Want to Be More Assertive? Here's Why You Should Learn From Your Kids! by Holly Brown MFT

I thought I was assertive, and then I met my baby girl. I tell my clients that assertiveness is a skill, and they'll get better with practice. Then I help them develop their own style of how to ask for what they want, or explain their feelings. But watching my daughter, I realize how innate of a skill it actually is. We're born knowing what we want. Somewhere along the way, a lot of us begin to lose that ability. 

• We second-guess.
• We have too many competing needs and desires.
• We decide that we should only speak up when we're 100 percent sure and right, now we're only at 90.
• Other people are more important than we are, we reason.

Let's get back to what we once knew, before we learned too much.