Many parents struggle to help their child grow in self esteem and confidence. Taking pride in our own accomplishments or those of our children is a wonderful and healthy thing. Expecting ourselves or our children to continually accomplish things is not healthy. As parents, we need to express our pride with our children on an ongoing basis regularly and to tell them we are proud of them on a consistent and specific basis. We need to review our own personaly expectations with the developmental stages to ensure our expectations are not unrealistic for our child. It is not realistic to except your three year old to know how to draw a picture of a person with a head, body, arms and legs. Very few children at this age are developmentally prepared or ready for such a task.
Whenever you see your child smiling with pride in her own accomplishment, you should join her in celebrating. It doesn’t matter whether the accomplishment seems significant to you or not — what counts is that she does. You can be proud that she has achieved her goal. When you see her self-satisfaction, point out to her that she must be very proud of herself. Then tell her how proud you are of her.
There will be other times when your child has accomplished something but is not confidenct in herself. When this occurs, she will probably look to others for affirmation. Many children experience this when they are experimenting with art. They aren’t sure if it is “good” or not. They look to others to find out if they are okay. When your child begins to “color”, you probably won’t even know what it is she is trying to draw. When she brings you something that she has created, the best thing to do is to describe what you see, in a warm, appreciative voice. Include specific details, for example, “I really like the birds flying at the top of the page.”
Perhaps the most important situation in which you need to tell your child that you are proud of her is when she is feeling like a failure. It is especially important to tell your child that you are proud of her is when you see her self esteem decreasing over her failure to accomplishment. Describe positive traits that you see in her. Be specific, say “I know you are trying so hard to ride your bike. Even though you fell, today you were able to ride farther than you did yesterday. I am so proud of you for being so persistant and determined to learn. I love you!” Praise for positive character traits does more to build a child’s healthy self-esteem than praise for what you perceive as accomplishments. This will also assist your child in developing the donfidence to try new things without having the fear of failing stopping them from trying.
To build self-esteem, children need symbols of their accomplishments. Consider starting a tradition of celebrating your child’s accomplishments and positive traits. Develop a special ritual where your family comes together and discusses these positive moments. Consider having a daily ritual of sharing a positive accomplishement or example of when she displayed a positive trait during the day. These can be conversations your child will learn to expect on a daily basis. Similar to discussing your favorite part of each day. This will stretch your child’s mind and assist in recognizing positive things in herself.
Scrapbooking can be a fun way to provide a symbol to your child’s tracking all of her accomplishments. Whenever your child is feeling bad about herself, pull out the album and tell the story of each accomplishment, taking time to remind her how proud you are of all the things she has done.
