Interesting Psychology Team
building self esteem in children…
“I can’t do anything right!”
“Nobody likes me!”
“I’m the worst kid in the world!”
As parents, hearing the children we love make such viciously self-critical comments is heartbreaking. Our first instinct is to rush to contradict them. “That’s not true, honey!” we exclaim. Trying to reassure our kids, we quickly marshal example after example of their talent and specialness. Because we love our children so much, it feels intolerable and even unimaginable that they wouldn’t love themselves. But the more we tell our self-doubting kids “You’re wonderful!” the harder they argue, “I’m terrible!” No matter how sincere and well-meaning our pep talks are, they never seem to sink in when our children are struggling with low self-esteem.
Challenges with self-esteem are very common. Almost every child—and adult—faces moments of self-doubt or periods when they feel inadequate. But for some children, the tendency to view themselves in a negative light is frequent, persistent, and even central to their identity. This post will help you address the root causes of your child’s low self-esteem and give you practical strategies to help your child develop real competence and confidence. But first, let’s talk about what self-esteem means.
What Is Self-Esteem?
Self-esteem involves evaluations of the self that lead to positive or negative feelings about the self. These evaluations reflect how we imagine that other people view us. When kids believe that others think badly of them, they feel bad about themselves.
It’s easy to spot low self-esteem in kids: If you’ve ever said things like, “My son gets so down on himself when he makes a mistake!” or “My daughter gives up before she starts! She’s afraid to try,” your child may be struggling with low self-esteem. Sometimes low self-esteem is tied to a specific area, such as when a kid believes, “I stink at math!” Other times, it’s all-encompassing, as when an older child insists, “I’m such a loser!” Children with low self-esteem see themselves as somehow inadequate or even unlovable, which can be excruciatingly painful.
The Rise and Fall of the Child Self-Esteem Movement…
In 1986, the governor of California created a Task Force on Self-Esteem and Personal and Social Responsibility with the hope that raising self-esteem would serve as a kind of mental vaccine, preventing problems such as crime, teen pregnancy, and drug abuse (Baumeister et al. 2003). Around the same time, leaders in education promoted the idea that boosting children’s self-esteem would lead to higher achievement and better test scores. Numerous programs were created to try to foster high self-esteem in children (Harter 2017).
Unfortunately, but perhaps not surprisingly, trying to raise self-esteem didn’t turn out to be a magical cure-all. Even research from the California task force showed very small relationships between self-esteem and the outcomes they hoped to produce. On the education front, some researchers began suggesting that promoting self-esteem could backfire by undermining children’s motivation to learn or to try hard. (Why would kids try to improve if they’re already wonderful?) Others argued that the focus on building up children’s self-esteem takes away valuable time that educators could be using to teach skills. Also, children tend not to believe effusive praise (Damon 1995).
More recently, Jean Twenge and her colleagues (2008) have argued that an emphasis on cultivating high self-esteem has contributed to a generation of teens and young adults (born after 1980) being less empathic and more self-absorbed as well as more anxious and depressed than previous generations. However, other researchers have challenged these conclusions, arguing that the observed differences in self-centeredness reflect mainly a temporary developmental stage of life or methodological issues related to questionnaires and sample selection (Arnett, Trzesniewski, and Donnellan 2013).
We Don’t Have to Love Ourselves
Still today, self-help gurus and inspirational articles often promote the idea that we have to love ourselves to have a happy, fulfilling life. This is nonsense. How many people honestly stand in front of a mirror and think, I love myself!? And if they do, would you want to be friends with those people? Probably not.
Logically, it makes sense that kids who feel better about themselves ought to do better in life, but that’s not what research finds. Roy Baumeister and his colleagues (2003) conducted a very thorough research review and concluded that higher self-esteem does not cause better school performance. It does not prevent kids from smoking, drinking, using drugs, or engaging in early sexual activity. High self-esteem also does not lead to healthier relationships. In fact, bullies tend to have high self-esteem!
One reason that high self-esteem isn’t necessarily linked to better outcomes is that it sometimes slips into narcissism. Narcissistic people don’t just feel good about themselves; they think they are better than everyone else. They are convinced that they are special and therefore deserve special treatment. They are very self-centered, so they ignore, dismiss, or stomp on other people’s feelings or wishes. If they do something kind, it’s because they want to look good. They often brag and seek admiration, and they generally act as if they were performing in front of an audience.
Although narcissists report high self-esteem, their self-esteem is fragile. If they fail, if someone else performs better, if anyone criticizes them, or even if people don’t admire them enthusiastically enough, they lash out in anger. They are quick to defend themselves and scornfully blame others when things go wrong.
This is certainly not how we want our children to be! Narcissists care more about looking good than being good. Their outward confidence has no depth.
Protecting Kids Self-Esteem Can Backfire
Even kids who aren’t overtly narcissistic can get caught in the trap of trying to “look good.” When kids focus on protecting or increasing their self-esteem, it can backfire and set them up for failure. Imagine a student who’s afraid that she will do badly on a test. Healthy coping strategies would be to start studying early and to ask for extra help from the teacher. But if the student is focused on protecting her self-esteem, she won’t do that, because she won’t want to look or feel “dumb.” Instead, she’ll put off studying until the last minute. That way, if she performs poorly on the test, she can protect her self-esteem by telling herself, I didn’t have enough time to study! I could have done better if I’d tried! She’ll also probably complain loudly about the unfairness of the test, the uselessness of the class, or the unhelpfulness of the teacher—anything to avoid facing the fact that she didn’t know the material and didn’t take steps to learn it.
Jennifer Crocker and her colleagues (2010) have investigated the high costs of pursuing self-esteem. They find that when a task seems very important to people’s view of themselves, but they’re not sure they can succeed, sometimes they deliberately won’t try hard. Psychologists call this self-handicapping, which means setting up circumstances that guarantee failure but also provide an excuse for failure. Other possible self-defeating strategies to guard self-esteem include cheating, lying, hiding mistakes, making excuses, avoiding challenges, blaming or looking down on others, and responding angrily to criticism. Trying to look good can sometimes bring out the worst in people!
Why Child Self-Esteem Matters
So, if pursuing and protecting self-esteem tends to backfire, does this mean we should abandon the whole idea of self-esteem? No. We know from long-term studies that low self-esteem can be a risk factor for depression and eating disorders. Research by Ulrich Orth and his colleagues (2014) shows that low self-esteem isn’t just a symptom of depression; it predicts and precedes depression at all ages, from childhood onwards.
Low self-esteem can also be emotionally painful. When kids hate themselves, their misery can feel intense, pervasive, and inescapable.
Low self-esteem can also lead to self-fulfilling prophecies. For example, a child who thinks other kids don’t like him will avoid interactions with peers, which will make him seem unfriendly and lead to the rejection he fears.
Child Self-Esteem Boosting Strategies Don’t Work
Many of the obvious strategies for trying to help kids with low self-esteem just plain don’t work. For instance, telling kids they are wonderful can actually make kids with low self-esteem feel worse. In one study, Eddie Brummelman and his colleagues (2014b) had kids play a computer game. First, they did a noncompetitive practice round after which some kids got a text message telling them, “Wow, you’re great!” Next, the kids played the game. Among kids who lost the game, those who had been told “You’re great” before the defeat felt more ashamed than kids who hadn’t been given this praise. This effect was especially pronounced for kids with low self-esteem. Hearing they were “great” set up kids with low self-esteem to feel “worthless, inferior, and exposed” when their actions didn’t live up to the praise.
What about having kids tell themselves positive statements? Saying very positive things to themselves can make kids with low self-esteem feel bad about themselves, because they become acutely aware of how much they don’t measure up to the positive statement. A study by Joanne Wood and her colleagues (2009) involving college students showed that prompting students with low self-esteem to repeat to themselves the statement “I’m a lovable person,” or to focus on how that statement was true, made their moods worse rather than better, and made them feel less happy with themselves! Rather than boosting their self-esteem, this positive self-statement ended up highlighting and confirming their belief that they are not lovable.
Maybe kids with low self-esteem need to experience success to feel better about themselves. Nope. Kids with low self-esteem are experts at dismissing and discounting their victories. They pick apart their performance, insisting, “It wasn’t that good. Anybody could have done it. And besides, I messed up one section.” Another study by Joanne Wood and her colleagues (2005) found that people with low self-esteem feel more anxious after a victory than a defeat. They expected the defeat, but the victory seems surprising and dangerous.
Success usually doesn’t penetrate low self-esteem, because it’s hard to absorb and feels threatening for people who are used to viewing themselves as inadequate. Performing well tends to make kids with low self-esteem worry that they won’t be able to keep up this performance, or that people will now expect more of them, or that people are now paying more attention to them, so their inevitable future failures will lead to increased public humiliation. Wood calls this “snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.”
The reason all of these strategies for boosting self-esteem don’t work is that they involve increased self-focus. They encourage kids with low self-esteem to think about and evaluate themselves, which they always do harshly, intensifying their misery.
What’s Real Self-Esteem Looks Like
The key to breaking free from low self-esteem is to move beyond self-focus. Real self-esteem isn’t about believing we are special or wonderful. Real self-esteem means being able to let go of the question Am I good enough?
Think about how you feel when you get together with a close friend. Your friend knows you, warts and all, but you’re not sitting there wondering, Does my friend like me? or Is my friend impressed by me? or Is my friend going to dump me? Those questions don’t even come up, because you’re not thinking about yourself. Instead, you’re completely focused on the conversation or activity with this friend, which brings a satisfying sense of ease and comfort.
Real self-esteem involves developing this type of fully engaged presence in what we are doing right now. When we’re not mentally standing back and judging ourselves, we are free to listen, and learn, and try, and experience, and do, and care…
So, how do we help kids with low self-esteem step beyond self-focus, so they can let go of their harsh self-evaluations? Research by Richard Ryan and his colleagues (2000, 2003) shows that the key is to address children’s fundamental needs for what we’ll call connection, competence, and choice. When these needs are met, children are less preoccupied with evaluating themselves and questioning their worth. Here’s a look at each of these needs.
Connection
Connection involves building meaningful relationships that create a sense of belonging. Satisfying relationships with family and friends are an important part of real self-esteem because they pull children beyond self-focus toward caring for others. Also, when children feel known, accepted, and valued by others, it’s easier for them not to question their worth. Love and concern for others— and just spending enjoyable time together—also give kids more interesting things to think about than their flaws.
Competence
Competence refers to gaining skills as well as learning how to learn, so children can do things that matter to them. For example, to have real self-esteem related to math, kids actually need to be able to do math problems and to know how to move forward when they hit a rough spot. They also need to understand that whatever skill level they have now is just a temporary stepping stone, because they have the capacity to grow and learn. Telling children that they’re good at math, without helping them develop genuine competence, promotes wishful thinking that won’t stand up to reality. On the other hand, when children are focused on learning and gaining competence, they’re less likely to believe that their whole worth as a human being is on the line with every performance or to see mistakes as proof that they’re inadequate.
Choice
Choice is about being able to make decisions, figure out what matters, and choose to act in ways that are consistent with personal values. No one likes to feel powerless or controlled by outside forces. Although children have far less opportunity than adults to decide what they want to do, they can still feel empowered by making choices. Choice allows children to muster internal motivation to move toward what is important to them, rather than stay mired in helplessness.
