5 Ways to Raise Your Child’s Self Esteem

5 Ways to Raise Your Child’s Self Esteem
© 2008 Marty Wolner, BA, CPE, ICF, PACA

High self esteem is when a child feels important, accepted, in control and purposeful. Having healthy self esteem is to feel lovable and capable. A child with high self esteem will be proud of his or her accomplishments, assume responsibility and accountability, tolerate frustration well, be brave and confident enough to try new things, and exhibit a wide range of emotion. A parent can be challenged as to the best strategies and tools needed to promote high self esteem in a child. But it’s healthy self esteem that will help a child become an emotionally and relationally healthy adult.

High self esteem is not about over-confidence or conceit. In her book, Your Child’s Self Esteem, author Dorothy Corkille Briggs points out that high self esteem is a quiet sense of self-respect, a feeling of self-worth. A child’s self esteem is like a “psychological mirror” that is used to build his or her identity. Children value themselves to the degree that they’ve been valued.

A child needs to feel not only physically safe, but also psychologically safe, as well. True safety is built on trust and honesty, and a child needs to feel the safety of non-judgement, being cherished and empathy, too. Healthy self esteem will help a child academically, socially, and creatively.

There are specific ways to help build a child’s self esteem. Healthy self esteem arises from a sense of satisfaction that a child experiences when certain conditions in his or her life have been fulfilled. A parent who promotes healthy experiences in each of these five areas, will help build high self esteem.

• Positive role modeling – children watch and observe parents and other adults around them from the day they are born, and although many parents fail to understand the impact of their actions and behaviors around kids, each and every experience and interaction a child witnesses or engages in helps to develop self esteem. To what degree these experiences are positive for a child determines the impact on healthy self esteem building. A child must feel lovable and capable to develop high self esteem, and witnessing and experiencing the behaviors of the adults closest to him or her will significantly affect that.
• Promote deep connection – a child needs to feel he or she is a part of something, sharing feelings, communications, and a deep level of warmth and caring. This may include identifying with special groups, heritage, or something else that is important to the child. A parent needs to figure out what that identifying piece is for each child and make a focused effort to encourage and nurture the connection. Children also need to feel deeply connected to the important people in their lives: parents, siblings, friends, teachers, clergy, etc. To what degree these relationships have a positive affect on deep and healthy connection for a child, will determine the affect on self esteem.
  
• Giving specific praise – a child may become confused with what’s referred to as “global praise”. So many times, parents and other adults feel that by telling a child he or she did “a good job” that it will provide a feeling of satisfaction within the child. Research has shown just the opposite, as most times children are confused by global praise. A parent may find it more effective to be much more specific, for instance commenting specifically on the colors in a child’s drawing, the noticed progress in the playing of a sport or musical instrument, or the tenacious effort preparing for a science project. Giving specific praise will surely help build healthy self esteem.
  
• Support and celebrate uniqueness – a child needs experiences that allow him or her to be different. A child needs to have self-respect, know that he or she can do things no one else can, be able to communicate and interact in special ways, use his or her imagination to reach creative potential, and enjoy being different. Many parents are challenged to engage a child in behaviors and activities that are different than what the parent had planned or envisions for the child, or may be far from the norm. Allowing this uniqueness is not easy, as parents may fear that a child acting different risks not being accepted by peers or other adults.  Healthy self esteem building provides the child with ample opportunity, and parental support, to find his or her own interests and beliefs, despite any resistance or lack of support from peers.
• Allow appropriate sense of power – a child needs to feel he or she has some influence over surroundings and circumstance. In order to have such influence, a child needs to learn many skills, have the opportunity to make choices, and be encouraged to take responsibility and be accountable. A child with high self esteem will believe that he or she can do what he or she has set out to do, knows what skills are required to fulfill a task, feels he or she is in charge of important things in his or her life, knows how to make decisions and solve problems, and can deal with some pressure and stress. Parents will want to allow “age-appropriate” sense of power and maintain healthy rules and structure, rather than burden a child with too much, too early. A sense of power is not being bossy, spoiled, or manipulative, but rather an understanding of skill and expectations.
  

In the book, How to Raise Your Child’s Self Esteem, the authors point out that a child who is not having healthy experiences in each of these areas may drift toward unhealthy experiences to fulfill his or her needs. The nature of children suggests a lot of identity, connection and/or power experimentation during childhood, so many times a child’s behavior will seem strange, independent of any self esteem issues. In an ongoing effort to promote healthy self esteem in kids, parents need to be aware of how to raise a child’s self esteem, and remain focused on fulfilling a child’s needs so he or she doesn’t look elsewhere to do so.

For more information on understanding the complex nature of who a child is, how his or her brain develops and processes information, and to practice new and easy-to-learn ways to raise a child’s self esteem, please visit: ResponsibleKids.net

© 2008 Marty Wolner, Responsible Kids Network