Five Tips to Kick Start Your Child’s Self Esteem

If there is one attribute that can change the outcome of a child’s life, I would have to define that as self-esteem.

Low self-esteem can take a youngster to unsavory relationships and achievement far below his or her potential, while a healthy level of confidence will guide a child to shine in so many aspects of life.

Several ideas are presented here, that you can use as a template for a curriculum to aid your child in developing his self-esteem. With that in mind, view the following suggestions as you would look at a spread of food in a cafeteria: take what appeals to you and leave the rest behind for consideration at another time.

1) Accepting Myself: My family, my strengths and weaknesses, my unique situation… My talents and my failings all serve to make me the special person that I am. Nobody is without flaws or regrets; what I do with my capabilities from now on is what is important.

2) Decision-Making: Children need guidance in making their own decisions and handling the consequences of both the good and bad decisions that have been made. It is important for them to understand instant-gratification versus long-range benefits in the bigger picture. The ability to delay immediate gain for a future yield is a sign of maturity that will boost a youngster’s self-esteem tremendously.

3) The need for help: Children can’t find all the answers on their own. A parent, teacher, grandparent, or neighbor can be an instrumental mentor to aid a child’s development in a myriad of ways. Asking for help is a a healthy sign of desire for growth, not a weakness.

4) Goal-Setting: The ability to establish and meet reasonable goals that are challenging yet achievable will be a superb springboard to longer-term aspirations. Successfully meeting a challenge encourages a person to take on further projects and strive beyond what he has already done.

5) Time-Management Skills: Despite the many time-saving appliances that fill our homes, we are busier than ever before! Learning to realistically prioritize tasks and projects is a skill that will keep overwhelming feelings at bay and serve your children well for years to come.

Use this list as a springboard for other ideas that come to mind as you broach these subjects with your child. A two-year-old will learn delayed gratification by being rewarded after the blocks have been cleaned, while a teenager will internalize the same lesson by shoveling snow to earn her new ipod. The lessons are timeless life-skills that will enable your child to handle the complicated time of growing up more effectively.

For further reading regarding your son or daughter’s self esteem, I recommend “Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys” if you are a parent of a son, and “Reviving Ophelia: Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls” if you are a parent of a girl.

NDL- Nonverbal Learning Disorder

NLD: Nonverbal Learning Disorder

You know him. He’s the one that sits at his desk during recess, reading rather than going outside to play ball with his classmates.

She’s the one that makes foolish remarks when she’s with friends. She’ll say something that is exaggerated or irrelevant to the topic at hand.

He’s awkward, always bumping into things.

Her handwriting is illegible and she’s weak in math.

These are children who suffer in school and out. They’re labeled “nerds” or described as “strange.” They try to fit in, but they don’t; worse yet, the more they try, the more they fail. Their self-esteem drops, they feel rejected and lonely, and are at risk for emotional problems.

The cause of their problems is a little-known learning disability called NLD, or Nonverbal Learning Disorder. This disability is often unrecognized because those who have it are usually verbally precocious and are thought to be equally capable in all areas. In turn, parents and educators (who are unacquainted with NLD) don’t understand the reason for the child’s awkwardness or poor performance. They presume that the cause is “laziness” or boredom. Hence, years may pass before these children receive an accurate diagnosis if they do at all.

Neurological Origin

The hemispheric specialization of the brain explains the origins of Nonverbal Learning Disorder. The left hemisphere of the brain is the seat of verbal information processing. The right hemisphere, in contrast, is specialized to process visual-spatial as well as emotional information. The right hemisphere’s functions are interwoven. As Dr. Wendy Heller of the University of Illinois points out, “It requires complex visual-spatial processing to decipher the meaning of a facial expression or to understand a series of complex gestures.”¹

Assessment of individuals with NLD indicates a neurological dysfunction which affects the systems within the right hemisphere of the brain. The result is the observed discrepancy between their verbal and visuo-spatial/social skills.

Characteristics

Children with NLD have learning profiles that are characterized by strength in the verbal area and marked weakness in nonverbal functioning. The differential between these abilities leads to significant impairment in their social and academic performance.

Noteworthy is a deficiency in visual-spatial organization. Children with this learning disability often demonstrate relatively poor achievement in specific academic areas, such as mathematics, science or reading comprehension. In the early grades they may have difficulty with handwriting and cutting because of poor fine motor skills.

One of the most salient consequences of having NLD is the impairment in social functioning. Few of us realize how much of our social interactions are based on our understanding of the nonverbal cues of communication. Eye contact, hand gestures, tone of voice, body language, and posture are some of the many signals to which we attend when we speak with someone else.

Children that miss the nonverbal cues of communication² often feel uncomfortable with their peers and may gravitate toward adults, who admire their broad knowledge, or to younger children, who will gladly take direction from them.

Lastly, children with NLD may display attentional problems such as distractibility and difficulty concentrating. Accordingly, they may be diagnosed as having Attention Deficit Disorder. Although AD/HD can co-occur with NLD, they are not synonymous. It is thus crucial to obtain an accurate diagnosis.

Treatment

Children with NLD can benefit from the following:

1. Occupational therapy to develop their fine motor and visual-motor integration skills.

2. Social skills training – whether in school, at home, or within a therapeutic setting – as a means of learning effective communication and interpersonal skills.

3. Academic support in their areas of weakness.

4. Cognitive behavioral therapy or coaching techniques to help them cope with everyday challenges.

It is important that all interventions take place within the overall context of building the child’s self-esteem. Children with NLD have often experienced much negative feedback in a variety of situations. An important part of therapeutic treatment is to help them recognize their strengths and take pride in the achievement of new skills.

Not a Childhood Illness

Like all learning disabilities, NLD does not disappear with age. Children with NLD become teenagers and adults with NLD. Their neurological weakness can thus affect their personal and professional lives. Even adults with NLD can benefit from coaching that teaches them how to compensate for their weaknesses and utilize their strengths.

People with NLD are intelligent, reliable and often highly motivated to succeed. They need only garner support, understanding and mastery of unlearned skills to do so.

Recommended Books

Dr. Steven Nowicki and Marshall Duke have written two outstanding books on children with NLD:

Helping the Child Who Doesn’t Fit In (Peachtree Publishers, 1992).

Teaching Your Child the Language of Social Success (With Elisabeth Martin. Peachtree Publishers, 1996).

For adults with NLD:

What Does Everybody Else Know That I Don’t? By Michel Novotni (Specialty Press. 1999)

^{1 “}Understanding Nonverbal Learning Disability,” by Wendy Heller, Ph.D. http://www.nldontheweb.org/heller.htm.

² According to the Dr. Steven Nowicki, “one of every 10 children has significant problems with nonverbal communication” (Monitor on Psychology, September 2006, p.37).

Dr. Mona Spiegel is a Licensed Psychologist with a private practice in Rockland County, NY. She is also a Professional Coach who provides telephone sessions to women who do not need therapy but seek guidance concerning themselves or their families. She focuses on parenting issues, relationship/communication skills, and life transitions. You can reach her at 845-425-4842 or www.myfamilycoach.com.

Self-Esteem, the Industrial Revolution, & TV

Self-Esteem, the Industrial Revolution, and TV

If you were asked “What are the three top characteristic you hope to imbue in your child?” there’s a good chance that self-esteem would be one of your answers.

A healthy level of personal esteem will allow your child to seek achievement, solid relationships, and have the courage to be honest with himself and others.

In contrast, a person who is lacking self-esteem will generally not attempt to achieve more than the minimum and will often enter detrimental relationships because he does not feel deserving of better.

This feeling of value and esteem is enhanced by accomplishments. After all, how good can a person feel about himself if he shirked his responsibilities and spent his time doing nothing much?

There’s a good chance that there is somebody in your circle of influence that was dismissed from his job because a computer was able to take over his responsibilities. What a tremendous blow that must have been to his sense of self, to be relegated as irrelevant because a machine now has the capacity to do what he used to accomplish!

Imagine with me for a moment, how hundreds of cotton laborers must have felt with the invention of Eli Whitney’s cotton gin at the start of the Industrial Revolution. Wham! Their services and labor are now insignificant and useless.

The many blessings of the Industrial Revolution also brought about several negative impacts upon society. As people moved from farms to urban areas and machines took over many of the tasks humans had been busy with for centuries, children’s responsibilities lessened. Two centuries ago, the majority of children had to help out with the myriad of chores that had to be accomplished to keep a household running during that era.

While we are doubtless grateful for the ease of use of the many technological advantages we have today, the downside is that today’s children generally have few, if any, household responsibilities.

In the past, a six-year-old boy could gather the eggs of the chickens for which he cared and see tangible evidence of his toil. A young girl could sew an item of clothing and watch her creation develop into a useful and wearable dress.

Jump ahead to the present and contrast those scenarios with the activity that overtakes so much of our children’s time: Watching TV.

Can you imagine how you would feel if you had to sit at your front window for three hours a day and do nothing but watch your neighbors enjoying their lives? What if your neighbors were far wealthier, more beautiful, and had more exciting relationships than yours? And what if every single day you spent a significant amount of time at the window doing nothing but passively watching them go about their interesting activities?

What kind of feelings do you think would surface in your heart during those hours at the window? Emotions like jealousy, inferiority, and lack of self-esteem would likely be at the forefront of your feelings.

After spending an hour or two watching TV, how much personal esteem can be gained by our children from their couch-potato-activity? Television turns a naturally active child from a creator and accomplisher into a passive spectator of other people’s lives.

Other people’s lives that are not based on anything remotely related to reality, no matter how many reality shows are broadcast! TV characters lives are painted in vivid neon hues, far more colorful than the natural rainbow of colors that is real life.

When you look at the transition in children’s lives over the past centuries- from playing an integral, active role in a family’s household in a meaningful way, to becoming an inactive robot with eyes glued to a flashing screen for hours a day, is it any wonder that self-esteem levels have plummeted drastically?

Go ahead and turn of the TV and write down a family contract with a workable and realistic TV schedule that allows 60 minutes or less of viewing time on weeknights.

Then, together with your child, get creative.

Look for activities that entertain, build skills, and have tangible results. Help your child with a new craft project, and display the finished result prominently. Volunteer together at a children’s shelter and watch the disadvantaged children’s eyes light up with the gifts of your old games. Take up gardening together, and relish the farm-fresh taste of the fruits and vegetables of your joint handiwork.

Please share other ideas for activities that have real results and yield a true boost in self-esteem below!

Avoiding Confrontations!

“How many times have I told you to do such-and-such?”

It’s the familiar prelude to a power struggle between parent and child.

One of the most common complaints heard from parents is that their children don’t listen to them.

“I have to scream before he will even pay attention to me!” (That child has learned that the parent need not be heeded until a specific decibel has been reached.)

Or:

“I’ve got to tell her at least five times before she’ll do what she’s told!” (This child understands, based upon past experience, which the parent need not be taken seriously until the fifth time.)

Yelling and constant repetition make not a happy home. In fact, they create an atmosphere of strife and confrontation.

Prior to addressing the issue of power struggles, it is important to understand that the manner that a child perceives himself is different from an adult’s personal perspective.

While an average American tourist in a Third World country may be viewed as fabulously wealthy and any adult standing in a preschool class appears big and strong, the reality is that that wealth and strength is only relative to the person’s external trappings.

An emotionally healthy adult is capable of tapping into his inner views and values and respect himself no matter what is goes on in his surroundings.

By contrast, a child has not yet acquired a strong sense of personal identity and esteem. As a result, children use their surroundings as a barometer as to who they are. Their measurement of self-worth is defined by what is happening around them, and they take their cues from their interactions with others.

Now we can understand a fundamental underpinning of confrontations: Children would rather die than lose.

In the heat of a power struggle, a child is extremely intent on winning the battle at hand because he equates obedience with defeat. When a child hears, “Get into bed right NOW!” he has a great emotional investment in not obeying and thus not viewing himself as the loser of this battle.

Therefore, it is best to avoid confrontations as often as possible. What can we do to minimize confrontations, and how can we handle them when they are unavoidable?

1) Poor planning, rushing, and emergencies are prime times for power struggles. While raising children it is normal for the house to resemble a “madhouse”, it is often with a parent’s control to make wiser plans to reduce tension and lower the probability of confrontations.

Take the extra time to get up early, leave on a trip an hour before the last minute, and prepare activities, food, and clothing the evening before it is needed. You will reap the rewards of a calmer family and be less likely to find yourself demanding, “Get into the car right now!”

2) New situations demand proper preparation and explanation for a child. For example, prior to going to the mall (if that’s an unusual occurrence) it is incumbent upon a parent to map out the itinerary to the child. For example, “First we’ll be shopping for clothing, and I’ll try on a few things in a dressing room. Then, we will be taking pictures and you’ll sit on a blanket on a table and the photographer will ask you to smile and let you hold your teddy bear. If you behave well, and that means, staying close to me and not whining, we will buy you a treat after the pictures.”

Notice how this parent spelled out her expectations and clearly outlined exactly what good behavior is required in order to earn the reward.

Older children, too, need preparation for new situations that will be encountered such as vacations, visits to relatives, and community events that are new to them.

3) The self-esteem of the parent is of paramount importance in avoiding confrontations. If a parent’s suffers from low self-esteem, she may be tempted to “win” the argument with her child in order to prove to herself that she is in charge. The emotional “war” between the child and parent- both of whom are attempting to assert themselves is detrimental to both participants.

This is another valuable reason why parents must have their own inner sense of self-worth; which will allow them to be in a position to be firm without their ego getting in the way.

4) Poor sleep and diet are a major contributor to confrontations.

You know what happens to yourself when you haven’t eaten well or slept properly. Can you expect any different from a child? Enough said!!

5) Prior to putting a strain on a relationship, it is essential to nurture and develop that relationship’s positive side.

When you have a close relationship with your child a confrontation will not feel like a “put down” to the child. He is more likely to be understanding of his parent’s need, and not feel like he is “losing”, as a result of the closeness that is generally shared.

6) Distraction can work wonders. Young children are easily distracted by anything mildly unusual. A line I once invented to distract my son was, “Oh, no, it looks like a bunny rabbit bit off your tail!” For many months, saying that with mock horror could bring forth peals of laughter and make him forget that he was in the middle of refusing to get into the bathtub!

Offering a new choice can distract an older child from the issue at hand and lower the intensity of the confrontation substantially. When your teenager is balking at attending an event with the family, you can say, “Honey, it’s your choice. You can come with us right now and I’ll take you shopping in the afternoon, or you can stay home and we won’t be going shopping later. I’m not here to argue with you. It’s your choice, please decide within one minute, the whole family is waiting to leave.”

7) Find the pattern. Jot down a short note to yourself every time you have a confrontation with your child. After several weeks you will likely notice a pattern that has preempted the power struggles.

Do they generally happen in a specific location? At a certain time of the day? When your child is hungry or tired?

Finding a common denominator will allow you to work backwards to eliminate that source of stress on thus lessen the confrontations in your home.

Peace!!

Giving Your Child Effective Attention!

As an Early Childhood educator, I have learned that ATTENTION is a survival need- not a manipulation of adults.

After World War II, orphans living in a clean, hygienic and basically attentive facility did not thrive. In fact, almost half of infants died, despite apparently having all basic needs met. It turned out that the infants needed a meaningful relationship with a caring, and involved adult in order to survive, grow and thrive. Since then, we have learned that Human Growth Hormone (HGH) is released in a manner directly proportional to the amount of caring attention the child receives.

How many times have you said, “Oh, s/he just wants attention!”

YES!

S/he does just want attention and s/he legitimately needs it.

The power of the attention children get is that whatever you pay attention to is a behavior that is reinforced – that is, behavior the adult notices and responds to is more likely to be repeated again than ignored or unnoticed behaviors.

Be honest … when do you give the most attention and the most focused and intense attention?

When children are acting out or showing MIS-behaviors – right? So, each time your child does something you DON’T want to see again, you reinforce the behavior by strongly reacting to it, right?

Oops! Did you ever realize this? I didn’t as a parent. I heard myself yelling,

“How many times have I told you … ?”

Well, the more times I noticed that behavior and responded strongly, the more likely my children were to repeat it. I was a busy mom. I worked, ran the household, had friends, and the easiest people to ignore [at times] and the most annoying [at times] were my little children.

The odd thing, hard for adults to remember is that giving unpleasant or negative attention will NOT eliminate the behavior. Rather, it strengthens it. The intensity of reaction and the reliable immediate response are the most effective in making behavior occur again because – back to the top – children legitimately need attention to survive.

Nature has equipped children to do statistics and a quick analysis of their own experiences. When do they ‘bug’ you most?

When you are on the phone?

When you want to focus on shopping?

When you are chatting with another adult?

Ahhh – yes, when they don’t have your attention.

So, what does this mean? It means that you DO have to give strong focused attention when something has happened that you like and want to see again. Catch them doing what you want! Make meaningful, descriptive statements about their efforts – not outcomes, when they are engaged in constructive, creative, artistic endeavors. Make meaningful descriptive statements about cooperation, about helping others, about being able to spend a few minutes alone without interrupting your phone call.

Create those quality moments or better yet, minutes of just attending to your child or focusing on what s/he wants following WANTED BEHAVIOR.

If you do this consistently for a few days you will begin to see changes. Children want nothing more than your approval. If you show that approval by giving focused and meaningful attention to constructive behaviors, they will repeat those behaviors.

There are a few things happening when you do this. Children are reassured that you ‘see’ them–really see them–and what they are doing. It forces you to pay attention to specifically what they are doing and to think enough about it to make an intelligent comment about it.

The comments help children to think in more complex ways about their activity and capability and may even enlarge their vocabulary. When they get the attention they need, they will give back by lowering the demand that comes out of feelings of neglect.

Notice that I have used the phrase: descriptive feedback above. This is NOT PRAISE!

Saying “Good Job” without saying what you are approving leads to two conclusions by the child:

1) you really are not paying attention, you are just getting me off your back;

2) something I did was a ‘good job’, but I don’t know what, so I will have to do a number of things I did recently to test which one was ‘good’.

Descriptive feedback shows that you actually paid attention to what the child did. It means you noticed the effort or time spent and commented on the effort rather than judged the outcome.

How do I do this, you ask?

Really pay attention to what the child did and avoid using judgment words like: good, great, beautiful, bad, ugly, etc. In my Early Childhood Development classes, students are not allowed to use the words “good” or “bad”. This is the rule to force them to use more descriptive language that has shared meaning. What does ‘good’ mean? What does ‘bad’ mean? We all have different values and ideas regarding those ideas.

If the child has made a drawing or painting, you can say:

“Wow, I see that you put a lot of time into that art. I can count five different colors in the one painting. I wonder what you were thinking when you combined those two colors?”

OR

“You did that painting really fast. There are some famous artists that also use mostly one color just like you did here. Is that color special to you in some way?”

If the child has been kind to someone else:

“I feel so proud of you when you are patient with your sister/brother. I know he/she can be annoying sometimes, but I see you are getting more patient now.”
Etc., etc., etc.

Adults often feel they don’t have the time to slow down and focus on the child. However, it is when you have the least time that it is most important. If you provide that 15 minutes of quality, focused attention –sometimes called ‘want-nothing-time’ by experts like Magda Gerber – you will earn half an hour without interruption following that 15 minutes. If you do this regularly, the rare times you cannot pay attention will pass almost unnoticed by your child because he/she is not hungry for attention.

Be sure to tell your child, “WOW, you let me focus on my project/work/phone call for a long time. I really appreciate that you are able to wait now. That is an important skill for people as they get older and it looks like you are learning it.”

Don’t forget that children always do the best they can, just like you try to do. When they do something wrong it is more likely because they lack the specific skills to do it right than to annoy you. Giving descriptive feedback to children of any age or capability becomes a ‘teachable moment’ rather than an argument or power struggle.

Discipline means to teach. Teach them the skills by demonstrating them. Patience with their challenges and belief in their ability to learn will result in cooperation, motivation and high self-esteem.

By Kathy Kelley

Kathy is an Early Childhood Development Instructor at Chabot Community College in Hayward, California. She has three children and even the baby is off to college – she always wishes she had some of that childhood time back again.  Kathy can be reached at kkelley AT samplehead DOT com

Personalized Books: Reading, Having Fun, & Building Confidence!

What could possibly be better than reading with your child, having fun, and building their self-confidence… all at the same time?!

Personalized books let your child feel special every time you turn the page and read about their character. It definitely feels good to have your name in print… even if you are a kid!

Your child is the star of each magical story. There are books about trains, school, animals, parades, dinosaurs, and more! You can also personalize fun stories surrounding the birth of your child. Every story includes child’s name, age, hometown, friends, your personalized dedication and more!

You and your child will treasure these books for many years!

Vist The Giggle Pitt – Personalized Children’s Books & more! right now!

Praise What They Did, Not Who They Are!

How to harness the power of praise to build your children’s self-esteem

Raising kids with a healthy dose of self-esteem is one of the main goals parents have. In addition to a favorable attitude toward spending time with your child, which is the key to kids’ self-esteem, a fair dose of praise is effective in developing their self-image.

What kind of praise results in a happy and confident child? And which type of praise yields an arrogant and self-centered child?

Praise what the child did, not who the child is.

When your son arrives home from school holding his math test marked with 100%, resist the urge to express how smart and intelligent he is. Rather than exclaiming, “Wow, darling, you are brilliant!” a preferential statement would be, “Wow, darling, you knew the math so well, you did really well!”

The technical differences between praising the child’s identity, versus praising their actions may seem insignificant to some parents, yet the conclusions are powerful.

When a mother tells their daughter with a straight-A report-card, “Oh, sweetheart, you are just brilliant!” the girl believes that this is an integral part of her identity. However, what happens when next semester’s report-card is peppered with B’s and C’s? Who is she at this point? What if she were to meet a classmate whose report card showed only A+’s? That can lead her to confusion and questioning about who she really is.

On the other hand, when Mom responds to the straight-A report card with, “Oh, sweetheart, you did an incredible job in all your subjects, this is fantastic!” the praise remains with the girl forever. No one can ever take away the things she did in the past, and the accomplishments that she has done.

Keep on praising their actions, and you’ll raise a winner!

Kids with healthy self-esteem: The ingredient that cannot be left out of the recipe!

The other day, I was at an interesting parenting seminar.

The psychologist giving the lecture opened the session by asking us what the single most important aspect of parenting is, regarding raising children with a healthy self-esteem.

Assorted answers rang through the crowd.

“Give ‘em lots of hugs and kisses.”

“React to their good and bad actions positively.”

“Praise often and criticize rarely.”

“These were all excellent parenting tips,” Dr. D reassured us, “but what is the essential key to raising children who have great self-esteem?”

More parents called out various parenting advice, until the good Doctor silenced the crowd.

“There is one factor that will determine a child’s level of self-esteem. Parents can mess up in any other area, but if they mess up in this one area, the child is doomed to a low self-image. This is psychological math, it is the reason why children grow up feeling good about themselves.”

We all waited with baited breath, as the psychologist continued.

“The single most important aspect of parenting is conveying the message to your children that they are the source of your joy. They are the reason for your happiness, NOT a deterrent to it!”

He went on to demonstrate this principle with a story. He was visiting a friend who was describing a horrible incident that had recently occurred. She referred to the terrible day as a “snow day”. On that awful snow day, she had been trapped with all three of her children in their home for a period of twenty-four hours. Dr. D expounded upon how the children, who had been listening nearby, had felt.

When children feel that they are a deterrent to their parent’s happiness, they feel unworthy and badly about themselves.

Imagine if you came home early from work, and met your spouse in the living room, who looked up and remarked, “Oh, Honey, I was really hoping for some peace and quiet here this afternoon, why don’t you go on over to hang out at a friend’s house?”

How would you feel? Do you feel valued? Appreciated? Highly regarded?

Obviously not. The same feelings of rejection are experienced by children who are greeted upon their arrival home from school with, “Sweetheart, I’m really busy now, why don’t you play in the basement?” Or at Sammy’s house, or outside, or upstairs, or ANYWHERE BUT HERE!

Greeting a child who comes home from school with love and attention is one of the integral keys to raising psychologically sound kids.

Your children know that you are busy. You’ve told them so thousands of times! When you take the time and energy to focus upon them, they feel valued and esteemed.

Remember- how do children spell “love”? T-I-M-E!

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