What are we teaching children about themselves?
Children are constantly collecting evidence about who they are, and adults are often providing it without realising. Here's why the stories we tell children matter more than
we think.
Introduction
I first became interested in children and competition because of something I kept noticing in the learning space and on the playground. It was small things at first. A group of children would be playing a game, and the moment it became competitive, the boys would lean in - they wanted to win, they wanted to keep score, they wanted another round. The girls, on the other hand, often seemed more comfortable stepping away from that intensity. They were happy to participate, but the need to win did not always seem to be there. They were often more interested in playing together, talking, or simply enjoying the activity.
Of course, this was not true of every child. There were girls who were fiercely competitive and boys who could not care less about winning. But there was a pattern I kept seeing often enough that I started to wonder: was this simply something about children? Were boys naturally more competitive? Were girls naturally more cooperative? Or were we, as adults, teaching children to behave this way?
I had to find answers to my questions
That question eventually became the basis for a research paper I co-wrote titled, The Drive to Compete: A Gender-Based Study on Motivation in Children. The research grew out of those early observations of children aged roughly 5–9 and my attempt to understand what might sit behind them.
I sent questionnaires to men and women of different ages about their experiences with competition growing up - what they had been told about winning, losing, being ambitious, taking risks, and putting themselves forward. Many of the women described learning, explicitly or implicitly, that competition was not really for them.
They were encouraged to cooperate, to be nice, to avoid being too aggressive. Some remembered being told directly that certain activities were “for boys.” Interestingly, some of the men said that nobody had particularly encouraged them to be competitive either - they had simply gravitated toward competitive environments because those were the spaces they found themselves in, and the adults around them celebrated it.
This led me to a deeper question: not whether boys and girls are inherently different, but how much of what children believe about themselves is actually taught to them.
The things we say become part of their story
Children are constantly forming ideas about who they are. “I am good at maths.” “I am not a reader.” “I don't like speaking in front of people.” Some of these statements can sound like simple observations, but where did the child get the idea? Children do not arrive in the world with a fully formed understanding of their abilities. They are watching us, listening to us, paying attention to who gets praised, who gets corrected, who gets chosen, and who gets encouraged to try again. They are collecting evidence about themselves - and adults are often providing that evidence without realising it.
I remember an example from Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz that stayed with me. Maltz describes a boy who had developed a strong belief that he was terrible at mathematics. He had been laughed at when he attempted mathematical problems, and the reactions of his teacher and classmates reinforced the idea that mathematics was simply something he could not do.
Eventually, the problem was no longer just mathematics.
It was his image of himself.
He approached mathematical problems as someone who was “bad at maths”. Every mistake became confirmation. Every difficulty became evidence. The belief had become part of the way he saw himself.
This story is useful because it illustrates something that decades of psychological research have explored from much stronger scientific foundations: our beliefs about our own abilities matter, and our social environments can contribute to the development of those beliefs.
That is why the language we use with children matters so much.
A child who is repeatedly told they are disruptive may eventually begin to see themselves as the disruptive child. A girl who is repeatedly told she is “too bossy” when she takes the lead may learn to hold herself back. A boy who is celebrated every time he wins may begin to believe that losing is unacceptable.
These things are not always said with bad intentions - most adults are genuinely trying to help, to correct behaviour, to protect, to encourage. But sometimes, in doing so, we give children messages about who they are. And children are very good at listening.
Children do not learn only from what we explicitly teach them. They also learn by observing the people around them and by seeing which behaviours are rewarded, discouraged or repeated.
You're teaching children who they are, even when you're not trying to
Whether we are parents, educators, coaches, or simply adults who spend time around children, we are helping to construct the world they understand themselves through. What happens when a girl wants to climb higher; do we immediately tell her to be careful? What happens when a boy is upset because he lost; do we tell him to toughen up? What happens when a child keeps getting an answer wrong; do we move on quickly, or do we help them understand that struggling is part of learning?
These moments may seem insignificant. But childhood is made up of insignificant moments. A comment here. A reaction there. A teacher who says “try again.” A parent who says “you can figure this out.” An adult who notices a child taking a risk and says, “I saw you try something difficult today.” Over time, these moments become something bigger. They become a child's understanding of themselves.
Leaving room for who they can become
One of the things I am increasingly conscious of is how quickly we label children. The confident child. The shy child. Even when these labels begin as simple descriptions, children can eventually turn them into identities, and once an identity has been formed, they often behave in ways that protect it. The child who believes they are “not good at maths” avoids maths. The child who believes they are “not a leader” waits for someone else to lead. And so the cycle continues.
This is why we need to be careful about the stories we tell children, and the stories we allow children to tell themselves. Perhaps instead of saying “you're not good at this,” we say “you're still learning this.” Instead of “she's just not competitive,” we ask “what kind of challenge excites her?” One tells a child what they are. The other leaves room for who they might become.
Conclusion
We cannot control every message a child will receive; they will encounter comparison, failure, rejection, and expectation. That is part of growing up. But we can make the environments we are responsible for places where children have room to explore, room to fail, room to lead, and room to discover that something they thought they could not do is actually something they can learn. Perhaps that is one of the greatest responsibilities we have as adults: not to decide who a child is, but to create enough space for them to discover who they can become.
Offa Akpet, Lead Co-learner, Shoots (ages 9 - 11 years) learning group
References
Bandura, A. (1977). Social learning theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Maltz, M. (1960). Psycho-cybernetics. Prentice-Hall.
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