Climbing Cringe Mountain: Why Courage Grows in Awkward Places

The word cringe has taken on a new life for Gen Z. In a world where nearly every action can be recorded, replayed, and judged, many kids have learned to shrink from risk. A recent New York Times article, What Teenagers Are Saying About Cringe, observed that “experimenting is a natural part of identity formation that didn’t always feel so high stakes. Today it does.”

Dr. Kathy Koch calls that “heartbreaking, but fixable.”

“Identity is formed in the context of security and belonging, and both require exploration. Kids need safe spaces to try, fail, and try again.”

Why Kids Need to Risk Failing

Every parent wants their child to succeed, but we forget that kids learn to walk by falling. We don’t see them tumble and say, ‘Well, I guess they’ll never walk.’ We cheer, because every fall is part of progress.

If we don’t allow risk we bubble-wrap our kids. They never learn that failure isn’t fatal, it’s formative.

When Comfort Becomes a Cage

In today’s world, kids live under constant observation. Phones are always on. Every slip-up can go viral. They’ve been raised in a culture of surveillance, so they avoid anything that might make them look foolish.

But comfort can be a cage. It’s a lie from the enemy that you should always fit in. We don’t want cookie-cutter kids. God designed every child to be unique. If they never feel awkward, they’ll never grow courageous.

Reframing Cringe as Courage

Being uncomfortable isn’t the enemy of confidence; it’s the birthplace of it.
Parents can help by:

• Celebrating bravery instead of criticizing mistakes.

• Connecting effort to growth, not perfection.

• Teaching kids their smarts, so they see problems as puzzles, not proof of failure.

• Pointing to Jesus, who invites them to step out in faith even when it feels awkward.

Embarrassment is often evidence of bravery. When we help kids see that, we don’t just raise children who avoid shame, we raise disciples who walk on water.