How To Build Your Child’s Self-Esteem

Self-esteem is a concept that is regularly discussed in our current culture.  Many parents fill their child’s life with activities, play dates, and positive affirmations in the hopes of creating greater “self-esteem”.  In many cases however, it does not seem to work.  The harder we work to build our kids up the lower their self-regard.  This post is intended to give you a framework for how to build your child’s self-esteem.

What is Self-esteem?

Self-esteem is made up of a child’s academic and non-academic self-concept, that is, how the child views himself in those two domains.  Each domain is broken down further into more specific areas.  Academic self-concept is divided into the subjects of math, science, english, and social studies.  Non-academic self-esteem includes the areas of social, emotional, and physical self-concepts.  Global self-esteem is a combination of how the child experiences himself in these areas combined. 

What makes Self-esteem?

So we know what self-esteem is but what makes one child have more than another.  Researchers have found

 “The greater the discrepancy between adequacy in some domain and importance of that domain, the greater the negative impact on self-esteem” (Broderick & Blewitt, 2015).   

In other words Self-esteem is made when a child experiences success in a domain that is highly important to them. 

 How to build Self-esteem?

The role of parents then, is to discover which domain is most important to their child and to support it.  Does your child love math but hate soccer?  Then, practicing soccer with them may not be the most important thing on the list.  You may want to spend more time doing math together and joining them in that love.  Discover what is important to your child and support them in that area.

Support from parents is a key way to build self-esteem and so is competence.  When a child feels competent in an area that is important to them, their self-esteem is enhanced.  So, focus on providing lessons, activities, and competence building experiences in the areas that are important to your child.  As they build competence in these areas they will grow in confidence.  If we focus too much energy on too many areas the child may be overwhelmed and tired. 

 

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