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

Self-Awareness

A concept related to self-esteem is self-awareness. It emerges between fifteen and eighteen months and is the realization that one's existence and behavior are separate from other people and things. The roots of self-esteem begin in infancy with the form of attachment. Attachment is the strong, warm ties we have with the special people in our lives. When children have a healthy attachment to a parent, the attachment serves as the beginning of self-esteem as children learn they're safe with the parent who they have a healthy attachment to.

The idea of self-concept is defined as an individual's awareness of a person's identity from others. It's during infancy children develop a sense of their separate outlook different to their environment and others but also a sense of ability to influence others and their environment.

When my child was this age she had a healthy attachment to me which helped contribute to her healthy self-esteem. Where she knew she could be herself, that she would be taken care of and loved and supported this helped her have the self-esteem to try new things even when she was scared. She was scared to start preschool but as we talked about it, what to expect, about the friends she would find this helped relieve the anxiety she had about starting preschool.

My child's self-esteem grew as the learned that it was all right to have a different point of view from me. My child liked to sleep with books at night. Each night she picked out 2-3 books to sleep with and she would do it at nap time too. My point of view was that the books be on the book shelf while she slept but I respected her identity that is different than mine and allowed her to pick 2-3 books to sleep with. This helped develop her self-esteem as she learned her point of view would be respected and she would be allowed to make choices according to her point of view and those choices would within reason be respected. This helped her realize she could influence me and the environment she slept in.

It's not always easy to develop this part of self-esteem. We as parents think we don't want our children to do something like sleep with their books however, my point of view was always do I have a legitimate reason to tell my child no. If I didn't I wouldn't tell her no but I would possibly put a limit on it such as picking no more than 3 books to sleep with. When children know they can control their environment in this way and influence parents and siblings in such a way it gives them the control over their lives that they need but also realizing their parents are in charge.

Self-Esteem vs Self-Image

Self-esteem is the awareness that children make about their overall self-worth. This is based on children's growing insights of who they are and being able to define themselves. For example, children become aware of the things they are good at whether that be organizing, gardening or playing a sport. These insights about what they are good at help them develop who they become and how they define themselves. The development of these talents help build a child's self-esteem. For example, my child has always been good at art so I helped her develop this talent by having her take art classes and having art supplies in the home. As her skills developed so did her self-esteem. Her realizing that being able to do art was an insight into who she is also helped her develop who she is. She realized one of things I am is an artist.

Self-image is the view each one of us has about ourselves  and it's continually developing. It affects the changing interactions between people and people's social and physical environment. Self-image is neither positive or negative. Francis Wardle established an interactive model that self-image is based on. The model is: the individual, the individual's interaction with the environment, the response of the environment to the individual and their interpretation of the response.

This means a child's temperament affects who they are, the environment they are raised in effects it, and the way they respond to the environment affects who a child is. For example, some children are better off with a nanny than in a child care setting because they as the individual child may have a temperament that works better with a one-on-one situation than in a child care setting. The environment of the child care setting may be too fast and cause a child to feel like they are lost. This will cause the response of the environment to the child to be one where the child doesn't get the one-on-one attention they need and therefore their interpretation of the response is, "I won't be taken care of here and don't feel safe here." Therefore, a nanny situation is the better choice for the child. The child's self-image of themselves saw a child care situation as an environment they wouldn't be safe or taken care of and contributed to this being a setting that was not good for the child.

As the child grows and learns more about themselves and develops a healthy self-esteem their self-image will grow and change along with it.

How Emotions Influence Moral Development

There are two ways that emotions influence moral development. They are: First we feel guilt when we do something wrong or defy authority. For example, the first time a child cheats in school they feel guilty for cheating. They feel guilty because they know cheating is wrong and they've defied authority because they know the teacher and probably the parent will be mad and give out a consequence for cheating.

The second way that emotions influence moral development is we feel good when we've followed the rules and behaved in a socially approprate way. So, if a child's parent tells them not to go be part of the group after school that is going to cause a riot over a racial issue and the child goes home after school they feel good for following the rules and doing what the parent asked.

The emotion of guilt and being proud of oneself influence moral development as the child either feels good about themselves for following the rules or feels guilt over their poor choice. Other emotions such as happy, sad or frustrated also help develop moral development as children make choices and then deal with whatever emotion the choice leaves them feeling.