June 30, 2025 • 10 mins
How Kids Really Build Confidence (Hint: It's Not Hand-Holding)
When should parents step back and let their kids struggle? Inspired by a scene from The Chronicles of Narnia where Aslan says, “Let the prince win his spurs,” this episode dives into how real confidence is built, not given.
From ancient rites of passage to modern over-parenting, we explore why facing hard things on your own is the key to growing up.
Whether it’s a teen learning responsibility or a college student finally doing dishes, kids gain true self-esteem by overcoming, not avoiding difficulty.
Subscribe to Skipping Stones for weekly reflections on growing up, parenting, and living with intention.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
What in life deserves our time and attention and what
things don't.
I hope that as we consider thatquestion, along with other
topics on this show, that we canall learn to live our lives
just a little more intentionally.
This is Seth Roberts.
Thanks for joining me onSkipping Stones.
There's a moment in theChronicles of Narnia when Peter,
(00:29):
one of the young protagonists,comes face to face with a wolf
that wants to kill him.
When others go to assist him,the king of Narnia, Aslan, says
back, let the prince win hisspurs.
I never thought much about thisuntil the other day.
I happened to be watching themovie with my kids and I thought
(00:49):
why on earth would you everrisk letting even the least
valuable person in your army bekilled by an enemy in one-on-one
combat if you don't have to?
In reality, I don't think thiswould ever happen.
But being the story that thisis, there has to be something
more to it If you haven't readthe stories or watched the movie
(01:12):
, it's a story about four youngsiblings that find themselves in
a fantasy world.
When they stumble into itthrough an old magical wardrobe,
it turns out they wereprophesied to come and help set
the land free from the spell ofthe wicked white witch.
Aslan is a magical lion that isthe rightful ruler of Narnia
(01:32):
and is something of a godlikefigure.
I understand it was theauthor's intention to have Aslan
be a kind of representation ofJesus.
The books were, in fact,largely an adaptation of
Christian concepts for the sakeof children.
This moment when Peter faces thewolf ultimately ends up being a
transition point for him.
(01:53):
It is the moment he transformsfrom a fearful child to a brave
warrior.
It is a kind of coming of agefor Peter, but more importantly,
I think it represents themoments we all go through in
life where we need to facesomething on our own, two feet
alone.
Confidence and competence inlife is generated by doing hard
(02:16):
things, and I think this ispartly the lesson intended by
this moment.
In order to become greater, wecannot stay the same.
We have to change, and tochange we have to overcome
things that are in our way.
When I was younger, I remember alot of girls' favorite words
seemed to be maturity.
(02:36):
Us boys were constantly beingtold whether or not we were
mature by our female peers.
I honestly don't think theyknew what they were talking
about half the time, because inhindsight I think a lot of them
were pretty immature as well.
But now I too find myselfjudging people based on their
maturity from time to time, andI don't think I have ever
(02:57):
consciously thought about whatcriteria I'm making that
judgment based on.
So I put my thinking cap on forthe sake of this episode and
the best I can come up with isthat maturity is what you attain
after you take personalresponsibility for overcoming
hard things on behalf of otherpeople.
(03:17):
This is why the guy that'sstill partying hard into his 30s
and 40s somehow still comesacross as juvenile, Because that
is simply not something thatresponsible people generally do.
After they learn to beresponsible for something, In
primitive cultures there's oftena kind of formalized transition
(03:39):
where a boy goes from child toman.
Many of these rituals involvedthe boy actually being required
to face some kind of dangeralone.
I think I heard in some NativeAmerican traditions the boys
were sent out into the wild andthey had to stay out there until
they witnessed a vision.
And in another culture I readabout, the young boys would be
(04:00):
taken from their mothersforcibly and couldn't come back
until they could provide theirmothers with meat.
As for females, responsibilityfor another person seems rather
inherent to their nature,especially when you consider
their biological calling to bearchildren, and maybe this is why
they say women tend to maturefaster than boys.
(04:21):
At any rate, there's a time forall of us where we benefit from
being thrown out into the darkto face our fears.
When we face danger andovercome, it's transformative.
I've mentioned several timesbefore that I have kids.
Before you have kids, I thinkit's really easy to imagine that
(04:43):
you will be a great parent thatgets their kids to help out
around the house and contribute.
Once you have them, it soonbecomes easy to see that, yes,
you can get them to help out,but it actually takes more work
most of the time to have themhelp than it does to just do it
yourself.
It is really easy to get in thehabit of doing everything for
(05:07):
your kids because, quite simply,it's harder to have them help
you.
As they get older, theirability to help increases, but
even then it's still sometimeseasier to just do it yourself.
But people are not meant to betotally reliant on others
forever and at some point it'sgoing to hurt them if they still
are.
(05:27):
The longer we wait to let themface the darkness themselves,
the worse we make it for themlater on.
I had a girl that babysat forme at one point who was a
student at FSU, which is theuniversity here where I live and
she told me once that one ofher friends was complaining that
(05:47):
her parents only gave her$1,000 of monthly allowance.
She also told me she had toteach one of her roommates how
to use the dishwasher.
It seems like the modernperspective for a lot of
families today is that thepurpose of college is to live it
up before you have to startgrinding in the workforce for
the rest of your life.
I can sympathize with thatperspective, because there
(06:14):
really does come a point wherewe settle into a pattern and
life can seem like a monotonousgrind.
A lot of these parents maybethink that they are sparing
their kids the struggle thatthey have had to go through, but
the problem I see with this isthat the approach gives those
children nothing to be proud of.
They are robbed of theexperiences that they need to
transform.
Hardship to people is likeleaven to bread you cannot grow
(06:37):
without it.
When you've been working andproviding for a family for years
, you have perspective on whatlife is like, and so it's
probably easy for you toappreciate the idea of having
several carefree years in youryouth.
The problem with that is thatfor kids that haven't had any
responsibilities for their wholelife, they don't have the
(07:00):
perspective to appreciate it.
How can you appreciate anopportunity in your life where
you don't have to work and cantravel with relative ease when
you haven't even had any realresponsibility in your life?
To compare that against Mostlikely the world will force
responsibility on them at somepoint and they're going to miss
those college years and,honestly, they will probably
(07:21):
feel like they wasted thembecause they lacked the
perspective to appreciate themthem because they lacked the
perspective to appreciate them.
With a little more hardship inour children's lives, you may
also find that they're not goingto be quite as dumb as a lot of
their peers.
I saw something earlier todaythat talked about a paradox
where people that are actuallycompetent at a thing are the
(07:43):
least likely to think thatthey're good at it and the
people that are not are the mostlikely to think that they are
the most competent.
This thing I watched said that45% of people think they are a
top 5% performer at work.
When you are incompetent, youoften are too ignorant to
(08:03):
recognize that you areincompetent.
And so it goes with experience.
You just don't know what youdon't know.
So those poor little sheep thatwe call students go off to
school and think that theirlives are hard.
They think they have hard livesbecause they do, based on their
limited experience.
What is sad, though, is howclueless they are to how much
(08:25):
harder life can and likely willget when they find themselves
totally unprepared for what mostof us would consider to be just
plain life.
Their pride and self-esteemwill be deeply affected when
they finally realize how behindthey actually are.
Sadly, it's mostly our fault asparents for not preparing them
(08:46):
better.
We cannot fully prepare ourchildren for everything life has
to challenge us with, but wecan teach them, at least to some
degree, that they can do hardthings.
We do that by expecting them todo hard things when they are
young.
This doesn't necessarily meanwe need to send them into the
(09:08):
wilderness for a week and comeback later to see if they
survived, but it does mean weneed to make the effort to
prepare them and haveexpectations for them to do hard
things.
In a way, the best gift we canoffer our children is hardship.
Self-esteem in life comes fromdoing hard things.
It has never come from havingnice things.
(09:30):
We cannot become withoutovercoming first.
This is Skipping Stones.
You can find this podcastanywhere you choose to listen to
podcasts.
For more information about me,feel free to visit
skippingstonessrcom and if youenjoyed the show, please like or
(09:55):
subscribe.
If there is a topic you wouldlike me to speak on, please feel
free to email me at info atskippingstonessrcom.
New episodes will be releasedweekly, every Monday.
What in life deserves our time and attention and what
things don't.
I hope that as we consider thatquestion, along with other
topics on this show, that we canall learn to live our lives
just a little more intentionally.
This is Seth Roberts.
Thanks for joining me onSkipping Stones.
There's a moment in theChronicles of Narnia when Peter,
(00:29):
one of the young protagonists,comes face to face with a wolf
that wants to kill him.
When others go to assist him,the king of Narnia, Aslan, says
back, let the prince win hisspurs.
I never thought much about thisuntil the other day.
I happened to be watching themovie with my kids and I thought
(00:49):
why on earth would you everrisk letting even the least
valuable person in your army bekilled by an enemy in one-on-one
combat if you don't have to?
In reality, I don't think thiswould ever happen.
But being the story that thisis, there has to be something
more to it If you haven't readthe stories or watched the movie
(01:12):
, it's a story about four youngsiblings that find themselves in
a fantasy world.
When they stumble into itthrough an old magical wardrobe,
it turns out they wereprophesied to come and help set
the land free from the spell ofthe wicked white witch.
Aslan is a magical lion that isthe rightful ruler of Narnia
(01:32):
and is something of a godlikefigure.
I understand it was theauthor's intention to have Aslan
be a kind of representation ofJesus.
The books were, in fact,largely an adaptation of
Christian concepts for the sakeof children.
This moment when Peter faces thewolf ultimately ends up being a
transition point for him.
(01:53):
It is the moment he transformsfrom a fearful child to a brave
warrior.
It is a kind of coming of agefor Peter, but more importantly,
I think it represents themoments we all go through in
life where we need to facesomething on our own, two feet
alone.
Confidence and competence inlife is generated by doing hard
(02:16):
things, and I think this ispartly the lesson intended by
this moment.
In order to become greater, wecannot stay the same.
We have to change, and tochange we have to overcome
things that are in our way.
When I was younger, I remember alot of girls' favorite words
seemed to be maturity.
(02:36):
Us boys were constantly beingtold whether or not we were
mature by our female peers.
I honestly don't think theyknew what they were talking
about half the time, because inhindsight I think a lot of them
were pretty immature as well.
But now I too find myselfjudging people based on their
maturity from time to time, andI don't think I have ever
(02:57):
consciously thought about whatcriteria I'm making that
judgment based on.
So I put my thinking cap on forthe sake of this episode and
the best I can come up with isthat maturity is what you attain
after you take personalresponsibility for overcoming
hard things on behalf of otherpeople.
(03:17):
This is why the guy that'sstill partying hard into his 30s
and 40s somehow still comesacross as juvenile, Because that
is simply not something thatresponsible people generally do.
After they learn to beresponsible for something, In
primitive cultures there's oftena kind of formalized transition
(03:39):
where a boy goes from child toman.
Many of these rituals involvedthe boy actually being required
to face some kind of dangeralone.
I think I heard in some NativeAmerican traditions the boys
were sent out into the wild andthey had to stay out there until
they witnessed a vision.
And in another culture I readabout, the young boys would be
(04:00):
taken from their mothersforcibly and couldn't come back
until they could provide theirmothers with meat.
As for females, responsibilityfor another person seems rather
inherent to their nature,especially when you consider
their biological calling to bearchildren, and maybe this is why
they say women tend to maturefaster than boys.
(04:21):
At any rate, there's a time forall of us where we benefit from
being thrown out into the darkto face our fears.
When we face danger andovercome, it's transformative.
I've mentioned several timesbefore that I have kids.
Before you have kids, I thinkit's really easy to imagine that
(04:43):
you will be a great parent thatgets their kids to help out
around the house and contribute.
Once you have them, it soonbecomes easy to see that, yes,
you can get them to help out,but it actually takes more work
most of the time to have themhelp than it does to just do it
yourself.
It is really easy to get in thehabit of doing everything for
(05:07):
your kids because, quite simply,it's harder to have them help
you.
As they get older, theirability to help increases, but
even then it's still sometimeseasier to just do it yourself.
But people are not meant to betotally reliant on others
forever and at some point it'sgoing to hurt them if they still
are.
(05:27):
The longer we wait to let themface the darkness themselves,
the worse we make it for themlater on.
I had a girl that babysat forme at one point who was a
student at FSU, which is theuniversity here where I live and
she told me once that one ofher friends was complaining that
(05:47):
her parents only gave her$1,000 of monthly allowance.
She also told me she had toteach one of her roommates how
to use the dishwasher.
It seems like the modernperspective for a lot of
families today is that thepurpose of college is to live it
up before you have to startgrinding in the workforce for
the rest of your life.
I can sympathize with thatperspective, because there
(06:14):
really does come a point wherewe settle into a pattern and
life can seem like a monotonousgrind.
A lot of these parents maybethink that they are sparing
their kids the struggle thatthey have had to go through, but
the problem I see with this isthat the approach gives those
children nothing to be proud of.
They are robbed of theexperiences that they need to
transform.
Hardship to people is likeleaven to bread you cannot grow
(06:37):
without it.
When you've been working andproviding for a family for years
, you have perspective on whatlife is like, and so it's
probably easy for you toappreciate the idea of having
several carefree years in youryouth.
The problem with that is thatfor kids that haven't had any
responsibilities for their wholelife, they don't have the
(07:00):
perspective to appreciate it.
How can you appreciate anopportunity in your life where
you don't have to work and cantravel with relative ease when
you haven't even had any realresponsibility in your life?
To compare that against Mostlikely the world will force
responsibility on them at somepoint and they're going to miss
those college years and,honestly, they will probably
(07:21):
feel like they wasted thembecause they lacked the
perspective to appreciate themthem because they lacked the
perspective to appreciate them.
With a little more hardship inour children's lives, you may
also find that they're not goingto be quite as dumb as a lot of
their peers.
I saw something earlier todaythat talked about a paradox
where people that are actuallycompetent at a thing are the
(07:43):
least likely to think thatthey're good at it and the
people that are not are the mostlikely to think that they are
the most competent.
This thing I watched said that45% of people think they are a
top 5% performer at work.
When you are incompetent, youoften are too ignorant to
(08:03):
recognize that you areincompetent.
And so it goes with experience.
You just don't know what youdon't know.
So those poor little sheep thatwe call students go off to
school and think that theirlives are hard.
They think they have hard livesbecause they do, based on their
limited experience.
What is sad, though, is howclueless they are to how much
(08:25):
harder life can and likely willget when they find themselves
totally unprepared for what mostof us would consider to be just
plain life.
Their pride and self-esteemwill be deeply affected when
they finally realize how behindthey actually are.
Sadly, it's mostly our fault asparents for not preparing them
(08:46):
better.
We cannot fully prepare ourchildren for everything life has
to challenge us with, but wecan teach them, at least to some
degree, that they can do hardthings.
We do that by expecting them todo hard things when they are
young.
This doesn't necessarily meanwe need to send them into the
(09:08):
wilderness for a week and comeback later to see if they
survived, but it does mean weneed to make the effort to
prepare them and haveexpectations for them to do hard
things.
In a way, the best gift we canoffer our children is hardship.
Self-esteem in life comes fromdoing hard things.
It has never come from havingnice things.
(09:30):
We cannot become withoutovercoming first.
This is Skipping Stones.
You can find this podcastanywhere you choose to listen to
podcasts.
For more information about me,feel free to visit
skippingstonessrcom and if youenjoyed the show, please like or
(09:55):
subscribe.
If there is a topic you wouldlike me to speak on, please feel
free to email me at info atskippingstonessrcom.
New episodes will be releasedweekly, every Monday.
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