Self-Esteem ..“The ability to see yourself as a flawed person and still hold yourself in high regard”.
Ester Perel.
Building self-esteem in children involves a holistic approach that includes love, support, opportunities for independence and positive reinforcement. By fostering an environment that promotes self-worth and resilience, children can develop into confident and emotionally healthy individuals.
Building self-esteem in children is crucial for their emotional and social development, also helping them with regulation skills.
Below are some effective parenting approaches and tips that can help foster a positive self-image and confidence in children:
Provide Unconditional Love and Support
Ensure children know they are loved and valued regardless of their achievements. Name the quality you love about them, name their effort, rather than saying “well done”, name the piece that you noticed. Accept and support your children regardless of what they have done or not done.
Engage in activities they enjoy, showing them they are worth your time and attention. Listening intently, listening restores relationship and is a powerful act of love.
When you are busy and not able to spend time with them right now let them know eg “I would love to play with you but I have to make the dinner and I will play with you when”….or would you like to help me make dinner and after we can play. Ensure you follow through.
Encourage Independence and Responsibility
Give children opportunities to make decisions appropriate to their age. Power comes with choice, give them a little bit of power if that is what they are seeking.
Give them tasks and chores appropriate to their developmental age and stage to promote a sense of accomplishment. Children love a job, often their play is role playing a job that adults do.
Set Realistic Expectations and Goals
Help children set and achieve small, attainable goals. The most important word here is attainable. Expectations need to be realistic, their expectations for themselves and yours as a parent. If the expectations are too high this can lead to shame and disappointment.
Provide Constructive Feedback
Praise the effort and process rather than just the outcome. This is called “praising wisely”, the effort, the team work, the consistency, the resilience, the focus, the determination, the process rather than the outcome.
Offer specific praise for kind and supportive behaviour to reinforce positive actions. Name the specific trait you have seen. e.g “you were being so kind when you did / said / helped with X”
Model Positive Behaviour
Demonstrate self-respect and confidence in your own actions. Let them see you being proud of your achievements, name it if you are proud of something you did. Let them see you being present, kind and gentle to yourself. Show them that you treat yourself with kindness and compassion even when things do not go your way.
Show them that you fail and how you learn from your failures. Show them that you treat yourself with kindness and compassion even when things do not go your way. This way you are modelling healthy ways to respond to failure and also showing that failure is a part of life and our response to it is what matters.
Promote Problem-Solving Skills
Play is a wonderful and natural way for children to problem solve, don’t rush in to solve their problems, give them time and space and see how amazing they are at solving their own problems.
Foster a Growth Mindset
Help children understand that struggling with something new is a natural part of the learning process. Growth occurs when we push ourselves out of our comfort zone, not when we stay in it. Modelling this for our children and telling them that sometimes things are hard at first and with the right support at the right time we push through.
Teach and model Emotional Regulation
Validate their emotions and name your own. Tell them how you are feeling, how you know you feel that way and where you feel it in your body. Ask them how are they? How do they know? And where do they feel it in their body? Sign up to our Parenting Toolkit for a deep dive into Emotional Regulation.
Encourage Interests and Hobbies
Support Passions: Encourage them to pursue activities and hobbies they are passionate about. Notice what they are good at and encourage them to pursue that, join them in that hobby. What are they passionate about? What is their value or priority? The key word here being “their” value or their priority.
Be Patient and Consistent
Patience: Understand that building self-esteem is a gradual process and requires time and patience. Some of us are still trying at 50! Mindfulness
Resources
Prepared to Parent
If you feel you need support on your parenting journey, our Connected Consultations may be what you need, where we offer a space for you to share what is going on for your child and we empower you with tools and strategies to help your child, no matter what the concern. Connected Consultations.
Another article that you might be interested in Coping Strategies With Big Behaviours and Emotional Outbursts
Recommended bbooks for children about building self esteem and reducing anxiety , for all of our book recommendations click here Books
The Koala who could – Rachel Bright
A bad case of Stripes – David Shannon
My monster and me – Nadiya Hassain
Giraffes can’t dance – Giles Andreae
Hey Awesome – Karen Young
Hey Warrior – Karen young
