How to Help Children Build Self-Esteem
Your child is really special, fantastic little person. They are incredibly level-headed dancers or outgoing that you could never achieve in mathematics. You know your kids are great; you just want to make sure they know how good they are. And it’s natural to want to praise them for all the wonderful, impressive things they do. But if we praise too much , we can undermine their self-esteem over time.
Jim Taylor, author of Your Kids Are Listening: The Nine Messages They Need to Hear From You , tells Today’s Parent that trying to help our children increase their self-esteem by constantly showering them with praise is not the best option. Instead, children need to learn to develop their own abilities.
Self-esteem arises from feelings of love and security, as well as from developing competence, Taylor says, and while parents often overwhelm their children with the first two ingredients, competence – being able to figure things out – takes time and effort. “As much as we want, we cannot praise our children to the point of competence,” he says.
In fact, over praising children is doing more harm than good. “We’re lowering the bar for them,” says Taylor. “If you keep telling your child that he is already doing a fantastic job, you are saying that he no longer needs to force himself to push himself. But confidence comes from action, from trying, failing, and trying again – from practice. “
Let them train – a lot
A child who only feels truly competent in their roles or expectations at home or at school may not necessarily feel competent in new situations. This is why, as they grow older, it is advisable to introduce them to activities or interests in different settings.
“I think children start to feel more competent when they can work in a wide variety of settings with different people,” says Barbara Greenberg, a clinical psychologist who specializes in treating adolescents .
Giving them jobs and responsibilities is another way to enable them to practice their professional skills. For a teenager, this may mean a part-time job, but teens and young children may find some power to increase their confidence in successfully dealing with family responsibilities.
“They can fight their parents about it, but they secretly enjoy it,” says Greenberg. “They feel needed.”
Help them measure their effectiveness
Surely you could tell them all about how their high school play was top notch or how their defense on the pitch really improved over the course of the season. But in the end, you won’t be there to rate their every performance, so they’d better learn self-esteem, Greenberg says.
“You can ask the child,“ How do you think it went? “,” Could everything have worked out? “Or” What do you think you can do next time? “She says. “An added benefit to this is that they learn to read social cues.”
If they learn and practice this self-assessment regularly, they can better recognize the problem in the moment and adjust course when they have a conflict with a peer, teacher, or boss.
Remember that fighting is good
We know we must celebrate effort, not results or ability . (This is the difference between “I saw how much you did math problems this morning” and “I’m so proud you did this test!”). However, it can be difficult to understand when your child is actually doing well at something. But kids who are too focused on productivity may take less risk or hesitate to take on new challenges, lest they do as well as they would like, or not as well as they think we expected them to.
And we want them to fight, at least sometimes. Fighting is good; struggle is an opportunity to overcome an obstacle. And failure – or even just a mistake – is an opportunity to try again. Taylor explains in Today’s Parent :
“For a lot of parents, it’s backwardness,” says Taylor. “They think that difficulties and setbacks will hurt their children’s self-esteem, but this is actually a great opportunity to help her with that.”
So while you don’t want to set your kids up for failure by giving them a challenge beyond their capabilities, you still want to help them set goals and encourage them to try a new challenge and take a little risk. This helps to develop their general competence, and the literate child will be more self-confident.