Tips on How to Build Self-Esteem in your Child By Rachel Funnell, LMFT

In order to be able to build self-esteem in your children, it’s important to know what it is and how much of a role it plays in people’s lives. Self-esteem is described as a person’s overall subjective sense of personal worth or value. It’s defined by many factors including self-confidence, feeling secure, identity, sense of belonging, and feeling competent. It plays a big part in influencing our motivation, our mental health, our decision making process, our relationships and our overall quality of life. To flourish, kids need to be able to believe in their own abilities as well as know how to manage it when they aren’t successful. Below are several ways in which you can help instill confidence and build self-esteem in your child. 

• Model Confidence:

    Parents play a big role in how their children learn how to do all sorts of things. Your kids are constantly watching and learning from you on how to handle disappointments, try new things, and how to persevere through challenges. You don’t need to be perfect and you can acknowledge struggles or concerns but don’t dwell on them. Instead focus on the positives and what you can do and learn from the experiences. 

• Avoid Dwelling on the Negative or Mistakes:

    It’s important to normalize making mistakes by being patient when they make a mistake. Embrace imperfection and how unattainable being perfect is. Don’t dwell on what went wrong but help your child identify what they could learn from it and then move forward. 

• Encourage your child to try new things:

    It’s good for kids to have diversity in what they can do and what they have done. If all they do is the one thing that they excel at, they won’t feel confident to try different things that may be a challenge for them. Having multiple skills helps your child feel capable and confident that they can handle anything. 

• Allow your child to fail:

    This may be very hard for some parents to do because you want to protect your child from getting hurt and feeling pain. But failing allows your child to realize that they will survive it and they will be able to learn how to manage setbacks. Through perseverance comes confidence.

• Give your child responsibilities:

    When children participate in chores and have responsibilities, they develop a sense of purpose and accomplishment. This helps them feel valued and needed. When your kids participate around the house, praise them for their efforts and participate, even if it isn’t done perfectly well. 

• Allow your child to explore their own interests:

    Your children are trying to develop their own identity and that may include activities or expression of self that’s not a part of your vision for their life. However, your child needs to learn what their own passion in life is. Their self-esteem will grow when they are able to see themselves accomplish new tasks and challenges that come with their passion. 

• Model positive self-talk:

    As a parent you are a model for your child. They see how you interact with the world including how you manage frustration, setbacks and challenges. When you are struggling with a problem, say encouraging or calming words/phrases out loud so your child can hear how you are managing the situation. 

• Encourage Independence:

    As your child gets older, let them do more and more on their own. Even if it takes longer for the tasks to get done. As they get into their middle school years, it’s important to let your child do more things that you normally would do for them. For example, figure out how to manage their time and school work, how to talk to teachers about problems, and how to make sure they have everything for school. If you continue to do things for them, they will start to believe that they can’t do anything for themselves or can’t do anything right. This quickly lowers their self-esteem. 

    As parents, we want our children to have high self-esteem but remember you aren’t perfect either so be patient with yourself. You may not always get it right and that’s okay. The most important thing is to let your child know that you love them no matter what. Your unconditional love will go a long way with bolstering your child’s self worth. 

Resources
https://childmind.org/article/12-tips-raising-confident-kids/
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https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-self-esteem-2795868

https://www.verywellfamily.com/ways-to-build-strong-self-esteem-in-your-child-3953464

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