‘I don’t want to be here’.

It’s something I occasionally hear from a child at the beginning of a confidence coaching session. Sometimes it’s said quietly, with eyes fixed on the floor, sometimes it’s defensive, and sometimes it’s wrapped in humour, but almost always, underneath those words sits the same feeling: Shame.

Shame that they needed help, shame that someone noticed they were struggling, shame that coming to coaching means something is ‘wrong’ with them, and that belief breaks my heart every single time because the truth is, needing support is not a weakness. Standing up and admitting you need help is actually a strength.

Why children feel embarrassed about coaching

Children are incredible sensitive to how they believe others see them and this isn’t random or a modern thing. It stems from a mix of evolutionary survival mechanisms, brain development, and social learning all wrapped up in one. We’ve literally carried sensitivity for years. In evolutionary terms, belonging meant survival; brain wise, we’re wired to seek approval; and socially, well, who can’t be off comparison culture?

It’s tough going, and by the time many young people reach late primary or secondary school, they’ve already absorbed powerful messages about success, failure, popularity, and confidence. Some of the big beliefs they’ll have include:

• Confident people don’t need help

• Strong people cope alone

• Asking for support means you’ve failed

It’s sad that this has become their narrative because the reality facing many children today tells a different story. Research shows that around 1 in 10 children have a diagnosable mental health disorder, and many more struggle with anxiety, low confidence, or emotional overwhelm.

By the age of 11, nearly 29% of children already report having little or no confidence, often as they transition into new social and academic pressures, and many young people simply don’t talk about it. Surveys suggest around four in ten students feel they have no one at school to discuss mental health with, with embarrassment and uncertainty about who to trust being major barriers. In the place where they spend much of their day, almost half feel there is nobody there for them to talk things through.

So when a child walks into a coaching session and says to me, ‘I don’t want to be here’, it’s rarely about the coaching itself. It’s about what they think it means about them.

The turning point: when children realise they’re not broken

People think changes through coaching have to be big and bold. There’s a big fanfare and everything is sorted, but one of the most powerful moments in coaching often happens quietly.

It’s when the child realises:

• They are not the only one who feels this way

• Their thoughts and emotions make sense

• Confidence is not something you’re born with or without

You read that right.

Confidence isn’t something you’re born with or without. It’s something you learn and practise. Studies have shown that structured self-esteem and confidence interventions can increase self-esteem scores by an average of 23% in children aged 6–12, while emotional skills programmes significantly reduce anxiety and improve wellbeing. This is why coaching as an early intervention is so key.

Over the past two decades, wellbeing and mindfulness programmes have increasingly been introduced into schools to support children’s emotional development. One of the early pioneers in this space was Relax Kids, of whom I originally trained with, and who I still look to fondly today because their methodology works so brilliantly.

Founded in 2000 to make meditation and relaxation accessible to children through playful, structured techniques, in a three-year pilot where Relax Kids was introduced as a whole-school approach, fixed-term exclusions fell from 19 to zero, and incidents of aggressive or disruptive behaviour dropped dramatically. By the end of the programme, 91% of pupils scored average or above average for emotional literacy, and the school received an Ofsted ‘Outstanding’ rating for emotional wellbeing and pastoral care. 

Long before mindfulness became a common term in education, programmes like Relax Kids were already teaching children simple tools such as breathing, relaxation, movement, and positive affirmations to help regulate emotions and build confidence.

In another programme, 81% of children reported increased confidence and 83% reported improved self-esteem after participating. Proof that the impact of proper wellbeing support can be significant for children and young people, and it is results like these that highlight the fact that when children are given tools to understand their emotions, calm their nervous system, and reshape their thinking, behaviour often improves naturally, not because they are being controlled, but because they finally have the skills to manage what’s happening inside them.

That really is the power of giving children language, tools, and a safe space because when a young person realises they aren’t ‘the problem’, they just haven’t yet been taught how their mind works, everything starts to change.

Confidence isn’t about being loud

Another myth that children carry is that confidence means being the loudest, bravest, or most outgoing person in the room. Why? Because that’s what’s been drilled into them, but real confidence looks very different.

Sometimes it looks like:

• A quiet child finally raising their hand

• A teenager speaking kindly to themselves after making a mistake

• A young person trying something new even when they feel nervous

Confidence is not personality, it’s permission to try, to fail, to try again, and above all, permission to be human. I’ve seen tremendous change in the coaching room with young people, often times with them not believing it was a big change until it’s pointed out how far they have come. It’s switching up that narrative to be more realistic.

Reframing coaching for young people

One of the most important things we can do as adults, be us parents, teachers, or coaches, is to change the phrasing we use around support. Confidence and wellbeing coaching isn’t a place you go because something is wrong with you. You might feel there’s something wrong, but there’s not a tick sheet that says, ‘Is something wrong with you? Yes? Welcome aboard’.

Coaching is a place you go to discover what’s already right with you. With me and my sessions in particular, it’s where children learn:

• how their brain works

• how thoughts influence feelings

• how to regulate emotions

• how to speak to themselves with kindness

• how to build resilience

These aren’t fixes to an issue. These are life skills that need honing.

From ‘I don’t want to be here’ to ‘I’m glad I came’

The children who start sessions reluctant are often the same ones who later say that they didn’t know other people felt that way, that they can actually calm themselves down, and they can at least try where before they wouldn’t have even considered it.

Sometimes the biggest flip is from ‘I don’t wan’t to be here’ to ‘I’m glad I came’, and more often than not it can also be ‘Do we have to stop?’

Coaching didn’t change who they are. It helped them realise they were never the problem to begin with.

A final thought

Imagine if children grew up believing that learning how their mind works was just as normal as learning Maths or English. Confidence wouldn’t be something a lucky few seemed to have, it would be something every child knew how to build. Perhaps then fewer young people would walk into a room saying, ‘I don’t want to be here’, carrying the quiet fear that needing help means they’ve somehow failed.

Underneath those words is often something deeper: the fear of judgement, the pressure to cope alone, and the belief that everyone else has it figured out, when the reality is, they really don’t.

Our job as adults is to change that story so that asking for support doesn’t feel like shame, but like the beginning of growth. When children understand their thoughts, emotions and inner voice, confidence stops being something they pretend to have and becomes something they truly build.