How to raise trustworthy kids
When you look back, do remember someone in your life who truly believed in you? Who made you feel like you could do anything? Who saw you, maybe when no one else did? These special individuals have such transformative powers. They can spark confidence and belief in even the darkest of corners. Just look at some of the best coming-of-age films and think of your favourite . They usually centre around one person believing in another. ‘Finding Forrester’ comes to mind for me!
Maybe you were lucky and you had more than one person. I was one of the lucky ones and I don’t doubt that having these people in my corner, throughout different stages of my life, has helped me to become the person I am today. Unfortunately though, not everyone has those cheerleaders encouraging them, believing in them, seeing them.
I see it all the time in my work as a Clinical Psychologist - children who are missing those people. Children who light up when you give them the smallest amount of praise, who cling to those words because they don’t hear them anywhere else. I see adults who have little to no self-belief or confidence in themselves; the consequence of a life without.
The importance of trust
I think as parents sometimes we can forget how important we are in the lives of our children. How powerful our words and actions can be and the impact they can have. We can forget how our language and behaviours shape their inner voice, self-image and confidence. One of the best starting points we can use as parents, to promoting a positive sense of self in our little ones is trust.
Trust is about believing that a child is capable, whatever the challenges or setbacks may be.
Trust empowers kids at every level, whether that’s in the classroom or how they see the world. And this starts far earlier than you realize. You may have heard people talk about ‘attachment’ before? Well essentially, a secure attachment is formed when an infant feels that they can trust and depend on their primary carer; that they can rely on them.
Trust is a two-way street
It’s important to remember that trust is mutual. This can be difficult, especially for those of you parenting teenagers but let me explain. The degree to which your children can trust you will reflect in their ability to trust others.
We know from research that children that were rated as less trustworthy by their teachers displayed higher rates of aggression and lower rates of ‘prosocial behaviours (i.e. collaborating and sharing with others). More than this, distrust in children has also been associated with loneliness and social withdrawal.
When we break it down, if we don’t feel trust as kids, or there isn’t that person close to us that we can trust, we have difficulty getting over it and this can have lifelong consequences because you grow up thinking that you’re untrustworthy and you start to see that as part of who you are.
How do you build trust in your children?
As I said, this starts from day dot. Babies are much smarter than we give them credit for. They know how to make us smile and laugh (my 10 month old daughter is currently testing out different facial expressions to see if she can get us to laugh, we obviously think she’s hilarious!) and even though they are dependent on us for everything, it’s also an opportunity to start teaching them some valuable lessons.
Kids learn how to self-soothe, particularly when given the opportunity. They might suck their thumb, cuddle their teddy, twirl their hair etc. My son talks to his teddy and twirls his hair whenever he needs it and this is also how he puts himself to sleep. He will even role-play with his toys any issue that he’s struggling with. So, because we have built a relationship on trust, my children have learnt that they can meet a lot of their own needs (age-dependent of course), which means my hubby and I get a little bit more down time. It’s a win-win.
Finding opportunities to build trust
As your children grow, you can give them more opportunities to build their own trustworthiness. You want to ask yourself with the choice that you’re making, is this something that will actively build trust in my child? Or will it serve to limit them?
For younger children, little achievements are going to help build this trust and belief in themselves. I’ll give you some examples:
Tie their own shoes
Put on their own clothes
Get themselves a cup of water
Through these small victories they can see the results of their efforts. And remember, celebrate these wins with them. It will help bolster that belief in themselves and give them incentive to do it again.
And parents of teenagers, here’s a graduated activity you can do to help bolster trust (thanks to Esther Wojcicki for the suggestion) with the shopping:
The parent does everything, selecting and buying all the groceries needed by the child.
You trust your child to go with you to the shops and you allow them to make most of the purchasing decisions (giving kids a specific budget is also an amazing opportunity to teach them financial responsibility!)
You let your child gather the needed items on their own; the two of you meet at the checkout at a set time and make the final purchases together.
Once you’ve built a foundation of trust and taught your child how to be responsible with money, you give them your debit card and let them shop on their own! (Of course, you check the charges and teach them to verify the statement at the end of each month).
Now step four probably sounds terrifying to you right now (it definitely does to me!), but as they prove their trustworthiness, you increase their freedoms and responsibilities, and this will build trust and independence - and who doesn’t want that for their kids?
So, here’s a challenge for you - over the next TWO weeks, whatever the age of your child, pick something to work on to help build trust. I’ll do this too with my minis and report back. If you accept my little challenge, reach out or better yet, tag us in a pic on Instagram.
Need more?
