Helping A Child Find Their Own Voice
We all want children who can make decisions, solve problems, express their needs, and eventually navigate adulthood without relying on someone else to tell them what to do. We want our children to become independent, but also confident and happy. But how we should build and support a child’s ability to find their own voice is confusing.
This is because many of the systems surrounding our children send the opposite message.
From a young age, children are taught to look outside themselves for answers about who they are, what matters, and whether they are doing well.
Adults praise them for achievements they did not choose, reward them for outcomes they may not value, and carefully structure nearly every hour of their day. By the time adolescence arrives, many young people have become highly skilled at meeting expectations while having very little sense of what they actually want for themselves.
This raises an important question: How do children develop agency if they rarely have opportunities to exercise it?
What Is Agency?
Agency is the belief that your actions matter.
It is the sense that:
- your choices have meaning
- your opinions are important
- your efforts influence outcomes
- your life belongs to you
Children with a strong sense of agency are more likely to:
- take initiative
- advocate for their needs
- recover from setbacks
- make thoughtful decisions
- develop confidence that comes from experience rather than reassurance
Agency is not the same as independence. A young child can be dependent on adults and still be developing agency. Agency begins when children are given opportunities to notice their own thoughts, preferences, interests, and values.
The Problem With Constant External Validation
Many children grow up receiving a steady stream of messages about what should make them proud. Good grades, awards, trophies, acceptance into advanced programs, recognition from teachers and coaches, and so on.
These accomplishments are not inherently problematic. Success can feel good and achievement can be meaningful.
The problem arises when children learn that other people’s approval is the primary measure of success.
Consider how often adults ask:
- What grade did you get?
- What was the final score of the game?
- Did you make the team?
- Did you earn an award?
And what adults do:
- Frame a child’s certificates and put on the wall
- Display trophies on a shelf
- Put school grades on the refrigerator
- Provide tangible rewards or money for accomplishments we value
Compared with:
- Did you enjoy it?
- What do you think about it?
- How does it feel?
- Does it make you feel proud?
- What did you learn?
- Do you want to keep doing this?
When children are repeatedly taught to focus on external outcomes, it becomes difficult to pay attention to their own internal experience. Over time, they become experts at asking:
“What do other people want from me?”
instead of
“What matters to me? What makes me feel good about myself? What makes me happy”
The Overscheduled Childhood
I find myself encouraging parents to protect their time and resources. To avoid spreading themselves thin and overscheduling with activities and therapies. A common problem I hear is that a child has very little unscheduled time.
For many families, the schedule is packed with opportunities designed to help children grow and succeed. Yet growth does not happen only through structured activities.
Children also need time to:
- become bored
- create
- daydream
- reflect
- discover what captures their attention without adult direction
These moments often look unproductive from the outside. But they may be where agency begins.
A child who spends an afternoon building something, drawing, writing stories, learning about something of interest, or experimenting with music is practicing something important: Following their own curiosity.
Adolescence and the Achievement Trap
The pressure undoubtedly intensifies during adolescence. Many teens begin shaping themselves around college admissions expectations. They select activities that look impressive. They pursue leadership positions because they are told colleges value these. They volunteer because it strengthens applications. They enroll in increasingly demanding coursework.
Some teens become remarkably “accomplished”. Yet many have had little opportunity to ask a simple question:
“Do I actually enjoy any of this? And by enjoy, I mean the process or experience of what they are doing and accomplishing. Not the reward, not the grade, not the praise from others. When every decision becomes strategic, self-discovery gets pushed aside.
The teenage years should be a time of identity development. Instead, many adolescents become experts at performing versions of themselves designed to impress adults, organizations, institutions…. alongside comparing to and competing (instead of connecting) with their peers.
What If We Paid More Attention to Joy?
What if we shifted our focus? Instead of asking children what they achieved, we became curious about what energizes them. What if we paid attention to:
- what they choose when no reward is offered
- what they talk about without being prompted
- what they return to repeatedly
- what makes them lose track of time
- what stressors do they overcome to fulfill their goals
- what creates genuine pride
Joy leaves observable, behavioral clues. So does curiosity. So does persistence.
When children willingly return to something difficult because it matters to them, we are learning something important about who they are becoming.
Helping Children Listen To Their Own Voice
As parents, teachers, and professionals, one of our most important jobs may be helping children learn to listen to themselves. This doesn’t mean removing expectations or allowing children to avoid challenges. It means creating opportunities for self-reflection.
Asking questions such as:
- What did you enjoy about that?
- What felt meaningful to you?
- What are you proud of?
- What would you like to do differently next time?
- What do you want more of?
These questions teach children that their perspective matters. It reinforces the need to self-reflect and to pay attention because it matters (to them….and to you). Over time, children begin to trust their own observations, preferences, and values. That trust becomes the foundation of self-advocacy.
Finding Their Path
All parents want their children to be “successful” (with whatever relative meaning it may have for your child and family). But any variation of success is difficult to sustain when it is built entirely around someone else’s expectations. Children eventually need more than achievement. They need a sense of direction that comes from within.
They need opportunities to discover what excites them, challenges them, and gives them purpose. They need room to become themselves.
Helping children find their own voice does not mean telling them who they should be.
It means creating enough space that they can hear who they already are.
