Why kid leadership matters: The leaders kids remember (and the ones we help them survive)
The pine needles were sticking to my socks when I heard Javi yell across the group campsite. “Nobody’s doing what you say! You’re not the boss of everyone!” The 9-year-olds froze. Their group challenge was to build a one-person raft out of four logs, some rope, and a plastic tarp, and Mia, their elected group leader, was standing on a rock holding the rope like she was about to tie it around someone’s ankle. She’d already moved three people’s logs twice, told Lila her knot was wrong twice, and when someone suggested they test it in the shallow water first, Mia had rolled her eyes and said that would just waste time.
I was there as a parent chaperone, and Mia’s mom is my friend. She’d mentioned over coffee the week before that Mia always raises her hand to lead, that she gets frustrated when people don’t follow her plans, that she wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or something to worry about. I’d nodded, because I’d been thinking a lot about kid leadership lately, after my own 12-year-old came home from a student council meeting upset that his new president had canceled the book drive he’d spent a month planning without asking anyone.
Javi plopped down in the dirt, arms crossed, and Lila turned to start picking pine cones off the ground, done with the whole thing. The camp counselor was busy mediating a fight over a hatchet on the other side of the clearing, so I walked over. Mia crossed her arms right back, jutted her chin out, and said, “I’m the leader. Leaders tell people what to do, right? That’s what my teacher says.”
I thought of the 7th grade student council president I’d survived when I was 12. She’d run on a platform of “more school dances” then planned every single one by herself, turned down every idea anyone brought, and got upset when half the council stopped showing up to meetings. I still remember how it felt to sit through those hour-long meetings, not saying a word, because anything I suggested got shot down immediately. I also remember the president we had the next year, a quiet girl named Carla who asked me what I wanted to do before the first meeting even started. I told her I wanted to run the snack bar at the dance, and she said okay, gave me the budget, and didn’t check in on me once except to ask if I needed more gummy bears. That’s the leader I still remember, 30 years later.
I knelt down in the dirt with the kids, brushed pine needles off my jeans, and asked Mia, “What do you need to get done today?” She said “Build the raft.” I said, “Can you build that raft by yourself right now?” She looked at the four logs, each bigger than her, and shook her head. I said, “So you need these guys to help you, right? If they’re mad, they won’t help you. What if you ask everyone what they think the first step should be, instead of telling them?”
She hesitated for a long minute, then hopped off the rock. She mumbled the question, and Javi was the first to speak up: test the logs to make sure they float first. No one had thought of that. Turns out one of the logs they grabbed was waterlogged, it sank to the bottom when they dragged it out to the shore. They swapped it for a dry one from the pile, and Lila said she’d learned how to tie bowlines in scouts, so she could do all the edge knots. Mia stepped back, let her do it, and they finished the raft 10 minutes ahead of every other group. All five of them squished onto it in the shallow water, and it didn’t sink, so they cheered like they’d won the Olympics.
Later that night, Mia found me by the campfire and said, “I still think I could have built it faster by myself.” I laughed, because that was honest, and I didn’t argue with her.
This is the thing no one talks about much when we talk about raising kids to be leaders. We’re so focused on encouraging our quiet kids to speak up, our bold kids to step up, that we forget to teach them what good leadership actually feels like for everyone else. We celebrate the kid who takes charge, even when that means they steamroll every other kid in the group.
If your kid is stepping into a leadership role, you don’t have to give them a big speech about being nice. You can just ask them three specific questions before they start: What does each person on your team want to work on? What’s one thing each person is better at than you? What will you do if half the group doesn’t like your idea? That takes two minutes, it’s not a big deal, and it gets them thinking about other people instead of just checking the box of being the leader. For teachers who let kids elect their own group leaders, one small shift that works is having every candidate share one specific thing they’ll do differently before anyone votes, instead of letting the loudest or most popular kid win automatically. Rotating leadership roles every two days for long projects also keeps one kid from taking over the whole time.
If your kid is the one stuck with a leader who won’t listen, you don’t have to jump in and email the teacher to change their group tomorrow. You can give them one specific phrase to try first: “I tried this for another project once, it worked really well – can we test it?” That gives them practice speaking up for their ideas without you fighting their battles for them. If that doesn’t work, you can help them write a note to the teacher together, instead of doing it for them.
Last week, Mia’s mom sent me a photo from soccer practice. Mia’s the team captain this year, and she’s standing in a huddle asking the new 7th graders what drills they want to do for warm ups. She still gets impatient when people drag their feet, she still sometimes takes over when she thinks something is going wrong. But she’s asking.
Some leaders we carry with us because they made us feel like our part mattered. Some we just get through, and that’s okay too – those ones teach us what we don’t want to be, just like they taught me. It’s not a perfect system, and it doesn’t turn out polished leaders every time. But right now, asking is enough.
Please indicate: Thinking In Educating » Why kid leadership matters: The leaders kids remember (and the ones we help them survive)