Positive Self-esteem Through Four Constructs

Nancy Curry was a psychologist and professor of child development at the University of Pittsburgh and Carl Johnson who is a faculty member a the University of Pittsburgh have broken down how to develop positive self-esteem and described the role of parents as an important process. They discuss the development of positive self-esteem through four constructs.The first one is love and acceptance. What children need is unconditional support in their efforts to learn, grow and develop. What a parent says should be offered with genuine affection to who the child is, not what they accomplish. For example, if a child fails a test, a parent can ask how they feel about it. They can ask if there's something they an do differently next time to improve the results. Don't make them feel bad for failing the test or not putting the effort into passing the test, just help them realize they have to put effort into things in order for them to have the result they want, Help them to see they may have made a bad (not wrong) choice and to make a different (not right one) next time.

The second construct in developing a positive self-esteem is power and control. There are a number of ways to help children achieve a sense of power and control. Providing children with opportunities to make a variety of choices is one way to do that. Parents should make sure the choices are acceptable, age appropriate choices. For example, do you want to have yogurt or goldfish for snack? Both are acceptable healthy snacks but the child can choose which one they want.

The third construct to develop positive self-esteem is moral value.  Moral value is the idea that a child is treated fairly and fundamentally a good person. A child with high morals cares for others and learns reciprocal behavior. We enhance a child's  sense of moral values by making sure interactions between  children and adults are characterized by mutual respect, cooperation, empathy, and fairness. Parents should find constructive ways to deal with frustration, disappointment and failure. By doing this it develops moral values and a sense of fairness.

The last construct to develop a positive self-esteem is competence. When you punish a child make sure you criticize and punish the child's behavior  and that the child knows it's the behavior that is unacceptable not the child. This helps the child develop competence in their ability to make good choices that lead to good behavior.

Happy Mother's Day

I'm spending the day with family. I hope you are too. Happy Mother's Day!

Treating Children As Individuals

While all children are expected to follow rules and behave in a certain way each child's efforts, abilities and accomplishments should be viewed in relation to each child's unique development and personality. One child will be good at ballet, one may be good at football and one may be good at organizing. The belief in the learning and success of a child regardless of the child's status, personality, learning struggles or behavior is important to instill in a child. One way to increase the affirmation that every child can succeed is for parents to avoid using words that label a child. Children shouldn't be labeled shy, trouble maker etc because labels can become expected behavior for children by the adults in the child's life and eventually by the child themselves.

When my child was in the 6th grade, there was a boy in her class. He had been in a previous class with her too, it was either 4th or 5th grade. The teacher they had in the 4th or 5th grade labeled this boy as a troublemaker and a goof ball. She didn't think the boy was capable of much and had low expectations of him. He lived up to these labels and expectations of himself. He goofed off and didn't try. When this boy and my child were in the same class their 6th grade year they had a child who believed in this boy. Their teacher brought out the best in him, and showed him that he is capable of more than the labels that were put on him. He didn't goof around, he applied himself resulting in good grades and proved to this boy that his potential was more than the labels put on him.

When we take labels off of children and help them succeed and reach their full potential we treat them as the individuals they are and they behave as those individuals instead of the labels that are put on them. They also live up to the higher expectation of who they can be rather than the expectation of the label.

2 Fundamental Ideas Central to Affirmation

There are two fundamental ideas that are central to affirmation. The first one is valuing uniqueness and the second is not expecting a child to be like others. This is a critical view that affirms each child's uniqueness. It's important parents don't compare children to other children in their family or other families or children in their classroom. When parents or others compare children to others they send the message that who the child is, is somehow wrong and not valued which causes the child to feel they aren't love-particularly for who the are. The message is sent they need to be like someone else, whether that is the next door neighbor, the child in youth group, one of their friends, someone in popular culture or even who a family member wants them to be in order to be someone who is liked, loved and accepted.  This sends the message that who they uniquely are is somehow wrong and it's not the child who is wrong, it's the adult sending this message to the child that who they are is wrong, who is wrong. This message is wrong.

I believe I've discussed before how my child had a youth leader who tried to teach this message to my child. My child isn't an athletic person. She doesn't  like to watch and particularly doesn't like playing them. Whenever the youth group would have an activity that was a sport the youth leaders would purposefully not tell my child what the activity was so that she would go and they would try to get her to play instead of respecting the fact that she wasn't a sports person. This made my child feel disrespected and unloved for who she was. The leaders would tell her she needed to be more like the girl in her youth group who did like sports which told her she wasn't valued for who she is and she didn't feel like her youth leaders valued her for who she was because they were constantly telling her what she should like and who she should be like. This affected her self-esteem and self-worth until I got it stopped because this was not a message they were going to give my child.

Love, respect and value your children for who they are, for their likes, their dislikes, the things they're good at, the things they're bad at. Let them know you see them for who they are and love them for that.

Happy Easter

I'll be spending today with family. I hope you are too. Happy Easter!

Affirmation- A Concept of Self-Esteem

An important concept of self-esteem is affirmation. Affirmation is a  belief in what children can become. This means that in each child a deep faith that they can learn, grow, mature, develop and blossom is instilled in them. This requires parents and other adults to accept children for who they are- personality, temperament, behavioral sill and abilities- while they believe their children can learn, grow and improve.

To develop this in my own child, I believed in what she could become and I did what I could to help her. I saw her talents and helped her develop those talents by making sure she took classes that would help her develop them and giving constructive feedback when she needed feedback. For example, my child is a good artist and when she was doing paintings and drawings for her art classes she would often ask how it looked. I would tell her how it looked and if I saw where it could improve such as curving a line further in or out or that a part of it needed more paint I would suggest those improvements. When she was struggling with subjects she wasn't as good at I'd tell her to do her best in those classes and that as long as she did her best and she know she did her best that was what happened. I never made her feel like a failure or made her feel bad for having things she wasn't very good at.We all have things we're good at and things were bad at. We do our best at the things we're not good at and not beat ourselves up over it.

I also developed this concept in my child by accepting who is. She developed OCD has a teenager and as we worked through it to get it under control and where she could manage it- this was a difficult time for us. I had to be aware of the ways it frustrated me and make sure it didn't show to her and that it didn't effect her self-esteem. It took months to figure out what things triggered it so that those things could be eliminated if they could be and it took months to get it where she had it under control and could recognize the triggers herself and prevent the anxiety attacks and other symptoms it caused. I had to love her through this time period and accept it was a part of who she was even though it wasn't an easy time for us.

I also had to surround her with people who would love and accept her for who she is as well. I had to surround her with people who would help her become the person she wanted to be. This wasn't always easy. She had a few youth leader at our church who would tell her who to be and what to like or dislike. My child has never liked sports or liked playing them and they would try to trick her into going to activities where the activity was a sport and guilt her into playing instead of allowing her to sit and watch from the side or not allowing her to go. This caused friction for a while between me and the leaders until they understood they needed to accept her for who she is not tell her who to be.

Developing affirmation in a child can be difficult and often we have to realize our dreams for our children are different from theirs. We also have to realize it's our responsibility to help them achieve their dreams and help them have the confidence to be developing affirmations in them so they know they can achieve what they want in life and that we as their parents are behind them supporting them.

Funny Things Kids Say

Don't have a lot of time today. Enjoy this video about funny things kids say. See you next week.

Kids say the darndest things