Helping Your Child Develop Good
Self-Esteem
Your child needs to possess a sense of importance and
worthiness to ensure healthy development. A good self-esteem helps to insulate
your child against challenges they face. A child who feels good about
himself will have an easier time resistig peer pressure and handling conflicts.
These kids tend to be more involved in extracurricular activities, have
better grades, more interests and better interpersonal relationships with those
around them.
For children that have low self-esteem, the various
challenges of life cause them to become anxious or frustrated. They tend
not to be good problem-solvers, and may become depressed or withdrawn.
Although other adults certainly have influence on your
child, you as the parent are in the best position to help your child develop a
sense of worthiness. Be sure to praise not only good results, but more
importantly, the effort (if warranted) that the child put into the activity.
While you can tell the child that you are proud of him or her, be sure to
say that they should be proud of themselves, too, as you don't want your kids to
only perform to get adult approval.
If other adults say negative things about your child
to him or her, discuss the situation. Talk about how some people take
their bad day or negative feelings out on other people and the wrongness of this
action. If the child did display bad behavior, talk about how this person
could have discussed the behavior with the child without resorting to put-downs.
Reinforce to your child that he or she is a a good person even if the
child's behavior was bad.
While you will want to praise good traits about your
child, you need to make sure the child understands that everyone has both good
and bad traits. The "bad" traits just offer opportunities for improvements
or may actually be strengths for the child under the right circumstances.
Help your child to develop a realistic view of his or her strengths and
weaknesses.
Your children will learn from observing you. So,
take steps to nurture a high regard for yourself. Don't talk negatively
about yourself, and steer clear from activities that may make you feel unworthy
such as excessive drinking that leads to actions you are ashamed of when sober.
Let them know that you, too, sometimes have feelings of self-doubt and
talk about how you manage those feelings.
Teach your kids about self-talk. If they
constantly berate themselves for being stupid or ugly, they may begin to regard
themselves as such even if the truth totally the opposite. Self-talk
should be as if they are talking to a friend instead of critical as if they are
talking to an enemy.
By helping your child to feel self-worthy, your child
can maintain a healthy self-esteem into adulthood.
