Healthy self-esteem in kids does not just make them feel more confident and secure; it also helps them cope with mistakes. It also makes them more likely to succeed in school and achieve personal goals.
Most parents struggle to understand how to help their children develop healthy self-esteem. They claim that keeping their kids humble is better than boosting their ego.
However, raising them to stay humble might affect their confidence in the future. Because of this, parents need to balance their actions to help their kids develop healthy self-esteem.
In this article, you’ll read:
- Ways To Help Your Children Develop Healthy Self-esteem
- Understanding More About Child Self-Esteem
Ways To Help Your Children Develop Healthy Self-esteem
Image Source: iStock
When a child has low self-esteem, it could significantly affect every aspect of their life. Those children with low self-esteem can be withdrawn and could experience struggle in having fun.
Aside from that, they are more likely to yield to group pressure when they belong to a wide circle of friends. There could also be a possibility that they may become vulnerable to bullying because of their low self-esteem.
Low self-esteem and lack of confidence often go hand in hand. It could affect low self-esteem if you notice your child talking negatively about himself and his abilities.
If you think your child does not have healthy self-esteem, you do not have to worry much. As parents, you can still do many things to help your children build healthy self-esteem.
Parents play a significant role in their children’s life. They influence their child’s values, behaviours, and decisions in life. Aside from that, they are also capable of making a significant impact on their child’s self-esteem.
If you are a parent and notice your child has developed low-esteem, you can do a few things to help them. Here are three ways you can help your children develop healthy self-esteem:
Pay More Attention to the Growth Mentality
Most people focus on the excellent result but sometimes fail to reflect on the process. As a parent, it would be best for you to let your kids learn to appreciate their efforts instead of the result.
Parents must be capable of making their children know that skills are built through effort and hard work. It would be beneficial for a child’s self-esteem to realise that they should now always focus on the outcomes of the things they do.
You may compliment or praise your child’s hard work and efforts along the process if you can. It can help raise your child’s self-esteem.
Sometimes, kids want to hear validation and appreciation from their parents and other people to make them more confident about themselves. Making sure you express your positive attitude towards their actions could help them become more internally secure.
Do Not Fix Their Feelings
Parents must never treat their child’s feelings like a problem that they need to solve. Kids do not need their parents to fix things for them to develop healthy self-esteem. What they need is a kind of parent who knows how to listen.
Parents must focus on listening when kids are sharing about the struggles they are facing and the challenging situations that they are experiencing. It could be the best thing a parent can do to help their kids label their emotions.
It would be best if you allowed your kids to try and work things out by themselves. As much as you can, it would be helpful to enable them to do things on their own while you are showing your full support and encouragement.
Allow Them to Feel Bad
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Kids may become more self-conscious if they feel that their feelings are being ignored. There could be times when children might think that their parents are invalidating their feelings when taking kids out of negative emotions.
Indeed, it is an action that is difficult for parents. However, parents must remember that it could be more beneficial in the long run. Kids will learn more about how to deal with bad feelings.
Understanding More About Child Self-Esteem
To help your child develop healthy self-esteem, you must have a deeper understanding of it. You also need to know the right balance between boosting your kid’s confidence and making them stay humble.
Self-esteem is how people help themselves, inside and out. You will also notice if a child has healthy self-esteem when they possess a positive outlook and feel confident about themselves.
Here are the signs that your child has healthy self-esteem:
- Make friends easily
- Finds social activities to be enjoyable
- Always happy
- Enthusiastic about discovering new things and activities
- Communicate comfortably with others
- Independent
- Free to share their ideas
The Importance of Having Healthy Self-Esteem
The state of your child’s self-esteem dramatically affects how well they do in their daily lives. More importantly, your child’s self-esteem, while they are still young, could significantly contribute to their future.
Moreover, it reflects the way they start conversations with the new people they encounter every day. This also determines how they respond to forming possible relationships or friendships with people they know or just met.
CNBC, Caring For Kids
This article has been republished with the permission of theAsianparent Singapore.
