How to Nurture Courage in Your Children

Does your child have courage?  Can your child persevere without giving up even when they are faced with difficult situations?  Can your child – even your young children – set a goal and work hard to achieve it, or do they give up thinking they just cannot do something?  Do you know how to nurture courage in your children?

I have seen many children who are naturally able to say hello (looking that person in the eyes), tryout for the baseball team without any worries, or work hard at climbing a high hill.  I have also been amazed at the tenacity and courage of some teens in reaching out to the underprivileged to serve them without fear.  I’ve seen children of all ages make the courageous choice to find different friends when they realize that the friends they’ve had have changed moral course.

While courage is often a part of DNA and natural personality traits, it is also important to nurture courage in all our children. 

Many children are naturally tentative and need our help and encouragement to be brave and go beyond their comfort zone.  It would be a mistake to wait until they are in a situation demanding moral, intellectual, or physical courage before nurturing this virtue. 

Nurturing courage begins when you stand that baby up and say, “Come on, walk to Mommy.” 

Why it is Important to Nurture Courage in Your Children

First, let’s be clear that courage doesn’t only mean making the decision to go skydiving or parasail over the ocean.  Those decisions certainly have an element of (extreme) courage, but the courage I’m talking about is the inner decision that I won’t be defeated and that I have the strength to try again.

Imagine your little 1 yr. old walked a couple of steps and fell down.  Would you say, “Well, Johnny, looks like you’re never going to get the hang of this, so give it up?”  Of course you wouldn’t. 

And so, it is with every challenge our small children make.  We have to be there to encourage them to try, praise them for their effort, and comfort them in their disappointment while also encouraging them to try again.

Learning to try again is part of a growth mindset – a belief that your abilities are not set in stone, but rather can develop over time with attention to success.

Without courage few, if any, of the amazing inventions of our world would have ever happened. 

Without courage, our children might never experience the exhilaration of success.  They would be tied to their own insecurities, self-beliefs (whether correct or incorrect), live a limited life, and let the results define them.

Without Courage, We Let the Results Define Us

“I’m a failure.” 

When we aren’t taught to try again, we decide that the results are that we’re a failure.  It may be that we try again, and we still fail – but WE aren’t the failure.  We just learned something that didn’t work. 

How many hours of daily practice did it take for me to get the Chopin run down in the Waltz in B Minor? It was comprised of 16 little notes in two measures with 1/2 steps in between, with my fingers going over and under at lickity- split speed.  It took me weeks to get it right.  But I performed that run without error for my recital and 40 years later, I still remember how to play it!

Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.

Winston Churchill

Nurturing Courage in Your Child Stretches Abilities

If our children always do only what comes naturally and easily to them and we don’t encourage them to stretch themselves to see what they can do with a little courage, you may never know the extent of their God-given talents.  Some talents just take a little more time and effort to develop.  If children don’t have courage to try after mistakes or failures, a significant part of them may go undeveloped.  And what a pity that would be!

When I was teaching 1^st grade, I had a student who was not naturally quick at math facts.  She was very bright, but her personality is more tentative.  At the beginning of the year, she was always last in our class competition.  She and I had a talk about how fast she was, and she said, “I’ll never be fast.”  I suggested she practice really hard and let’s see how things worked out.

By Christmas break, she won the classroom competition.  You should have seen her BEAM!  It was a joy to watch her make a goal and try and try again until she accomplished her goal.

Courage to Try Builds Resilience

Resilience is an undervalued virtue. To be resilient is to be able to withstand misfortune or change.  So many children lack resilience.  We can’t protect our children to the point of depriving them of opportunities to fail.  I know that sounds harsh and even now, with most of my children adults, I find it very hard to watch them be disappointed, or go through discouraging circumstances. 

But acquiring the experiences of living through disappointments at a young age, will help them be more resilient as adults.  Striking out at the plate is hard on an 8 yr. old.  But in the grand scheme of life, it isn’t serious.  Helping him through that disappointment, encouraging him to work at it, and try again will be a lesson that he may recall when he’s 25 and having trouble finding a job.  That IS a big deal and without the tools of a positive mindset, experiences of living through disappointment, and courage to try he may get stuck in a spiral of unemployment.

Your child will need courage to

• Resist peer pressure
• Be able to say no to the crowd
• Say no to teasing/bullying someone, no to internet curiosities, no to video games that are not appropriate, no to cheating when “everyone else is doing it”
• Walk away from parties, alcohol, and sex during the teenage years
• Say “no” to viewing porn as early as they get on a computer
• Be true to family values and follow their moral compass even when it is unpopular or inconvenient

How to Nurture Courage in Your Children

To nurture courage in your children isn’t just something we can say and walk away.  It is a steady tone of encouragement and engagement.

Set stretch goals for them at age appropriate levels

• “What can you build with those blocks?
• “What would you like to be when you grow up?”
• “Can you run faster?  Can you do that math timed test faster and more accurately?”
• “Would you like to learn to sew?”

Work through scenarios when necessary

• “What do you think will happen if you try to…..?”
• “What will you do if children laugh at you for not knowing something?”
• “What will you say to those kids who are trying to get you to do something bad?”

Praise them for their effort – especially in doing hard things

• “Great job!”
• “You rode your bike all by yourself!”
• “You tried so hard! I’m so proud of you!”
• “Maybe next time you’ll be able to….. but what a great effort!”

Teach by your example

Show courage and point it out – like the time I had to go confront a neighbor because her child was bullying my son.  I explained to my child that confrontation was hard for me, but that I knew the mother would want to know.  I was charitable with my words and she was grateful that I told her.  Her son stopped bullying.

Help them prepare for a situation

If your child has a piano recital, of course they will be nervous.  But if you have helped them prepare and they know their piece, they’ll be less afraid AND will be more successful.  Help them see how preparation is critical in their self-confidence and ultimately in their results

Think through decisions in advance and teach them how to say no

When children begin leaving the home, away from your presence (to go to a friend’s house or play down the street)  make sure you’ve worked through some possible scenarios with them so they have the courage to say no to inappropriate talk or actions.

In the End, Love Them

Make sure your children hear that you love them as they are.  Explain that when you challenge them to be brave and work harder or longer for a specific goal, or try something new or difficult, you are just encouraging them to stretch themselves – to see what they may be able to do that they didn’t know they were capable of.

Pray for your children daily to have the moral courage they’ll need to live as children of God. In the end, that’s what counts and that’s what will make them happy.

Have a great week!

Janet

P.s. Looking for more words on courage and mindset? Check this post out!

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