Share Your Confidence With Your Kids

My wife asked me to remodel the shower in our master bathroom. In our 27 years together, I don’t believe she has ever seen me actually tile, or do any plumbing work. And yet, she looked at me and asked.

“What do you need?” she said. Some knowledge would be good. Maybe a couple of years in an apprentice program as well. Both for plumbing and tiling. And if there is enough time, I should go ahead and learn how a hot water heater works. My basic understanding now is that it’s magic, and I should be thankful.

“Also, how about a new fence?”

Ok, I can probably do a fence. Nailing boards has a lot less risk of flooding the house.

“And you need to patch those holes in the ceiling.”

Great. I can get used to working with drywall before I get to the shower.

“My car is making a funny noise. Would you mind looking at it?”

I once wrote a piece stating that the first thing you need to do is to check the North muffler and the South muffler when your car makes weird noises.

“When there’s times, we have to hang a new door in the basement and also redo the deck,” she said.

I like how she snuck the deck in there with the door as if it’s one job. But my point here, my wife seems to believe that I can do all these things. I’m not sure where she gets this belief from, to be honest. I mean, I’ve done some home repairs. I can replace a fan without killing myself, but I do ask that there are some band aids and an EKG machine nearby. And I do woodworking on occasion, but mostly because saw dust is man glitter. But shower remodels and tile work? Not so much.

And it doesn’t really matter because I know I can do these things because my wife believes that I can. It’s amazing what you can accomplish when someone thinks you can. Sometimes it’s really that simple. But it’s true. And that’s what our kids need from us.

I know that this sounds like a motivational speech from a wide toothed televangelist. “You, too, can become a millionaire if you just follow these easy steps!” Then the steps involve buying his seminar.

But it’s deeper than that. Jen Mann in her book How I F*cking Did It says that everyone needs a hype man. She’s right, but I don’t know if she realized much further this statement goes. For her, it was talking about writing and publishing. But a good hype man gives finds you the confidence when you have none.

Everything is new to a kid. It’s a shower stall with a cracked bottom with pipes somewhere behind the wall. They’re not sure because they’ve never lived this particular moment in their lives. “What if”comes into play for our kids. What if there’s more behind the wall than just pipes? What if there is embarrassment and a crowd ready to laugh at you for any failure? What if it’s a bad grade? What if it’s a rejection?

This is where I have found that I have confidence to spare and they are free to borrow as much as they need. From just a pinch of sugar to a whole loaf of bread, that confidence is there the minute they need it. They can do things simply because dad thinks they can. That’s the power of a hype man. That’s the subtle gift we can give our children when the world seems so hard and scary.

Sure, things are going to go wrong at times. Maybe it’s a bad grade or they get laughed at in public. But at the same time, I’m there to tell them all the times I screwed up. In about a week, I’m sure I’m going to have a story about the time I drilled into the wall and busted a pipe. I’ll laugh at my failures, but keep going. And why? Because my wife thinks I can. To put it simply, I have confidence in myself because she does.

I wanted to be a writer. It was that dream that always put away for more practical pursuits. Books, short stories, articles—all those sounded wonderful but it’s so hard to get started. It’s even harder to stand out. And the publishing process is difficult. Find an agent, get a publisher, and then get a book into stores sounded impossible to me at the beginning.

Until my wife said, “When are you going to stop messing around and really write.” I got the confidence to really right because of that.

10 minutes ago, I took my 15-year-old son out for his second driving lesson. Except we weren’t going to a parking lot this time. This time, we were going to cruise around the neighborhood for a bit. He questioned my decision making, which is fair I suppose at times. But I assured him that I would be right next to him and we would be only going 15 miles an hour.

And that’s what we did. He learned how not to take sharp turns at stop signs. How to go slow and be sure of where his wheels are. And that no one is home at 3 pm on a Monday afternoon other than teenagers who just got out of school. When we pulled into the driveway, he asked when we get to hit the highway next. I’m confident that is a bad call until he gets more experience.

I will be the first to admit that I’m often over confident. Sometimes with reason, but often because I have a great support system around me. The truth is that I know dads that do plumbing and can walk me through the process. I know dads that fix walls, grow gardens, and know exactly where the North muffler is located. They are all ready to lend me their confidence when I need it.

And that’s exactly what I try to give my kids when things seem impossible. I have plenty of it to spare.