On Wednesday night we held our Confidence Breakthrough Workshop and something that came up was regarding behaviours and what they communicate.  Specifically behaviours parents were seeing in their daughter (one of the worksheet exercises on the night)..

And as the comments began to come through and different behaviours were being listed off, Di and I quickly recognised them as low confidence behaviours.

What we tend to see in someone who is low in confidence is behaviour such as:

• First and foremost: they’re unsure of themselves
• That means she starts second-guessing everything
• And we all know what comes after second guessing
• Ruminating over and over in her mind
• Being distracted
• It’s also really hard to actually make a decision
• She’ll tend to flip-flop between things
• Or one minute she feels very strongly about something the next minute she doesn’t
• To parents this behaviour can be very unpredictable
• She’s usually pretty emotional, which really affects her communication
• Sometimes the communication just stops altogether, or it can be hard to understand what it is she’s actually trying to say
• They’re not sure how to behave,
• And they don’t know what is being expected of them. 

When you’re witnessing all of this of your daughter, usually the first thing you want is for her to not be going through it.

And you’re wondering what on earth you can do? But it’s important to take a moment and recognise how this behaviour makes you feel.

I believe that watching your daughter go through this can make you feel a bit uncertain about her next move, how she might respond to you emotionally, you can be quite sensitive to her reactions. You might be tempering what you say and how you say it just in case. And you don’t quite know how she’s going to respond to different things.

There’s a bit of unpredictability there. You can be a bit tentative. You can hold back from communicating with them. You basically start pulling away from her too.

Often we feel frustrated when we’re around someone who’s low in confidence (this doesn’t come from a bad place!  Sometimes it’s just human nature to feel a bit frustrated and think,

“why can’t you just listen to me and why can’t you just hear what I have to say and take some of my advice?”

So you can feel like you’re not being listened to, you can feel like you’re not being respected.

You can want to pull away from that – because it’s not a nice feeling. We don’t want to hang out in that space when someone’s behaviour is making us feel these feelings.

At times, you also want to push a little bit, because you just want to see what’s really going on and see how she’s going to react or what actually works or not.

We also see regularly the instinct to try to have a stronger control over the situation.

So ultimately what this really does is it really starts to affect your relationship between the two of you, because it’s hard to trust a person who’s unsure of themselves and flip flopping and not communicating very well.

It’s hard to believe them when they say they want something or they’re going to do something because you’re not really seeing evidence of follow through on that.

And look, there’s an element of respect that can also get deteriorated a little bit between both parties when this is happening.

But ultimately what you see breaking down is the bond and the connection and the relationship. 

SO NOW I WANT YOU TO FLIP IT

Think about your parenting and how you interact with your daughter. Think about whether there are times where you’re not sure of yourself and you’re feeling a bit low in confidence when you’re making those decisions about what to say to her, what to do.

Maybe you’re second guessing yourself. It’s likely you’re sitting on the couch in front of Netflix, going over and over in your mind;

Did I say it properly?

Did I not?

Should I do this?

Should I not?

Which means you’re distracted. You might not be paying attention and you are most likely not able to make a decision.  And comes with that flip-flopping,  which makes you unpredictable.

And I can tell you now there’s a lot of parents that experience the emotions that come with feeling low in confidence. 

So then your communication suffers and becomes unclear and it’s very hard to get your point across.

You’re not sure which words to use. You’re not sure how it’s going to get received. You don’t know how to behave. And you’re not really sure what your daughter is expecting of you from time to time.

Does this sound familiar? Does it sound like something that you have personally experienced yourself when you are raising your daughter?

Now you can understand how she feels when YOU’RE not at your most confident.

• She can be sensitive to your reactions or what you might sort of say or do, or think.
• If she doesn’t have that consistency and that strength of that confidence of holding firm.
• If she’s not seeing that role model to her and demonstrated to her, then she can feel quite off keel and unstable.
• She could become tentative towards you because if she’s not being led and parented confidently
• Then you might see her pulling back and she’ll basically turn off and not listen – which makes you feel more listened to as well!
• But she could also push you, this is when you see some of that boundary pushing behaviour.

If she sees a wobbly fence there, if you’ve got something that’s not strong and firm in front of her – that is a red flag to a bull, she is running up to that boundary and she’s pushing that and seeing how far she can get it, as soon as you can see those little cracks.

Then you see her also, (as I mentioned before for parents), wanting to get some control over the situation.

And that’s when she can start to get quite rigid and she won’t move on things.

These behaviours are direct, reflections and correlations for when she is responding to feeling as though she is not being led confidently and she’s not being role modelled to confidently.

I’d say, between 80 and 90% of the parents I speak to, put their hand up and say that they’re not entirely confident with what they’re doing. 

Sometimes you’re just making it up as you go along. Sometimes it’s just feeling like you’re doing it all wrong.

And all of those feelings continue to just eat away at our own confidence as grownups, as parents and as human beings.

This is why we run the Courageous Parenting Program.

We want to help you become the strong role model that she really needs, and you will be someone that she does trust and that she does believe in, and that she does respect and she wants to have a great bond and relationship with.

Of the participants that did the program last year, 100% of them came out of the Courageous Parenting Program saying that they were definitely more confident as a parent.

And just having that increased confidence has helped them build that bond and relationship, lead by example for their daughter and be the role model she needs. Which subsequently lifts their daughter’s confidence levels as well.

If you are interested in the Courageous Parenting Program registrations for 2022 are opening soon. 

This program has been designed to build your confidence as a parent, because that is critical. That is key. If you can feel confident, if you can feel assured about what you’re doing, that is absolutely the first step to making sure that you can help your daughter on a path to confidence as well.

Diane and I would absolutely love to work with you!