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Raising kids' self-esteem

7/10/2014

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Why does the self-esteem of today’s kids seem to be falling?

We’re so obsessed by measurable outcomes in terms of quantifiable achievement in our kid’s lives these days, that I think we’re generating a huge problem in terms of their feelings of self-worth. For example, we praise high grades and high performance and frown upon failure. We make achievement or lack of it synonymous with who our children are. We need to make sure our kids know that we value them, regardless of their grades, their mistakes, their achievements, or lack thereof. How they are perceived influences profoundly how they feel about themselves.

According to my anecdotal research at school (I teach kids aged 13-18), kids feel that parents and teachers seem to be saying either implicitly or explicitly that they’re not good enough. This impacts their self-esteem.

My book, Raising Stress-Proof Kids (forthcoming, Familius, 2015) highlights that as we push our kids towards academic success on this imaginary stress-freeway towards an imaginary finish-line, the results are all too often high anxiety, depression, and even suicide in many countries.

The world is full of brilliant, creative individuals who can do more than just achieve high marks. Some people may even take a while to find their ‘thing’ and that’s okay. If Steve Jobs hadn’t taken a calligraphy class in Oregon while he was trying to find out what he really wanted to do in the world, we wouldn’t have fonts on our computers! We need to be interested in the world and show our kids that there is space forwhoever they are going to be in this world.

So, in short:
  • Value effort and don’t give empty praise (i.e, ‘you’re so smart).
  • Help your kids see ‘failure’ or mistakes as an opportunity for growth. For example, even with regard to drawing pictures, if your eight year old messes up, instead of him just throwing his picture out and starting again, encourage him to look at the drawing and see how the mistake might be incorporated or transformed.
  • Appreciate kindness and helpfulness. Say ‘thank you for putting that stuff away,’ rather than ‘it’s time you tidied up that disaster of a bedroom.’ Look for the efforts worthy of value and appreciation.
  • Listen to your kids. They feel valued when you’re truly engaged with what they have to say.
  • Apologize. We’re not perfect. It’s okay to say ‘I’m so sorry I was grumpy with you this morning. I was just tired and edgy.’ This shows our kids that we value them as human beings worthy of our apologies.
  • Get them (and you) off the ‘stress freeway’ towards success. They’ll do so much better if they have the tools to be resilient.

Life is going to be full of things that can impact self-esteem and feelings of self-worth as our kids grow. We can’t stop that or fix everything. But if they have the tools and the underlying sense that they are valuable human beings, they will surely thrive.

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Need to succeed

4/10/2014

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As parents, we’re often anxious…we want our kids to be successful in the world, so this often leads to us pushing them to succeed, sometimes from when they’re really young.

But what we don’t get, is that being stressed actually gets in the way of healthy emotional and intellectual development. Chronic stress prevents optimum blood flow to the brain and gets the body into a fight-or-flight response. The more time young kids spend in that state, the more that becomes the baseline…and when they’re stressed, because the fight-or-flight response is our bodies’ historic way of helping us outrun or escape danger, it is impossible to be emotionally calm or to think clearly. We’re fed a lot of info about the need to succeed, and so we inadvertently put a lot of pressure on our kids to succeed…and that pressure can cause unnecessary stress. In fact, their long-term success (and health!) depends upon them being given the capacity to be resilient. It takes a full 21 years for the brain to be fully mature, and children develop at different rates, just like not every child walks on their first birthday! So stressing our kids about their achievements is counter-productive.

As a teacher of almost two decades, I see so many young people feeling burdened by the unrealistic expectations that well-intentioned moms and dads and teachers put on them. These kids develop anxiety, depression, feelings of low self-worth and self-destructive behaviors. If we do our bit to reduce the pressures they already face, by NOT putting so much pressure on them ourselves, we can help them immensely.

There are many ways of reducing stress in our families. An important one is our own behaviours and responses to our children’s behaviours. Also, teaching our kids how to get themselves into a state of high coherence (see www.heartmath.org) is really helpful in terms of assisting them to identify and modify a physiological stress-response. If we know that chronic stress gets in the way of healthy intellectual and emotional functioning, (as well as being a precursor to all kinds of negative things like anxiety, depression, and yes, heart disease), then we know we need to do all we can to prevent it. They (and we as parents!) can learn how to stop stress in its tracks and get our nervous systems back into order.

Tips for reducing stress in the family:
  • Try not to lose it when your kids lose it. Maintain calm in the face of a storm. It may not fix everything but it won’t make things worse.
  • Try not to over-react to things. The state of our nervous system impacts the state of our children’s.
  • Try to fix things that are broken or heal hurts when they happen, rather than punish.
  • Try not to put undue pressure on young kids about school. In my anecdotal research as a teacher, parental expectations and disappointment is a big stress.
  • Remember that unconditional love is essential for healthy physical, emotional and intellectual growth. Hug your kids, play with them give them time. That will give them the best chance of being resilient, successful, stress-proof people!

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    About Shelley 

    Shelley Davidow is an internationally acclaimed author. She is also a teacher, academic and trained facilitator in Restorative Practice, conducting workshops throughout the world. 

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