to model positive behavior for their kids, says Kamphoff. “As parents, you can teach your kids how to manage that inner voice [and] be a good role model,” she says.
2. ‘Normalize failure’
Children typically lose some amount of confidence after setbacks or negative interactions, like social rejection from a peer or struggling to learn a new skill, says Kamphoff.
“Most people, when they fail they really beat themselves up,” she says. Teaching kids that “there’s no such thing as failure,” because every setback is an opportunity to learn something new and improve your skills or approach, can be a “really powerful” tool to embrace.
As a mental coach to professional athletes, Kamphoff regularly teaches the concept of moving on from past failures, she says. In those cases, she turns to another three-step tool that she calls “Learn-Burn-Return” to help people move on from failures, rather than dwelling on them.
The first step calls for identifying lessons to learn from a specific mistake or failure, to avoid repeating it in the future. Parents can ask their child, “What would you do differently next time?” and remind them that “you are not the mistake,” says Kamphoff: Every failure is a temporary setback, and not something that must define them permanently.
The second step is moving on from the mistake. Kamphoff recommends teaching your child an easily repeatable phrase or action, like physically “shaking it off,” to signal that it’s time to leave that negative experience in the past.
In the third step, parents teach kids to “return” to a more positive mindset by employing “confident self-talk and body language,” like reminding them of their strengths and how the lessons from their setbacks can help them grow going forward, she says.
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