By asking this question, we enter the field of self-esteem, so in other words, the theme of this occasion is how to nurture your child’s self-esteem in such a way that you help him to know himself and at the same time to accept and respect himself . Shall we start?
HOW TO HELP YOUR CHILD TO KNOW HIMSELF
This objective goes far beyond calling our children champion or princess and is that if we reflect a little, what message do we send each one who calls them that? Of course the intention is that they are positive messages, but it escapes us that constantly calling a child “champion” sends him the message that we hope he always wins. Does that mean it is always on trial?
Are we not predisposing him to put fighting, dominance, competitiveness first, and perhaps leaving aside other values such as compassion, solidarity and generosity? And what about the “princesses”? When we call a girl a princess, what are we putting the accent on? In beauty, glamor, perhaps superficiality? Of course, the concept of princesses today includes being warriors, but they are still stereotypes; the same as the champions.
What really nurtures a child’s self-esteem is to receive the genuine recognition of all the characteristics that make up their personality by their parents, ALL. This means that we really know our children, that we get involved with them, with their wants and needs, with their dreams and fears.
Isn’t that part of being a human being? Knowing our son deeply will allow us to know their qualities and strengths to support them, as well as identify their negative characteristics and weaknesses (yes, as perfect as we see our children, they also have them) to help them manage them in the best possible way.
One risk that we run as parents is to try to give our children what we lacked in our own childhood; And I don’t necessarily mean material things. It may be that as girls we are left wanting to win some swimming competition and we insist that our daughter do it because we consider it to be something very good.
Or how about we wanted to learn to play a musical instrument as children and we also enrolled our son in piano lessons because he is very good. Nobody in their right mind would question the benefits that exercise or musical education bring to children’s training, but the mistake is in putting our expectations before the real abilities and desires of our children. The picture worsens when we want to direct the steps of our children along the path that we “know is in their best interest” or that which has been traveled by members of previous generations of the family.
It is a challenge to stay as neutral as possible and accompany them to discover which of the enormous wealth that this world offers makes them happy, without imposing our expectations, dreams, desires, etc.
To the extent that we can recognize their own qualities, virtues, and abilities, without regretting that they do not have those with which we dream, we will be teaching them to recognize and accept themselves as they are; We will be nurturing and reinforcing their self-esteem and helping them to not desperately seek acceptance from other people in the future, because they will have received the message that just as they are, their genuine way of being is very good.