How to Raise a Child with Healthy Self-Esteem

By Angela Sellari

Being an adult often comes with stress and worries. Moms all over the world try to protect their children from the stress that comes with day-to-day problems without realizing that providing the child with the appropriate skills to deal with stress is more important than hiding them from society’s problems.

If we try to make a comparison between different kinds of toothpaste, things will be pretty clear. But what about when trying to compare a grownup who has healthy emotional stability and one who is stressed out and anxious? What do you think we are going to learn?

Well, psychologists say that the ones who are more balanced were raised having a greater amount of self-esteem than the others. And that, dear moms, is accomplished at home and you can have a great part in helping your child develop a good sense of self and healthy self-esteem. Here is how.

Allowing your child to be more independent

This is a hard thing to do, but it can be done and it is in your child’s interest. If you think back at the first time you felt like you had a feeling of believing in yourself you will probably remember the first good grade you got when you first studied on your own.

Even if you feel the need to help your child with everything he/she does just to make sure that he/she learns how to do it well, in general, we best learn by ourselves.

Failure is a part of learning and when success finally comes and your child sees how the efforts paid off and that they did it by themselves, their self-esteem will grow higher than it would by you praising them without having any accomplishments of their own.

Make sure that your child has tangible goals

Have you ever had an almost impossible dream? We’ve all had one and we will most certainly have others. To make the impossible possible, a good practice is to break that goal into smaller goals that are easier to reach.

Teach your child to do that, as achieving smaller and easier goals will give them a sense of accomplishment and will encourage them to do more to make their dream come true.

He/she wants to be a good runner and run 10 miles? Teach him/her to set smaller goals. In the first week, they should run a mile, 2 miles in the next, and so on until they reach the 10 miles they’ve been dreaming of. If you let them run 10 miles in the first week without any practice they won’t be able to do it and will feel like a failure.

Last but not least

One of the most powerful invisible forces is unconditional love. Feeling you’ve got someone’s unconditional love gives you a sense of belonging, makes you feel that you matter despite all your flaws and that you deserve the love of others. And if you deserve the love of others, then you deserve your own love. And healthy self-esteem is a healthy amount of self-love.

Teaching your children to love themselves is the most precious gift you can give them. Most of our doubts and worries come from not feeling appreciated enough, good enough for others and ourselves, we always want to do things to measure up to others’ expectations and we lose ourselves on the way.

Do you want that to happen to your child? It is a healthy habit not to make our children always depend on us and to let them grow their own personality. Let’s be super-moms together!