Recently, my third-grader asked if I could help her with her math homework. There was a question about a shed that needed to be painted, and how many red, blue and green buckets it would take to get the job done.
“Well,” I began. “If the surface of the shed is 65 square feet, and a red bucket holds 20 square feet of paint, could we do it with just red buckets without having any extra paint?”
She blinked up at me.
“How many square feet of paint do the red buckets hold?” I asked, patiently.
“20?”
“So how many buckets would it take to get to 65 square feet without going over?”
“Four?” she suggested. Then, seeing my furrowed brow, “Five?” Then her whole face crumpled and she threw her pencil across the room. “I hate this! I’m so bad at math!”
I’m guessing most of you have been in a similar situation, and I’m guessing your instincts were the same as mine: To swear to high heaven that your child was not bad at the thing in question. “You’re great at math!” I stammered, “Your teacher just told me how good you’re doing! Remember the 97 you got on your test the other week?”
My impulse to boost my daughter’s confidence isn’t wrong, say the experts. It’s my approach that needs rejiggering.
In How to Talk to Kids About Anything: Tips, Scripts, Stories and Steps to Make Even the Toughest Conversations Easier, Robyn Silverman, PhD stresses the importance of “acknowledging faults as works in progress, rather than defining characteristics.” In other words, the goal isn’t to ignore or contradict your child’s negative self-talk—it’s to help them see their own strengths in the face of adversity.
One phrase Dr. Silverman recommends really stuck with me: One thing I know about you…
Here’s why it works: When our children are feeling down, we—as the people who know them best—have the ability to model resilience, and point to a true skill or experience they possess that can help them in the current moment. The key is to back it up with evidence, so they see it as a fact and not just a platitude.
So if your kid is feeling upset after a crushing soccer loss and labeling himself a bad player, instead of, “Don’t worry, you’ll get ‘em next time!” you could say, “One thing I know about you is that you always show up for your team. Remember the time it was 25 degrees and snowing, and you still came to practice? That commitment makes you an MVP!”
Or if they’re down on themselves because of a schoolyard squabble, try: “One thing I know about you is that you always think about others’ feelings. Like the time Sophie was sick and you picked up her library books for her. No wonder you have so many friends.”
As Dr. Silverman says, “When they can’t see their gifts for themselves, we need to become strength finders and reveal them.”
So how could I have better handled my daughter’s multiplication meltdown? Well instead of arguing that she is good at math, I could have pointed to facts she knows are true. “One thing I know about you,” I might have said. “Is that you always keep trying, even when things aren’t easy at first. Remember how hard it was for you to tie your shoelaces? But you kept at it every day, and now you’re a pro!” Then, to bring it back to the shed-painting at hand: “I know this math homework is hard, and I’m so proud of you for being a kid who doesn’t give up.”
Who knows if she’d have reached the right answer on her own. (I did eventually offer a hint about the green buckets, which hold five square feet of paint.) But more important is giving her the confidence to know she can get there.
