It’s the start of a new school year, and your child’s self-esteem will make a big difference in how your child views life both in and out of school. I’m not talking about praising everything your child does and creating a “praise junkie.” You can do a lot toward helping your child truly develop high self-esteem. Here are my top 5 tips for raising kids with good self-esteem.
1. Give your child positive attention. Spend time with your child and help your child feel he or she belongs and is significant.
2. Use positive discipline methods, focusing on communication and logical consequences. I have a series of discipline articles at Living Montessori Now that focus on discipline methods that are effective and help your child feel respected and valued as a person.
3. Encourage your child, but don’t give excessive praise or emphasize the outcome. Especially encourage your child’s effort and persistence in a task. It’s important that your child feels encouraged to work hard on a task, gaining internal satisfaction (and positive character traits).
By giving excessive praise or emphasizing the product, your child is at risk of becoming a praise junkie who’s afraid to try something new. It really is all about the journey, not the outcome. Here are a few posts I’ve written that focus on developing self-esteem and positive character traits rather than focusing on the outcome:
A Montessori Approach to Praise You Can Do It! Is Your Life Process Driven? What about Your Kids’ Character?4. Be sure your child knows that your love isn’t dependent upon your child’s physical attractiveness. Girls especially need to know that they’re competent and special for who they are, not how they look. Healthy bodies can still be encouraged through an emphasis on healthy eating and a lifestyle that includes ways to be physically fit. You’ll find lots of body-image resources here: Helping Mothers and Daughters Have Healthy Body Images.
5. Follow your child’s interests. This is an essential Montessori principle, and it’s one that works for children at any age. Following your child’s interests ensures that your child will feel respected and provides your child the greatest chance of self-motivation and success. If you have a young child, here’s a post with 10 Montessori principles that can give your child a great start toward competence and good self-esteem: Top 10 Montessori Principles for Natural Learning.
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I’d love to hear what you find most effective in encouraging your child’s self-esteem. 🙂
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I would have to say that if your child is musical & sings to themselves, listen to them & if it sounds original & you play an instrument put it down on paper & when your child hears their song either or back to them it really will boost their self-esteem.
That feeling of SELF-achievement can never be taken away from them. They ‘created’ this & nobody can take it from them.
Thanks for your comment, Niamh! That’s so true … encouraging your child’s interests is so important! 🙂
Good tips! #4 is important. I really dislike how often I hear little girls praised (even by strangers) for beauty. Often seems like the first and only comment that’s made about a young girl, that or admiration for her clothing.
Thanks, Mary! It is sad that girls tend to hear about their physical attractiveness more than their other qualities.
I am happily practicing these 5 tips with my grandchildren!
Thanks for your comment, Annie! That’s awesome … lucky kids! 🙂
Great tips and yes it is so important to help students and children build good self esteem because it affects everything in their lives.
Helpful tips. I think that number 4 is very important because girls are so fragile when they are teenagers and even before that. Also the number 5 gives very good point because you cant force your child to like something that he really doesn’t.
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Great tips! I’m gonna use them for my own baby!! thanks!
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Wonderful post……. So much to ponder about! you’ve got shared such a lot of helpful and proper stuffs that we don’t keep in mind whereas interacting with our son! Me and my wife are planning to have a long discussion on the content of this post these days.
What you said is 100% correct thanks for expressing your Personal feelings, I Agree with you, thank you sooo much – Thanks for writing about tips for raising kids —- Impressive
Awesome article thank you very much for sharing such a lot of helpful and proper kinds of stuff.
Thanks for your sharing, thats post help me so much
this is a great page with great tips im going to keep all these tips in mind with my children keep up the good work
I really agree with your 3rd tip, “”:Encourage your child, but don’t give excessive praise or emphasize the outcome”.
I saw my sister doing this and didn’t get the good result actually.
Thanks for the amazing stuff, We Really need to Spend more time with our child and encourage them in their activities
Thanks for the amazing stuff, We Really need to Spend more time with our child and encourage them in their activities
Excellent article toward helping one’s child develop high self-esteem.