Both of my teenage daughters received their driving licenses during the pandemic. If you are, or have ever been, the parent of a teen driver, then you understand how exciting, liberating, and completely terrifying this moment in time can be. 

Now, I had to practically force my oldest daughter to sign up for driver's ed and take her driver’s test. She was eighteen when she finally got that license. It just wasn’t high on her list of priorities; she’d rather draw her comics than drive around shopping. But my youngest daughter was begging me to sign her up the minute she turned fifteen. She was in drivers ed right when the pandemic began in early March of 2020, and it took twice as long to complete due to the new precautions. She finished her remote drivers ed course and all her driving hours five months later, in September of 2020. She was thrilled to finally schedule that drivers test. Then she dropped a ten pound dumbbell on her right foot. She was in a cast for six weeks, and a boot for six more weeks with doctor’s orders—no driving.

Instead of feeling the freedom of being sixteen and getting that coveted drivers license, she was stuck at home on the couch with a cast on her foot, while doing remote learning during a pandemic. It was a very, very sad and dark time for my girl! The entire experience crushed her self-confidence. By the time her foot had healed and she had her doctor’s ok to start driving again, it was winter. She was worried about driving in the snow and having to take her test during a snowstorm, especially having spent so many hours on the couch instead of driving.

We scheduled her first test and she was all aflutter with worry. It was a crystal clear winter day, and she was doing great with parallel parking and that elusive thing called a “Vermont turn around,” but then she did not yield at one intersection—instant test failure. Failing the test was another blow to her already shaky confidence. 

We scheduled the next test and as we approached the date, I kept an eye on the weather. Of course, there was a big snowstorm in the forecast. To reschedule would mean several more weeks of waiting. She was so upset about how everything was turning out, and so filled with worry that she might fail yet again. But I made a bold move and decided to keep the appointment. I told her that if she failed again, she could just blame it on the snow and we would reschedule. But if she passed, I told her it would be a huge boost to her ego and to her self-confidence. 

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, to be confident is the feeling or belief that one can rely upon one someone or something—or to have profound trust in someone or something. To have self-confidence is to cultivate a feeling of certainty and self-assurance in your choices. People who have a high degree of self-confidence believe that they will achieve what they set out to do. They feel a sense of control over their lives. 

There is a direct link between self-confidence and mental health. A strong sense of self-confidence can reduce feelings of anxiety and stress and improve self-efficacy and interpersonal relationships. 

So how does one go about establishing such trust, assurance, and confidence? 

Practice.

I don’t believe that some of us are simply born talented. Yes, you might have an inclination towards something like a musical pursuit. But you don’t just get better simply by being talented alone. You have to log in your practice hours and hit a lot of wrong notes. Trust me, I know all about the wrong notes. I live with an amazing guitarist who plays guitar beautifully because he has hit a lot of wrong notes. He doesn’t take the wrong notes personally, he just keeps moving on.  

When my daughter just kept hitting more and more wrong notes around getting her license, we just kept charging ahead. She let the tears fall, and she got up one more time. 

You can practice being anything in life. Writer Annie Dillard said, “Where you place your attention is how you attend to your life.” You can practice anything you wish to improve, and that includes something like building your confidence. Practice is about coming back to the process, even when you feel beat down. You try again with a little more wisdom and experience.

This is the key to building your own confidence: expect mistakes and disappointments but return to the process again and again and again. It can be really easy to give up on something when it doesn’t work out the first time, or the second, or even more. You absolutely have to trust in the process and rest in trust and self-assurance. Sometimes all you can do is try again with blind faith.

So, my girl went out into that snowstorm and passed her test with no point deductions. The driver's ed teacher told her it was one of the best driving tests he had led in recent months. Her confidence soared, and now she often retorts to my worry over her driving in bad weather “Mom, I passed my test in a snowstorm, I know how to do this.” So now I have to trust in this next evolution of parenting, and let her step into adulthood with soaring confidence.