Now What

Now What

Share this post

Now What
Now What
How To Raise Humble Kids

How To Raise Humble Kids

Three scientific insights that could make your kids a wee bit less arrogant.

Melinda Wenner Moyer's avatar
Melinda Wenner Moyer
May 05, 2023
∙ Paid
16

Share this post

Now What
Now What
How To Raise Humble Kids
2
Share

A few months ago, I wrote about the fascinating reasons why kids are annoyingly overconfident. Some of it is due to differences in perspective — kids see bragging very differently than we do — and some of it is because arrogance can be, for children, at least, evolutionarily adaptive. In that post, talked a little bit about how parents can respond to kids’ arrogance, but today I want to unpack in more detail some of the recent science on fostering humility in children.

Humility, as it turns out, is a pretty useful trait. I mean, yes, arrogant people can be extremely successful (hello, 45th U.S. president). But research suggests humble people learn more and are more empathetic and generous and less judgmental than arrogant people are.

There’s still a lot we don’t know about how humility develops, but recent studies highlight three strategies that could help kids become more humble.

This post is for paid subscribers

Already a paid subscriber? Sign in
© 2025 Melinda Wenner Moyer
Privacy ∙ Terms ∙ Collection notice
Start writingGet the app
Substack is the home for great culture

Share