How Small Youth Leadership Roles Build Confidence: What I Learned When My Kid Became a Bee Chapter Lead
Last April, my 11-year-old Lila leaned against our kitchen counter, twisting the hem of her mud-caked hiking pants, and pushed a crumpled flyer across the sticky counter toward me. Half a peanut butter sandwich sat next to it, and our golden retriever chewed a stray sock by the dishwasher. The flyer had a cartoon bumblebee on the front, big text that read “Lead our new kids’ native bee chapter: Bee a Chapter Lead!” “Mia from the community garden asked if I wanted to do it,” Lila said. “I don’t know if I can.” I knew what that meant. A year earlier, she’d forgotten her lines mid-speech for the school’s public speaking contest, walked off stage red-faced, and hadn’t volunteered for any leading role since. Any time a teacher asked for a group lead, she’d shrink back into her chair and pick the note-taker spot, even when she’d done all the work.
I didn’t give her the big pep talk everyone says you should give. I just pushed the flyer back and said, “Let’s read the fine print. What do you actually have to do?” Turns out it was nothing like the big, high-stakes school roles she’d been avoiding. One meeting a month at the library, help plan one community planting each semester, count bees for the city’s local survey a couple times a summer. No big speeches to the whole school, no mandatory fundraisers, just small, bee-related stuff that Lila already cared about—she’d been pressing me to plant wildflowers in our front yard since she was 8, after a field trip to the nature center. She thought for two days, then said she’d try it.
She spent the night before the first meeting making name tags, drawing lopsided little bees in the corner of each, and wrote her three agenda points on index cards in purple gel pen. I drove her, and sat in the back of the meeting room folding extra flyers, planning to stay out of the way unless she asked for help. Five kids showed up, including her 8-year-old cousin and a boy from her math class who brought his pet tarantula in a plastic jar. Ten minutes in, Lila finished the opening icebreaker, and then went blank. She stood there by the table, her cheeks pink, and didn’t say anything for what felt like forever. I had my hand on my bag, ready to stand up and jump in, when she pulled her index cards out of her pocket, laughed, and said, “Sorry, I totally lost my train of thought. Give me one second.” Before I could even move, the tarantula kid raised his hand and asked if they could see his spider before they did anything else. Lila shrugged and said, “Sure, five minutes of tarantula time, then we get to the watering stations.” It was messy, it wasn’t how she’d planned it, but it worked.
Over the next six months, I watched her fumble through small problems that were hers to fix. When we planned the spring wildflower planting, she had to email the parks department to reserve the plot. I offered to type it up for her, but she wrote the whole thing herself, I just fixed the typos. When two kids who said they’d bring extra shovels didn’t show up, she walked over to the hardware store two blocks away, asked the manager for three loaner shovels, and came back with them—he even gave her a free bag of wildflower seed for the group. When her first big bee count day got rained out, she texted everyone in the group (with a little help from me with the group chat, since she doesn’t have her own phone) to reschedule, no panic, no asking me to do it for her.
I used to sub in elementary school, and I saw so many parents and teachers push kids toward big, visible leadership roles—student council, team captain, that kind of thing. Those work great for kids who are already comfortable in the spotlight, but for kids like Lila, who get nervous messing up in front of people, they’re just too high-stakes. If you mess up a student council event, it’s all over the school chat, everyone sees. If you mess up a bee chapter meeting, what happens? Five kids go home a little early, and you try again next month. That low pressure is where the real learning happens.
If you’re looking for leadership opportunities for your kid, you don’t have to aim for the big school titles. First, look for something tied to what they already love. If your kid is obsessed with dinosaurs, see if the local museum needs a kid to lead a junior discovery walk. If they love baking, ask the food bank if they need a kid to coordinate the youth cookie drive. It doesn’t have to be glamorous, it just has to matter to them. Second, don’t jump in to fix their mistakes before they get a chance to. When Lila blanked at that first meeting, I was dying to step in, but waiting 10 seconds let her figure out how to fix it herself. Third, let them be imperfect. Last month, Lila had a meeting scheduled the same day as her best friend’s birthday party. I thought she’d stress out about it, but she just asked another kid in the chapter to lead, and went to the party. No one got mad, the meeting still happened, and she learned that delegating isn’t failing.
She’s signed up to do it again this coming school year. Some meetings run 20 minutes over, some end 15 minutes early. She still forgets to send reminder texts half the time, and I have to nudge her after dinner to get it done. Last week, she told me she doesn’t want to run for any student leadership positions next year, but she’d keep doing the bee chapter as long as they’ll have her. I don’t know if this small role will lead to anything big down the line. It’s not going to look super impressive on a high school resume, or anything like that. But it gave her the thing she lost after that public speaking contest: the chance to lead on her own terms, mess up on low stakes, and figure out that she can handle it when things don’t go as planned. For now, that’s more than enough.
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