A defining characteristic of human cognition is the ability to communicate or inform others about the world. Yet, humans are also motivated to communicate about the self; beyond sharing our subjective opinions and preferences, we also deliberately communicate information about the self to manage our reputations and what others think of us more broadly. While the motivation to be seen positively by others emerges early in life, the cognitive underpinnings of early self-presentational behaviors has remained an open question. Here we ask whether young children can track others' observations of the self and strategically communicate information to revise or maintain what others know or think about the self. Three- and four-year-old children chose to whom to communicate their success based on others' past observations of their performance (Exp.1, n=70); though children generally preferred to communicate new information about the world (i.e., a novel toy), they were more likely to override this preference to demonstrate their success on a familiar toy when an adult observer had only seen them fail to activate it (Exp.2, n=100), especially when the observer already knew how the toys work (Exp.3a, n=32; Exp.3b, n=50). Finally, four-year-olds (but not three year-olds) avoided an activity that would reveal their true, undesirable competence on a drawing task (Exp.4, n=64). These results demonstrate the sophistication of early self-presentational behaviors: Rather than simply acting positively in front of others, children draw rich inferences about representations of the self in others' minds, and strategically communicate information to revise or maintain these representations.