Helping children develop high self-esteem is one of the most important tasks of parents.
Parents are the most important people for their children, they are the ones who most influence their lives and the task of seeing themselves as individuals, they are also sources of comfort and safety for children.
- Parents also act as mirrors.
- They are the ones who help their children look inside them.
- So it is so important to cultivate acceptance in children.
Children always seek approval from parents to be accepted, and this can be experienced so intensely that it can last in time and generate frustration in adulthood.
When parents accept their children and truly appreciate them, they provide a psychological shield that will make them stronger throughout their lives, if children do not have this recognition on the part of their parents, they must achieve this acceptance for themselves as adults, but before that. they can experience many self-esteem issues.
Children learn much more from their parents’ attitudes than just words, if these attitudes are of love, affection, and safety, the child will learn that it is important and loved and these will be his first impressions of his worth and esteem. If these attitudes are derogatory and indifferent, the child will understand that he is not loved and may feel frustrated and desperate.
Acceptance does not mean permissiveness, but you accept and love your child as he is, with his virtues and flaws, without having to model him in your image and likeness. If a lot of rigidity is imposed on education, children leave, lie for fear of being completely, end up hiding their personality traits and become people without authenticity.
Not recognizing children’s potential can cause us to lose the opportunity to increase their self-esteem. It is essential that children feel listened to and that their parents are interested in them. When we listen to someone, the message we send is that the person is important to us and what they say interests us, but listening must be sincere and participatory.
Recognizing and validating children’s emotions is critical. If we label your feelings “bad?” Or we make them repress and deny them, the result can be destructive to self-esteem: an insincense behavior and a loss of connection to their feelings, leaving them speechless.
We must bear in mind that we can only have good feelings when we also express those that are unpleasant and uncomfortable.
Therefore, telling children what to feel, comparing them to others, mocking them with sarcasm, tricking them into denying their feelings, or using threats and punishments for how they feel, are very common mistakes that parents inadvertently engage with. but this can lead to a denial of your feelings. By denying these feelings, children hide them in places in their minds where they refuse to access them, making it difficult to solve outstanding problems.
To help our children express and cope with their intense negative feelings, we can:
We must not forget one of the most powerful elements that parents have to strengthen their children’s self-esteem: language.
In every interaction with children we leave a little of our identity in them, so it is so important to pay attention to the words and tone of voice that we use when we approach them, trying to use a language that promotes self-esteem.
Self-esteem language is like describing behavior without prejudice, distinguishing a child’s value from his or her behavior. Faced with a situation where the child has misled, we must show that we do not approve of his attitude in this situation, but we do not disapprove of him as a person and/or individual, and finally, we recognize the child’s feelings and validate his experience.
It is important to note that as parents we also have a duty to be emotional and empowering instructors, so that children live safer when they acquire autonomy and independence, so discipline is so necessary, but it should not be used as an aggression. about the individuality of the child, but as a means to create a safe environment that facilitates learning.