Self Esteem Articles.
Children's Self Esteem
At the root of children's self esteem is….
Communication, communication and communication.
When I say communication, yes I do mean talking, but I also mean listening and I also mean allowing the child to communicate with his/her environment.
Free, open, unrestricted communication delivered with genuine love and free, open, unrestricted communication received with genuine love can not help but build strong and natural child self esteem.
A big part of self esteem in our formative years is build upon the direct consequences of communication. At that age we do not have the intellectual capacity to rationalize how we feel about ourselves. So instead of intellectualizing, children form an idea about themselves from their direct experience. And another word for direct experience is communication.
When people get ignored, they tend to get angry. Why do they get angry? They get angry because they feel smaller and the anger is an attempt to feel bigger again. It’s like the roar of a lion, the peacock displaying its feathers. When ignored we feel smaller.
In terms of direct experience that is translated as a lessening of self and this is a lowering of self esteem.
The amount of times I have seen questions, pleas, and attempts to communicate from children totally ignored is fantastic. Do it enough times and the child will start to become unsure about asking, which means that the child is now unsure of themselves, which is a lowering of self esteem.
Children also have an instinctive desire to help. This is a particularly beautiful quality in children, but one which can be easily spoiled.
In our over protective, over politically correct, overly litigious, and overly namby pamby world, action has gotten a bad name.
Yes, supervision is needed, because help from a child is also a learning experience for them. But we can so easily overly supervise to the point of restriction. A child wants to help and will gain massive feelings of self worth when allowed to do so. Any sensible adult can give a child a meaningful task to do and supervise that task so that the child can do it safely and effectively. My daughter has been helping to paint the house since she was four years old, I give her a task that she can do, show her how to do it and then let her get on with it. To begin with we got a mess, but when the room was finished and we all stood back, the pride in her face was well worth the white spirit needed to get the drips off the floor. She really did help, her work was not re-done later by me.
To keep self esteem high in our children we have to be willing to allow them to help and not to allow them to help as a game but to actually value the work they have done.
If that spirit is blunted in formative years you will spend a lifetime later on trying to rekindle it.
It is actually another aspect of communication, the child is giving something and the self worth of the child is acknowledged by adults when they allow the child to participate and contribute on equal terms.
Ownership plays a big part in children's self esteem. Do you recall the feeling connected with your first flat or first car? You had a part of the world and it was yours. This has got to do with personal space and the actual roots of self confidence, self esteem and being able to hold your position.
A child’s possessions and space should be the child’s possessions and space without conditions attached. Children are given things and then told in no uncertain terms how to look after them and what they can do with them. This is ownership with strings and because of it the child will not fully experience the first car feeling. It is a poor man who is not king in some corner. And it is a poor child who feels that they personally own nothing.
Yes toys will get broken and abused, the room will get untidy and clothes will get scuffed and ripped. And I am not banging the drum for total anarchy and destruction in a child’s life, but to over react and remind the child how much you paid for a thing or to restrict there ownership of objects and space will cost you far more in future problems when the child is confused about ownership and introverted because they can not own space. I know that might sound a little esoteric, but ownership of objects and space is a major factor in healthy child self esteem.
There are many other things which will go into building strong children's self esteem and I have covered them in the booklet “How to Protect Your Child's Self Esteem”. But the three points above could be seen as the bedrock of the subject. Communication, self worth through helping and participating and ownership are keys to allowing child self esteem to flourish.
What do we do when we see that our children’s self esteem is starting to fall, or when it has already fallen is also covered in the booklet.
There is no science to bringing up kids, but we as a species have managed to limp through for the last 1000s of years and we are still here. So we have not done too bad a job. But todays world and tomorrows world will bring differing pressures, to be in a position to cope with those pressures we can ensure that our kids are first of all sure of themselves.
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