Where does self-confidence come from ? Some children are bursting with it while an absence of it holds others back. Katy Gosset finds confidence is a learned behaviour that any of us can tap into.

Everyone wants it for their kids but where does self-confidence actually come from? Some children seem to be bursting with it while an absence of it holds others back. Katy Gosset finds confidence is a learned behaviour that any of us - parents included- can tap into.

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Sally's* son James* has always been one of the best runners in his year. In fact, he usually wins most races.

But lately, he hasn't wanted to try.

Sally thinks a sense of expectation from others that he would win has sapped his confidence.

"I tried lots of encouragement, reminding him that it didn't really matter if he won the race or not. It was just, kind of, doing your best."

"But I just felt it got to the point where he thought it was more fun to just run with his friends and not have that expectation on him."

Her other two children went through similar phases.

"Definitely, I think all three of them had confidence issues."

The quest for confidence

Confidence in children can seem like the holy grail for concerned parents.

So why do some kids lack this elusive quality while others appear bulletproof?

Clinical psychologist, Catherine Gallagher, said many parents believed confidence was innate.

"We often hear people described as either confident or not confident as if it's a thing we're born with."

Instead, it was a learned behaviour and could fluctuate throughout a person's life.

"Some might seem like they were born with an in-built Teflon shield to repel the opinions of others and the difficulties life might throw at them."

However, rather than having an excess of some quality, it was more likely that they simply lacked anxiety 'which is often the thing that holds us back or saps our energy.'

Most people had a kind of internal alarm system that went off in the presence of danger but that same alarm could be triggered by normal life challenges, Gallagher explained.

''The frustration we feel when we're struggling with a problem or which we visibly see when we see a baby struggling to roll over or pull themselves up, it actually serves a purpose.''

When a person faced any kind of challenge, their brain tried to draw upon a similar experience to model what to do next, Gallagher said…

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