Empowering Girls: Building Confidence and Self-Esteem | 18

Brett Campbell (00:01.96)
Hello and welcome to another episode of Future Learners. I am your host, Brett Campbell, CEO and chairman of Euka Future Learning. And I’m joined by my lovely host as always, host, I was going to say co -host, but then I forgot the co and then I went with host and then and, oh, what a mouthful. My beautiful co-host and also the amazing hostess, Ellen Brown, our founder and head of education. How you doing, Ellen?

Ellen (00:29.671)
Well, thank you, Brett. Nice to be a hostess.

Brett Campbell (00:33.864)
Yeah, the hostess with the mostess. I was going to continue on with that as well. All right. So firstly, thank you to all of you for tuning in. We appreciate you giving us your time to listen to these episodes, but also we appreciate you even more when you drop us a five star review, leave us a comment. And of course, when you share these episodes. So thank you for continuing to do so. We’re excited to continue to bring these episodes to you. And today we have another doozy of a topic as well. Ellen.

Ellen (00:36.711)
Yeah. Yeah.

Brett Campbell (01:03.24)
Let’s introduce the topic. What are we going to be diving into today?

Ellen (01:08.071)
Well, we’ve had International Women’s Day this week and we thought it might be really helpful to have a look at how can we empower our young women in our girls as they’re growing up and help them to be brave, courageous and happy girls. So we’re gonna focus on that this week.

Brett Campbell (01:26.984)
There we go. So a big mountain to climb there, lots of responsibility. And I’m going to hand to you first and foremost, where do we start, Alan? How do we do that? Talk to me.

Ellen (01:36.071)
Well, look, I wish I could say I’m an expert. I’ve got four boys and a girl. And so I definitely don’t feel like an expert, even though she’s, you know, hitting 16 now and we’re still good friends. So maybe that does make me a bit of an expert because I’ve managed to achieve that part of things. But where do we start? We start by looking at how do we help build confidence and self -esteem in our girls? Got any thoughts on that, Brett?

Brett Campbell (02:02.696)
I do actually I do have a lot of thoughts. I’m never short of a thought or two. It’s one of these topics actually it’s quite interesting because I always I like to go to what would I say?

quite deep avenues of thought as it pertains to topics like this. Cause I think that the, the opportunity and the reward of being able to have a very thoughtful discussion that’s meaningful that can create impact and move someone towards success. For example, like for someone to be able to listen to this and truly not be motivated. Right? So you can hear people talk about.

Ellen (02:23.047)
you

Brett Campbell (02:47.496)
you know, instilling confidence in young women and how we should empower them and so on and so forth. Um, it’s really about what are the, what are the touch points that we need to be discussing and unwrapping in many cases for it to land for the message to really land. Right. And I’ll say this first and foremost is in order for, for us as a society to build, you know, empower,

young females to be competent and have self -esteem. It’s got to start with ourselves, of course, first and foremost. So I think that the first quest that every parent should go on if they’re trying to instill anything with inside their child is to instill it with inside of themselves. Because when it’s inside of yourself, you have such a rock solid foundational belief, right? It’s you’ve got the time on the mat, you know exactly what it takes or you know the experience that you’ve gone through. But just because your experience,

doesn’t mean someone else is going to have the exact same experience. All right. It’s like when I talked to fellow friends of mine, whether we’re talking about, you know, being a parent now, um, again, I’ve got three years on the mat as a parent, right? So I’m not the person you’d really want to come to and, and say, Hey, I’ve got my 14 year olds doing this. I probably don’t have that direct experience with that. However, if you, again, peel the peel, the layer of the onion back a little bit, how you would deal with a, a six year old, a five year old,

Ellen (03:47.239)
you

Brett Campbell (04:13.128)
a 13 year old, a 45 year old. I mean, I’ve talked to 45 year olds who act like they’re six years old sometimes. So, so that the fundamentals and I’ll put my hand up sometimes I act like a little baby as well. We all do. We’ve all got it in us, but it’s more about having a framework of how do I actually think about this? What do I, um, and, and where am I needing to instill confidence? Right? Cause there’s, there’s confidence in the sense of, do I just have unparalleled sweeping confidence in every single thing that I do? Or do I need to,

Ellen (04:16.679)
you

Brett Campbell (04:43.08)
have the art or learn the art or the techniques on how do I build confidence within this area, within that area, within, cause there’s going to be some things that will naturally come to you, right? And the experiences that we have along the way are going to either enhance your confidence or dramatically decrease your confidence, right? So for an example, um, and I’ll, I’ll just give, give a bit of a high level here and then we can, we can jump back to the, the, um, the framework itself.

Ellen (04:47.815)
you

Brett Campbell (05:13.672)
But a lot of children lose their confidence because of the action that they took and the reaction that they got from said action. Okay. So I am yet to see a two year old who doesn’t have confidence. Like they will run through walls. Right. So it’s like, okay, why, why is this two year old got unbelievable confidence is standing on the table. They’re standing on now again, they don’t understand the consequence of falling off and banging their head and potentially really hurting.

Ellen (05:34.727)
Hmm.

Brett Campbell (05:44.168)
but it’s until a consequence is attached to a said action that will either enhance you to want to move forward further or revert back into your shell. And a lot of adults who don’t have confidence in this day and age, it’s been a compounding effect of, I don’t want to do X anymore because the feeling I got on the other side of that, I haven’t, and a lot of parents or adults,

don’t even know why they don’t have confidence in something until you revert back to really uncovering what it was that was the prime indicator. So for me, like as an example, when I was younger, I had one of my best friends tease me about something and it was about my physical body, right? And interestingly enough, it, it,

like lasered something into my brain that I was like, I have to change that. I have to change it. So then I started going to the gym as soon as I could go to the gym at school. Like when I was 14, I was there lifting weights because I was like, I need to change this part of my body. So, so he doesn’t think that that’s the like, and I put all of my, all of my, um, feelings on just what this one person said. Right. And that sent me on this quest of just being in the gym for.

Ellen (07:13.159)
you

Brett Campbell (07:13.512)
sent me down the life that I have today. But we’ve got to be very, very aware of where are we, like where is this thing originating from and what are we actually trying to solve for here? Does that make sense?

Ellen (07:27.239)
Yeah, yeah, it does. You know, when it comes to girls, like you’ve just said here, girls and self esteem, when you’ve said, you know, I’ve had this one person say that one thing to you, you can magnify that by, I can’t even think of a number when it comes to social media and what young girls quite young now, being exposed to about what the look should be, you know, and how your body should be and how you should be and

Brett Campbell (07:56.648)
Hmm.

Ellen (07:56.935)
And you know, Brett, I had a great time at school, but to develop my self -confidence at school meant trying to be what the teacher wants you to be, not trying to be who you want to be. And I think one of the things that I have loved about homeschooling my own daughter is that I can say, what are her strengths? What are her passions? How can I build that? And I’ve seen a confidence in her that I didn’t have growing up.

Brett Campbell (08:12.968)
you

Ellen (08:25.767)
because you know at school you say the wrong answer or you wear the wrong thing or you bring the wrong thing for lunch and all of a sudden your whole world changes around you you know and and their confidence gets really quite battered in that kind of situation so you know the big one for parents especially if you’re homeschooling and I bet you do this already Brett with your little one is to is to be building her confidence up and really saying to her look you you’ve done such a great job not fake stuff I’m not talking about

fake stuff, you know, not everything’s wonderful. But when you see them doing something that they have a special talent for and being able to highlight that and give them more opportunities to do that. That can you can’t keep them away from the social media, you’ve got to arm them, you’ve got to give them some strength to walk into that. And you know, what else just popped into my mind is when we were talking the other day about conflict resolution for girls, if they’ve got

Brett Campbell (09:11.88)
Of course. Yeah.

Ellen (09:23.623)
those skills that we talked about the other day, that gives them the ability to be confident in their own voice. So some of those skills in being able to communicate and conflict resolution are really important when you’re building confidence as a young woman. Yeah.

Brett Campbell (09:40.68)
To add a little bit of a framework to this, if we look at it simplistically for a second, to increase confidence, there’s a thing called the confidence loop, right? So I’ve talked about it in previous episodes, but it’s essentially if you want to break things down to frameworks. I love breaking things down to frameworks because it just makes things easy to understand and also easy for me to be able to communicate it to others and then hopefully they remember and can retain it. So it starts with, in order to have confidence, you must start with courage.

It’s having the courage to step forward or to do this or to participate. So if you’re talking about it from a young age with a child, I’m doing my absolute best, myself and Emily, are doing our absolute best to instill courage into Ayla. Now, how do you do that? Like, how do you instill courage? Now, there’s a number of different methodologies that you can approach. One of them is rough and tumble play with your child. Literally,

Yeah, I mean, that’s that’s one of the primary tasks that are laid upon males, the father figure within the house. It’s like the lion playing with their cub. And it’s not to build a frickel, a fickle and a person who is not afraid to graze their knees or to bang their elbow or to bang their head. And it’s really hard because as a father, the last thing I want to see is my child.

hurt themselves or do something that, oh, but sometimes you got to go, you know what, this is part of the lesson that I’m hoping that she’ll be able to gain from this. Right. Um, so in order to help someone increase their courage or to have the courage is to one, create an environment where failure is not even a thing. Right. Like learning is the thing it’s the, Hey, that’s all right. It doesn’t matter if we didn’t do that. Like I’ll sit down and we’re playing a puzzle with Ayla and she’s like,

Ellen (11:20.775)
you

Brett Campbell (11:37.48)
She’s got a pace and she’s like, Oh, and I can see her getting fresh. She’s like, I can’t do it. I said, darling, you can do whatever you put your mind to. You just got to take a deep breath, have a look. And then we keep trying. That’s what we do here. We just keep trying and trying. Have a try for me again. And then next minute she puts the puzzle piece and she’s like, yay, I did it. Yeah. You know, like, and she’s happy. And, and it’s the, it’s the repetition of that as, as a parent that you, and when I’m parenting, I’m.

Ellen (11:44.039)
you

Ellen (11:56.775)
Okay.

Brett Campbell (12:06.216)
I’m parenting like 80 % in the moment and I’m 20 % in the future. Okay. And it’s a really important distinction because some people go, why aren’t you a hundred percent there in prison? I’m like, if I was a hundred percent present, she’d be running wild because all I want to do is have fun and I don’t care about the consequences. Right. But every action has a consequence. So we need to, we need to think about that. And so when I, when I engage in playful play, right. I’m, I’m helping her go towards her limit every single time.

Ellen (12:11.879)
awesome.

Ellen (12:23.303)
Yep.

Brett Campbell (12:36.008)
if we’re on the trampoline and she’s like, chase me. I’ll like, okay, I’ll chase you. And then she’ll end up falling over. And then, you know, I’ll wrestle her until she, cause now I’ve got it to a point where she says, she goes, stop. So that’s when we stop. When she says stop, I’ll stop the rough and tumble. And then she’s the one who engages again. She goes, go. Right. And so we’re creating boundaries around.

Ellen (12:38.119)
you

Brett Campbell (13:02.888)
her having the courage still to engage in said thing, right, or to participate, because you have to have, as soon as a child loses their courage, and it can be so easily taken away, it can be so easily taken away, and there’s a couple of, because if I look at myself as sort of, I was growing up, or I looked at my sister as an example growing up, yeah, my sister’s a very strong female.

Ellen (13:29.657)
you

Brett Campbell (13:30.216)
And she was a strong female by, by nature of, I guess, needing to be and having to be as well. Right. Um, she, she is, she, you know, she went through high school. She was the type of girl that you wouldn’t, you wouldn’t mess with her at school. Like she would sort you out sort of thing. Right. And so she, she had that nature about her. So she had unwavering amounts of courage, but I knew that she was terrified in so many.

Ellen (13:34.759)
you

Brett Campbell (13:59.624)
case as well. Cause this is the distinction of to have courage doesn’t mean you’re not scared. Like knowing that it’s scary is a good thing. Like, and, and teaching your child that having being scared and being nervous right now is absolutely part of the, part of the process and what we should be feeling. Right. Not, we should be feeling that and still having the courage to do it anyway. Right. So it really starts with fostering an environment.

Ellen (14:18.073)
you

Brett Campbell (14:29.608)
of courage because telling your daughter that she’s smart and she’s, she’s just beautiful all the time. And I tell Ella, I say she’s beautiful. I say she’s smart, but I really doubled down on, I love how you, when we did that puzzle that you, you kept going, even though you thought you couldn’t do it, you kept going through that. That’s, that was amazing. I don’t go, you’re the best puzzle maker in the world. Cause she’s not, and it’s a lie. And, and why would I do that? Right? So it’s, it’s fostering those things.

Ellen (14:52.647)
Yes.

Ellen (14:57.735)
you

Brett Campbell (14:58.472)
to create the courage that, hey, you can go through this. You can persist. Don’t worry, there’s always a way. We will figure it out together. I’m here for you when you need it. So that just allows that extra, I guess, layer to start with. So it starts with having the courage, because once you have the courage to step into it, you create a capability. You create the capability.

Ellen (15:22.503)
What would you say, Brett, what would you say to a situation, like you said, you haven’t parented a 14 year old, but we’ve got lots of parents whose kids have had their self -esteem, their young ladies have had their self -esteem, their confidence shattered often at school, and that’s when they come to us at UCAR. And so where would you say is a starting point to build that self -esteem again in that kind of situation?

Brett Campbell (15:28.168)
Yep. The starting point.

Ellen (15:52.263)
Thank you.

Brett Campbell (15:55.336)
And in most cases, again, and this is very blanket and I know everyone has individualized sort of situations and so forth as well. But if we think of it through that framework that I was just sort of going through, there is you first need to reinstall courage and give them the courage as to why they would want to continue down this path. Right. And that’s, that’s a starting spot, right. But again, depending on the severity of how someone’s lost their confidence or their, um,

know, their desire, it really comes back to anchoring yourself with a larger purpose. Right. So let’s say for example, and I’ll give you an example just in like if I ever in any of my business career, or even fitness, right, so I’ve lost the confidence, I lost the confidence in my, my body last year, because I was, I neglected it. And I got, I let myself get carried away. And I’m, oh, my gosh, I don’t.

Ellen (16:30.905)
Yes, yes, so true. Yep.

you

Ellen (16:41.959)
you

Ellen (16:55.001)
you

Brett Campbell (16:55.304)
This is so hard. I don’t want to do this. I hate the gym. I don’t like working out, but I had to nothing was Charles. I’m going to change this. I’m going to go and train. I’m going to do 45. I’m going to go do CrossFit. I’m going to go run like none. I didn’t like none of it until I sat down and I realigned with a purpose as to why I should do this. And it took for me literally that Brett, you don’t want to be the father.

that can’t run around with Ayla when she’s five, six, seven, eight, and you’re sitting on the sideline and she’s out there having fun. And because that’s the, that’s the parent I want to. So for me, it was re anchoring the reason as to why I’m doing this at the despite of, I know I’m going to have to go through things that I don’t like. Right. Um, and I know this is, this is a very different example to a 14 year old, you know, that you were, you were discussing there, but it comes back to this redefining, redefining the situation.

Ellen (17:27.239)
Yeah. Yeah, totally agree.

Mm. Yep.

Ellen (17:45.991)
No, but I think, yeah.

Ellen (17:51.367)
Yeah.

Brett Campbell (17:51.784)
for what it is and being open and honest to your children and letting your children know that the world is hard. Like the world isn’t easy. And if you’re setting your child up for just this protection bubble that you don’t want them to get hurt, because I get it. The last thing I want is for Ayla to be hurt. But I’ll tell you what, I’m going to let her know about the world. And the world isn’t fair. Like it’s just not fair. There’s things that happen every single day that we just can’t even reconcile as why would that even be the thing?

But if you can reconcile and you start teaching your children and yourself that this thing happened the way exactly the way it was supposed to happen because it happened. And if you believe in the ultimate outcome of, you know, a lot of people say, well, it happened for a reason. And on a surface level that if you take that deep, it actually that’s so true. Like every single circumstance happened to a person in their life, the exact way it was supposed to happen. Now I know that can ruffle feathers because that

that can then open up into, well, why did that person, they shouldn’t have got sick or this person, this shouldn’t happen to that person. I’m not talking about all those, those fringe end of the spectrum situation. I’m talking about an aggregate and average that it does happen the way it’s supposed to happen because it’s within that. If we can become seek finders of within that, what are we supposed to, like, what are we learning here? What’s the lesson that we gained from this?

Ellen (19:17.159)
yet.

Brett Campbell (19:17.64)
Right. And then you can start to reframe the current situation where, and again, another example is I had curly hair. So I’ve got ringlety hair, right? You can’t see it in the video. So no point going to YouTube. I’ve cut it off, but I’ve got literal ringlet hair and I’ve had curly hair my entire life. I was the only boy in my school that had curly hair. And for the junior,

So the secondary years of my life, I was like, Oh my God, all my mates had all these different haircuts. I still tried to mimic them. I’m there with an undercut with curly hair and, and I just hated my hair. And I had the confidence I had around my hair was just, I felt inferior. Right. All it took was for one, one girl to tell me that, Oh my God, I love your hair. It’s so different than everyone else. I was like, Oh yeah, I am different.

Ellen (19:48.263)
you

Brett Campbell (20:09.192)
And I’ve known I was different my entire life, but it was, it was this moment where I was just like, you know what? I would, I much prefer to be different because being different is more unique and why do I want to be like everyone else anyway? Right. So I had to reframe that, um, that element where I then started to embrace curly hair. And then I had curly hair, my entire teenage up through to my sort of mid twenties. I loved it. I embraced it. Um, and it just so happened that it become like.

it was more of a unique thing that more people were pointing it out and it was, Oh man, I love your hair. I love your hair. So something that I had carried for years that I thought was just absolutely terrible ended up being amazing for years. Right. So, so that’s the, the, the parallel, you know, prom con effect of some things, but does that, is that sort of setting you in the right path? Does that make sense?

Ellen (20:59.847)
It does. It does. I, I’ve, yeah, there’s a couple of things I’ve taken from that. And I think one of those first things is when a young girl joins UCAR and they’ve come out of a situation that has shattered their confidence or their self -esteem, that’s a great place to start with things like validating difference is what you’re talking about there. Validating whatever it is that’s caused the problem for her.

Brett Campbell (21:18.824)
Yeah.

Ellen (21:28.231)
but also recognising the bravery that she then can embrace as she’s taking this new direction with her own learning. So we’ve seen so many young girls that have had a really difficult time at school and they’ve joined homeschooling with Yuka or future learning, let’s call it, with Yuka.

Ellen (21:50.503)
because all of a sudden they develop confidence in themselves because they can do things that they felt like they couldn’t because they couldn’t ask a question or because somebody was always making fun of them when they answered a question and all of a sudden this confidence starts to develop every time they’re able to achieve something they’re able to go oh you know and and the other thing I really loved what you were saying when you said

what you were saying when you said being able to have a purpose or a goal you know when you’re a young girl often your goal is getting through this week or you know it they’re very short term and as they get a bit older helping them to look ahead and find some role models that are actually doing some things that they can be really proud of and look at and go you know this is possible because once they’ve come out of that system and they’re and they’re in UKA there is no barrier.

Brett Campbell (22:21.736)
Mm.

Ellen (22:43.273)
to entry into anything. So all of a sudden they have the opportunity to say, you know what, I might even finish school before my peers. You know, what they say success is the best revenge. I might finish school first. You know, I might go off and do some crazy thing that you thought wasn’t possible before. So having that goal, validating whatever it was that people said was bad because it was different.

and recognising the bravery that they have got now that they’re taking a different journey with their learning, I think they’re probably good ways to start.

Brett Campbell (23:17.224)
And just to double tap on what you’re saying, because I’ll finish the confidence equation. It’s literally, you have the courage to step forward into something and then that creates a capability that shows you that, Hey, I now know, I now have evidence that if I do this, then I get why, right? I now know that if I sit down for an hour and learn, or if I know, I know now that it actually doesn’t matter if my hair’s a little bit frizzy or if

Ellen (23:22.857)
Yes.

Brett Campbell (23:47.24)
or if I, you know, if I’ve got a stain on my shirt or whatever it ends up being, because we think we generally try to forecast what we believe the reaction will be of something. Right. And here’s a perfect example. It’s like, if you’ve ever had any conflict with anyone or a friend or family member, and you’re like, it ended bad and you, you, you message each other, you’re like, well, I think we should talk about it. And then that lead up to that conversation.

you’re just you’re having the conversation 89 different ways of all the potential outcomes. It’s making you feel sick. It’s because you’re you’re preempting something that may or may not happen. Right. And then you get on the phone calling, Oh, my God, I’m so sorry. And they’re like, Oh, my God, I’m so sorry, too. And you’re like, Oh, God, I feel so much better now. But it’s like, you could have chosen to feel that way at the start, prior to letting it hijack you that entire time. Right. So but if we go back to that capability, because

I’ve had enough of those, like I’ve had enough, uh, let’s call it awkward conversations or tough conversations in my lifetime, right? That it’s created the capability of me that I’ve got a pretty good degree of accuracy of what to expect on the back end of that, which just gives me more confidence to do it more. And the more confidence I get, the more courage I have, the more steps I take so I can move forward faster and faster. So.

The hardest part is taking that first step. If you look at how they remove fears from people, right? So like the fear of height, like say you’ve got a fear of heights. You don’t go bungee jumping and just jump off the, you know, you don’t put them on the bungee, you go, all right, ready? And push them off and go, oh, well, you’ve done it, you should be fine. That’s not how you remove the fear of heights, right? You have to progressionally go through and go.

Okay, I’m gonna have the courage here. Let’s say you’re an abs. We’re going to abseiling. You don’t just get your harness on and go, okay, walk to the edge and then just go over the end. We’ve got you covered. You’ll be fine. You’re on a harness. It’s like the person has to mentally be able to agree to take that next step. Not not me trying to teach them across the edge of the cliff. It’s I have to mentally get people to do it. So when we’ve done fireworks before, right?

Brett Campbell (26:10.824)
I could tell you that you’re not going to get burnt. All you got to do is just walk across, but you’ve got to get yourself into a state of mind where you believe that to be true. That is, that is where that’s where it all starts. Right. So it’s, if you’re on the cliff of, uh, doing abseiling, it’s all right. So firstly, you got to identify what it is that you’re trying to move through and move towards and get over. So look, I do genuinely want to remove my fear of heights. If you don’t then no matter what,

Ellen (26:23.643)
you

Brett Campbell (26:40.776)
exercise you do, you’re not going to be able to move through. You have to genuinely want to be able to proceed through. Like you generally want to have to do it. Or else you’ll find a way to sabotage it in any way, shape or form. Right. So it’s like, okay, let’s just get to the edge of the cliff and stand there for a minute. You don’t need to go off. We’re not even at that yet. Don’t even think about it. You just take it one step at a time. It’s like, okay, turn around now. Okay. All you’re going to do is now I’m just going to lean you back a real little bit. I’m just going to hold you here. Is that all right? How do you feel? Did it? And you just,

coerce them through and then all of a sudden they’ve experienced it through and they have the capability of knowing that they can go through it versus having a turmoil of get off the cliff and it’s just created and doubled down on their hatred or their fear for heights. So it’s like anything. There’s processes and if there’s something that’s so deep seated or there’s a lot of trauma behind it, I would highly recommend going to talk to a professional about it. And,

a professional should be able to help guide the person or guide your, your, your beautiful daughter through the potential trauma that may be sitting there, because if we don’t remove any of that trauma, we’re just going to stack on top of it. And hopefully one day it doesn’t fall apart. You know? Um, so it’s very, very important that if we’re, if we’re looking to, to build confidence and self -esteem and our young females, then.

It’s got to start at the very early age. Now you might go, well, I’ve got a 16 year old daughter. You can still start now. Right. You can still start now. There’s, there’s no time like the present to go on a journey of understanding. And, um, and it all comes back to again, as a parent, if you’re truly wanting to help your child, and I’ve learned this from, I have a deep desire of wanting to help everyone.

Ellen (28:15.305)
Yes.

Ellen (28:30.619)
you

Brett Campbell (28:36.712)
But I realized in life, you actually can’t do that either. You can’t help everyone. You have to be able to create an environment where that person wants to help themselves and then you can and I would say must be there to be able to help go through that. But you’re not going to be able to help a child gain confidence if you don’t have any. Because most likely, they’re a byproduct potentially of how you have been showing up in the world, right? How you how you’re perceived in the world.

Um, and that’s, that’s generally the, one of the best proxies that comes as a pro and a con, because also if you, if you’re yelling your family or you do something, you know, that again, you write it off as just, ah, it was just a little thing. Next minute, your child’s walking around or they’re growing up yelling at people everywhere. And you’re like, what? You get a phone call from your friends going, Hey, you know, little Brett’s been yelling at everyone. It’s like, Oh, little Brett doesn’t know he’s, he’s picked it up off.

as mom or dad, you know what I mean? So we are the, we are the, um, the agar plate for our children. And it’s got to start with us. And if you want to increase confidence in your child, or you want to have your child to have more courage to do certain things, then you need to have courage and you need to support that. And that needs to be an environment. So here’s a perfect example, literally 45 minutes before this episode of podcasts.

Ayla comes into the room and into my office. Yeah. She’s hobbling outside into my office. I’m like, Oh, what’s going on here? And she’s got a prickle in her foot and she, she doesn’t want her mom to touch it. And it’s not a, it’s really, really sore. It’s the, I think it might be really sore. So, so we had like almost half an hour of a, okay, we’ve got to work through this. Cause there was, there was no way she was wanting us to touch it. You know, um,

And I had to sort of step her through, make her feel calm and make her understand why we’re doing it and the reason why we need to do this. Because if we don’t do this, like it’s not, if you don’t do that, your foot’s going to fall off. Like that’s, that’s how you scare your child. And next time your child gets a splinter, they’re walking around thinking their foot’s going to fall off. Like all of those things, like they really matters how you prime your child’s mind and what you say to them. Right.

Brett Campbell (31:04.648)
Even if you think it’s a joke, like even if you think it’s a joke, I’ve already picked up already with, with a lot. It’s like some, some look, cause I’m a joker. I like to joke about lots of stuff. And sometimes I might say a candid joke and then an hour later, I hear her ad libbing. I’m like, gosh, okay. No, okay. That’s, that’s not correct. Yeah. So really setting the foundation and whilst Ayla was upset as we’re removing said prickle.

because of we’ve spent a lot of time before where she’s banged herself or, you know, we had to go to hospital once for a specific reason, nothing major, but she walks around now sometimes like she even said, she goes, she actually calls it the dentist. I don’t know why she calls the hospital, the dentist. It’s hilarious. She goes, I need to go to the dentist. I said, no, darling, you’ve got a prickle in your foot. Daddy will be able to help. Daddy can help you. I was hilarious. But, um,

We had to create an environment where it wasn’t traumatic for her. Now I could have tied her down and just held her leg and got this prickle out and go, Oh, you’ll be better off for it. But it’s, it’s that short -term gain for us that we think can lead to long -term problems potentially. Now I’m not saying this one would, or every time you do something like that, it would, but one of those 830 things that you do across the span of our, you know,

helping our child, it could be one of those things that we set up the wrong environment for. So two parts, one is the, just this last part is the integration of when you’re growing and developing a child from the early age, that’s obviously ideal if you can, but then there is the intersection of when something may happen or occur in their life that we need to then deploy a different seed strategy. And with anything, if,

Ellen (32:39.689)
Well, you’ve said. Yes.

Brett Campbell (33:02.568)
If someone doesn’t feel like it can be solved or they don’t want to solve it, we just need to real realign the way in which we’re thinking about it and what we’re actually thinking about for the for the end outcome. Yeah, because there’s always a way to paint the end picture that whatever happened right now is supposed to be the way it is. Because now here’s what it’s allowed us to do.

Ellen (33:25.801)
Yeah, so true. There’s a couple of things you said there that I really would love to talk to. When you’re talking about the way you’re, I love how you said, you know, I’m parenting 80 % now and 20 % in the future. And I’ve got to say, when I was attracted to homeschooling when my children were small, because of the teenagers I met who had been homeschooled, and I’ll tell you what was different about them. They hadn’t been in a situation where they had been.

battered, their self -esteem hadn’t been battered, they were quite confident, easily easy to speak to and quite driven in what they want to do and it was so outstanding to me meeting these particular young people and certainly two young girls that I can remember thinking my goodness I want that for my daughter and that’s because parents were doing

what you’re talking about there, where they’re giving those girls opportunities to become confident and that their voice matters and that they’re more thoughtful and they’re not trying as they’re growing up, unfortunately, certainly in my schooling experience, you were always so desperately seeking approval from peers that your own voice and your own confidence was often, for me, it was definitely,

pushed down in that quest for approval from teachers or from peers. So certainly, you know, the way you’re talking about fathering and parenting develops kids like the ones that I saw that attracted me to homeschooling in the first place. And now I have got that experience with the young people that I’m homeschooling now. But the other thing I was going to say was something that you said about when you said, I now know.

And it really brought home to me the opportunity, and I’ve actually seen this happen, work with a couple of young people where they had a poster up in their room. And this is for kids that are coming out of the school system or out of a situation and into homeschooling for the first time. It’s new and their confidence, their self -esteem has been shattered. To have a piece of paper up on the wall or a poster up on the wall that they can add to as they are building confidence. I now know that what, you know,

Ellen (35:42.889)
Kate says isn’t everything or I now know that I’m good at this. And as they’re starting to become more confident in their homeschooling that this poster can start to grow and they can start to have something they can look up at and go, I now know because we’ve all had those moments as adults where we’ve gone, what? I didn’t realize that that wasn’t a boundary before and now I’ve opened the door and I’m an adult and I can see it. But helping them to be able to have that in front of them.

is really good and the other thing that you said that I really liked is when you’re talking about if you’re going to help someone with a fear of heights and you wouldn’t just toss them over the ledge with the rope, it’s the same when they start schooling and start this journey with Yuka. Don’t expect that, and I am thinking more about the teenagers, they’re the ones that were 13 or 14 and they’ve come out of school and they have…

they’ve got a lot going on emotionally and often a fear of even their own abilities in school. So instead of just saying, well, here’s your program, off you go, you know, taking the time to just set smaller goals and say, let’s do one lesson together and let’s call it quits for the day or let’s, you know, do a little bit of this work and so gradually increasing that so that they develop their confidence without sort of…

throwing them in the deep end and thinking, oh, they’re still not okay, you know? So those are probably important things.

Brett Campbell (37:09.288)
Yeah. Another really important area to touch on is you are a proxy of your environment, right? Which it is hard when you’re at school, like there’s, there’s absolutely zero denying that I obviously didn’t go to school during a social media world. Um, so I don’t know what that is like, but I’ve seen it and obviously many, many friends, children, et cetera, have gone through that. And I’ve spent a lot of time sort of in those areas studying it and it’s hard.

Ellen (37:18.633)
Yeah.

Mmm.

Ellen (37:32.521)
you

Brett Campbell (37:37.672)
Like you’re, if you are thrust into an environment where you got 30 kids and then at lunchtime, you’re probably proxy to at least a couple of hundred or you’re seeing so many different things and, and there’s a new craze going on and it’s like, Oh, they’ve got the Crocs or they’ve got this and you know, it’s important to sit down and have a conversation with your child about the world, especially as a teenagers. It’s like not all families and not all people are created equal. Right.

We all have blood and we all have a heart and we breathe oxygen, right? But there’s certain circumstances in families and situations that are very different. And it’s important for your child to know that no matter what side of the coin they may or may not be on. So as a kid, I didn’t understand, like, I, at times,

would be like, why can’t I have this? Why can’t I have the new pair of shoes? Why can’t, why can’t I get a new school bag like that? Well, what if they get the cheap one here? And, and I just thought it was unfair, right? Which is so not true and reflection. And if anything, yeah, my mom and Emma said that they, we did it. They did an amazing job raising us as well. But it was, I compared without the knowledge of what it was like my parents didn’t sit down with me.

And not saying that they had to either, but again, these are just things in reflection that I look at. I’m like, I can understand why one of my mates lived in a three story house and they had two cars and he had always had the new video games and this and that. Because now I know the job that his father had and his mother worked and their average income would have been XYZ. And I’m like, okay, well I can understand that, you know, but it’s important to.

let your child know that the reality of what they are living within, like the boundaries and the means in which they’re living within and that, you know, um, if you are coming, you do come from wealth or you do come from a, you know, um, an area where money isn’t necessarily a struggle point for you. Um, is you need to educate your children on that, that this is a,

Brett Campbell (39:53.768)
Yes, a luxury of sorts, because many kids, families don’t have the money to do this, or they don’t have the opportunity to go on holiday here this many times. And it’s really important because imagine if you were in their shoes, how would you feel? Right? And this is having these open, meaningful conversations with your teenagers is and again, it’s like, are they going to listen? They might not listen to you the first time, second time, fifth time, sixth time.

Especially if you’re trying to embed this into their their nature now and you’re like, you know what? I’ve got a rogue teenager and I can’t rein them in it’s like it’s gonna take sets and reps. It’s gonna take absolute Discipline from you as a parent and that’s the only way that it can happen You know I’m gonna send them off the boot camp and they’ll come back all proper and prim and proper because then I’ll be oh my god I can’t believe my parents did this to me until they’re 30 and I’ll go. Oh my god I can’t believe my parents did that for me. It’s the best thing they ever did to me now I can look back at but it again. It’s one of those things

sitting down and just setting the scene of the actual reality of the world in which we live in, the life in which they are currently living in, the reality that it doesn’t have to be this way forever because there’s opportunities galore in this world that we have in front of us. And if you would like to go and own a Lamborghini, son, when you’re older, or you would like to go and buy three horses, when you’re…

You can do that right now. Our family, we can’t afford that. But again, it’s, it comes back to the setting the expectations first. Cause when you ground your child or you ground any human in an understanding, right? Perspective really matters, right? Perspective really matters. And, and they might understand why someone teased them or said this thing to them, right? Because most people don’t tease or bully just because they

want to be a bully. They’re doing it for a number of different reasons, generally social acceptance to try and fit in with the crowd of who their environment consists of. Right? So not that everything needs to be explained, but it really can be in most cases. And if it gets to a point where it’s just tongue -tied, the reality is it absolutely happened that way because it was supposed to and it did.

Brett Campbell (42:16.488)
That’s all we can deal with. We can only now focus on how would we like it to happen in the future? If it did happen again in the future, how would you prefer to think about it? How would you prefer to feel about it? Right? Same thing with when we talk about communication conflict resolution, this all sort of ties in under that, right? It’s the ability to not take what someone says at face value all the time. Like the amount of girls, even at an older age where you’re hearing them talk and you’re like,

Ellen (42:34.761)
you

Brett Campbell (42:45.16)
They say something about their best friend. And then next week you see them together again. I was like, I thought you said, I, you know, it was just a passing thing. Like, you know, and I think sometimes the closer you get with someone and you get hurt. And this is just a natural sequence in all humans. Definitely in partnerships is this is why partners can really trigger their partner very easily. Cause you know what those touch points are, you know,

You know that one thing to say that can can get that person, you know, going crazy, because it’s not because they want to say that because they think is necessarily true. They say it because they know they’re going to get a reaction from you.

Right. And when you build that self esteem with inside your daughter as she’s growing up that people’s opinions do matter, but they don’t count. Right. You don’t want to also have the attitude. I don’t give a shit what anyone says about me because that’s not true because we do care what some people say about you, but you’ve got to remember who, who it is that is saying that. And maybe there’s some truth within it as well. And maybe yes, your feelings do get hurt.

But maybe there’s a, you generally get hurt feelings because there’s an element of truth somewhere within it. Or it’s so far off the spectrum, there’s an absolute absurd lie. But generally it’s cause there’s a little bit of truth in it that someone’s taken, they’ve just expanded and created an entire story around it. And that’s the thing. And then over time you forget what the thing was, but you just have, you’re left with the feeling that you haven’t been able to express or.

to be able to discuss and talk about it. And that’s another, and I’ll end on this point is, it’s another element that as parents is we need to be there for our children. And we need to be able to foster an environment where they can be open and share.

Brett Campbell (44:51.72)
I, I, I want it my, I’m going to do my absolute best to cultivate an environment where Ailer can come and tell me anything. Absolutely anything. And I won’t judge her for it immediately. I won’t, you know, I won’t overreact. And I say immediately because it’s not necessarily judging, but there’ll be some things that, um, like this morning, this is crazy. She, she’s three years old and I was like, what’s that? And I looked under her dresser.

And there was a piece of glass. I’m like, Oh my gosh. And I pulled out from behind the dresser and it was, um, a photo frame that we’d had on the wall with, with a picture in it. And she goes, I broke that daddy. Like she told me she broke it. And because we, whenever she does anything, we create that environment where she’ll come and tell us like she drew on the carpet the other day. She goes, Oh, look at, you know, my darling, you know, why, why don’t we draw on the carpet?

Ellen (45:24.585)
you

Brett Campbell (45:50.28)
goes, because it’s hard to clean, you know, like she knows all the like the consequence of said thing, right. But again, certainly don’t have it perfectly. But it’s it’s one of those those things that if you can cultivate that environment for your child, and be there as a as a first to be able to listen, right. And if you if you didn’t listen to our previous podcast around conflict resolution and communication, definitely go check it out. Because empathy is such a powerful superpower.

for you as a parent to have. And it’s the ability to be able to regulate your own, understand your own, recognising your own emotions, recognizing the other person’s emotions, and then knowing how to handle that. That’s so powerful. Because if you start creating an environment where your child comes up and tells you something and you’re like, what the bloody blah, blah, blah, blah, highly unlikely they’re gonna want to come and tell you something as well. And they’ll just go, I don’t want to face that feeling that I felt when you yelled at me, because I felt x y z x x.

You’re just reacting to it. You don’t want your child to hate you, but that’s what you’re basically saying without saying it. Do you know what I mean? So very, very important that we take a self reflection upon ourselves. And we are the starting block of building confidence and resilience and strength and courage into our, into our daughters.

Ellen (47:10.121)
Yeah, and definitely, you know, valuing their viewpoint and their voice doesn’t mean you actually agree with what they’re saying. So I know with a teenager in the house right now, she’ll have an opinion on something that’s different to mine. And it’s because I’ve got a lot of years on her and I have to be very careful to there are some things I go, Oh, right. Okay. You know, and not make a judgment on it.

even though I would like to go, well, actually this isn’t, you know, then I go, that’s, that’s one where I’m just going to leave that one because she’s going to grow into an understanding on that. So it’s picking the things that you actually need to go, we need to, we need to make some adjustments here or share a different alternative viewpoint on something, but valuing the voice of, of your daughter is a, is a massive one. And if they’ve, if you’ve got that from growing up from small, that’s great. If you find all of a sudden, this is just,

it’s happened upon you and you haven’t got those communication skills in place. It’s, you know, like you said, it’s not too late. It’s about picking the times and making sure that you’re valuing what they’re sharing. But I know, yeah, I was just going to say when it comes to leaping into doing something new like they are with their education or their homeschooling,

Brett Campbell (48:09.896)
Mm.

Brett Campbell (48:17.448)
And you.

You guys, sorry.

Ellen (48:30.601)
you have got that extra time to be able to nurture things that they have got talents for. And being able to draw on that gives you something that you can share about who I am in the world, because it’s such a confusing time for young girls, you know, in those teenage years, who am I and, and why have I got value? It’s a really big question that some people never grow out of that, you know, and so if they’ve one of the things I’ve

Is the time to be able to develop those talents or passions that they’ve got to actually start to answer that question, who am I? What am I good at? Why have I got value? It’s a real privilege, you know, as what we do in Euka is a privilege to be able to walk alongside parents as they’re giving their daughters the opportunity to discover those talents. And…

Brett Campbell (49:23.912)
you

Ellen (49:24.585)
and move ahead in them and give them extra opportunities outside of what they would have normally been able to have.

Brett Campbell (49:33.672)
Another just addition to the creating confidence, courage, capability, et cetera, and then through to more conferences. To get the ball rolling, start with the easy wins. Start with the things that you know that they’re very capable of and just all you’re doing.

Ellen (49:45.449)
Mm -hmm.

Ellen (49:52.105)
Yes. Yeah.

Brett Campbell (49:52.584)
Right. So don’t start with the biggest audacious thing that they’re trying to generate confidence or courage over. Right. It’s just start with the small things and you’ll start to build up a list a mile long that you’re like, now your proof outweighs their belief of no, I can’t do it. But something that you said there that I, I’ll, I’ll, um, double tap on was when you’re talking with your daughter and she has a different, um, viewpoint on it.

Ellen (49:59.049)
Yes.

Brett Campbell (50:22.44)
Adopt the seek first and mentality as well of really going, you know what? I’m curious. Like I fundamentally think that you’re wrong. Now you don’t need to say that, but it’s like, so I want to explore why she thinks that like, what are the reasons that she’s coming up with that understanding? So I do that. I do that quite often with Emily. Right. And I mean, I’m probably not an easy partner to be fair, but I think I’m pretty easy, but she’ll say something.

And I just can’t take, I, I struggled to take a lot at face value, you know, especially when I’ve got enough proof in the past to go, okay, what’s this? So she might say something. I’m like, interesting. Where did you, where’d you get that from? Oh, a lot of people have been who, who actually like, who said it? Like what source like where specific are. And then you find out that it come from, uh, it was something that was on a Tik TOK video or I read it on a.

on a website and I’ll be like, what website was that? Ah, and then what you’re doing is you’re teaching someone as well that.

Not everything that you see here or feel is true, right? Something could have triggered it off. And this is the world we live in, though, obviously with media and headlines and no one reads the actual articles. They just see a headline and that’s their onto the next thing. And they’ll build that up as their corpus of truth, which again, another conversation within itself. But.

Ellen (51:47.227)
you

Brett Campbell (51:59.24)
become super curious about why your child thinks that or why they hold that belief. Right. And then even ask yourself, and I love this concept called steel manning where it’s put the argument as if you were your child and you were arguing yourself, like what, what argument would you have to provide for you to be wrong, Ellen, in your case and her to be right in her case. It’s such a fun thing to do. Not all the time, of course, cause yeah, we’ve got life to live, but for certain things that matter and, and a

and meaningful if you’re ever having a conversation and you’re like, your child just totally disagrees with you. Try and find the median as to why are you disagreeing? Because generally you’re basing your, your thesis, you’re basing your argument off a totally different starting point from what she would be. And when you understand that you get back on the same sheet of music and you’re singing from the same song, you can see where you, you lost.

or the communication got fractured because she’s seeing blue, you’re seeing red and you’re just coming to it from a totally different avenue. So lots to unpack there and lots to figure out for us as parents as we move forward. It’s a never evolving landscape. And what I’ll say just to wrap this episode up is just know that if you’re listening to this and you’re taking any pieces from it and you’re implementing it, you’re already a…

Ellen (53:12.029)
Yes.

Brett Campbell (53:27.144)
ahead of so many, many other parents out there, becoming awoken to the opportunity that there are things that we can do and you can do and consistently do to improve, you know, not only your own life, but your children’s lives as well and your future generations lives. It all starts with us. And Alan, any final words that you would like to impart?

Ellen (53:52.989)
you know, I’m an optimistic person and that’s because I’ve seen so many situations turn around for young girls that were in a very difficult place. And so to see young girls that are going out and getting careers that they’re after, they’re off to university and things like that, it has really hit home to me that, you know, you’re in this fantastic, you have a fantastic opportunity with your daughters now, whatever age they are and, you know,

to be able to say you’re building something in them that’s going to be a great platform for them to go on and develop into who they’re going to be in the future. So yeah, it’s an exciting journey. It’s a tricky one. And one thing I loved that you said, Brett, where you said, you know, if your daughter has a certain, if there’s a courage situation, a confidence situation, what can you do in your own life as a parent to say, oh, is there something that I’m…

Brett Campbell (54:50.856)
Yeah.

Ellen (54:52.381)
you know, giving off that somewhere I can develop more courage and show them that you can build yourself up. It’s never too late to be improving your own self -esteem and confidence because it’s easy for as a mom, as a woman to be without even realizing saying something like, oh, you know, I look like this in this outfit or that kind of thing, you know, really focusing on your own self -esteem, your own confidence and courage and start being active about building those things up in yourself.

Brett Campbell (55:02.344)
you

Brett Campbell (55:14.216)
Yeah. Yeah.

Ellen (55:22.493)
then your daughter’s going to see that in you as well so I like that you mentioned that before also. That’s it from me.

Brett Campbell (55:24.168)
Yeah Amazing and we’ll we’ll wrap it up there. Thank you very much for tuning in if you’ve enjoyed this episode Please share it head over to itunes Spotify YouTube you name it wherever we are streaming this show Give us a thumbs up five -star review. All of those things are amazing. Thank you very much, and we’ll see you on the next one