Tips on Building Healthy Self-Esteem in Your Child

     It is vital that our children have healthy self-esteem – a positive view and good feelings of themselves. Self-esteem is learned mostly at home during childhood. This is why it is essential for parents to be kind, give praise, love and listen to their children. 

Following are a few tips to help you boost your child’s self-esteem:

1.      Give children your time and undivided attention.

2.      Use fair and reasonable consequences to change problem behavior. 

3.      Catch children being good - admire and reward it.

4.      Support qualities your child is most likely to admire - courage, self-reliance, confidence, respect, honesty, problem solving, a positive attitude, and uniqueness.

5.      Encourage children to be responsible for their thoughts, feelings and actions. 

6.      Teach children that every setback is an opportunity in disguise.  Look for the opportunity.

7.      Tell your children that you love them unconditionally. 

8.      Tell children that they are good so they believe it and embrace it.

9.      A child’s worth should be kept independent of performance.  When performance declines, which it inevitably will, there will be a loss of worth and a blow to self-esteem. Instead attach privileges to performance.

10. Many children (especially ages 8-12) think that feeling good about themselves is being conceited or stuck up. Use The Self-Esteem Game™ to teach children how to have healthy self-esteem.  Make children aware that if they show their self-esteem too publicly there may be other kids that will want to lower their self-esteem. Don’t let these kids dictate how your child should feel about him/herself.

When I started my private practice in child clinical psychology, I noticed that many of the children I worked with had very low self-esteem, a root cause of their problem. I thought that the best way to reach children was through playing a game. Games are the way children practice the things they will need to do as adults. Children never resist a fun game and they learn without even knowing it. This is why I invented The Self-Esteem Game, which recently received The National Parenting Center’s Seal of Approval. 

Promoting self-esteem in your children is not easy but I hope that these tips will help.