In the early stages of childhood, the development of self-esteem and the conception of self is crucial. This will depend on your child developing a level of self-esteem suitable to be happy and self-sufficient. Today from Aecetia, we bring you some tips to contribute to this development.
Helping our children to develop their self-esteem can be easy if you put into practice through a series of guidelines that we explain below.
What is self-esteem and why is that important for kids.
Self-esteem is the set of perceptions, thoughts, evaluations, feelings and behavioral tendencies directed towards our own person.
Having a good self-perception is important at any stage of our life, but as we mentioned earlier, it is essential to educate children to have a high self-esteem because it is directly related to how they will act, think and above all, it affects to interpersonal relationships.
Low self-esteem is the root of many of the problems that affect a large part of society today: there are people who, because of this low self-esteem, do not respect themselves, are dependent or are not able to control their own emotions.
When we are small, our brain is like a sponge, everything we see, hear or perceive we do and our repercussions in our personal development.
Self-esteem have been categorized in several stages:
High self-esteem: the person feels capable and valuable, able to face life, feels accepted as it is.
Low self-esteem: the person feels wrong as a person, feels that he has no value and is not able to deal with adversities successfully.
Average degree of self-esteem: it is in the line between the two previous states.
To properly develop our children’s self-esteem, we must take into account certain factors and enhance their self-recognition, self-acceptance, self-worth, self-respect and self-improvement.
When we help you to strengthen these aspects from a young age, our son will create a stronger personality that will help you overcome the adversities of life and be more likely to be happy. Here are some tips to increase your child’s self-esteem.
5 Tips to Increase Your Self Esteem
1.- Spend time with them
Our daily obligations and the demands of our work make it increasingly difficult to reconcile family and work life and without wanting to, situations can occur where we leave aside what really matters most, our children.
Dedicating one moment a day to complete care for your child will help reinforce the feeling that it is valuable and important to you.
Details such as turning off the TV or storing the phone so that we can focus all our attention on talking to him will help him feel more confident about himself.
It is also important to share with him the activities you enjoy. Sometimes we point children to too many extracurricular activities because we believe it is best for them or because we can take extra time to finish tasks that we have pending or catch up with the household chores.
In one case as in the other, try by all means leave in your planning leisure time to share with you. If you work outside and do not have much help at home, you might consider hiring some afternoons for someone to help you with the maintenance of your home so that you can dedicate that time to an activity that brings you together.
2.- Constructive criticism
When the child does something wrong there are two ways to correct it: by criticizing it personally or by focusing our observation on inappropriate behavior.
We must avoid making the child too guilty of the mistake made to avoid associating it with his own personality. In correcting bad behavior we have to try to focus on criticizing the action, not the person.
Try to maintain a positive language that will help you learn from your own mistakes and correct negative behaviors without creating a complex ending.
3.- Promote his autonomy
Many parents believe that making their children self-sufficient and independent is a task they must postpone by the time they are 18 and older. Nothing is further from reality.
The human being begins to take responsibility, or not to do it, from the first stage of his life, and the family is the first educating agent of the child.
To educate is to help our children be independent, autonomous, acquire necessary skills for decision making, have critical thinking and can stand on their own.
Autonomy must encourage it in several aspects:
Hygiene: we must teach our children to follow a series of rules of hygiene, food and physical appearance. So that they are acquiring healthy habits
Social relations: They must learn to socialize, sense of friendship, integration, have their own opinions and create their own personality.
Intellectual development: We must equip our children with tools for learning such as books, educational games, courses, cultural excursions, etc. This will make them more curious.
Leisure: We should not saturate our children with extracurricular tasks, as we mentioned above, we must let them play and have fun.
Responsibility: We must give them responsibility tasks from a young age and that they increase progressively at their age.
Comparisons: Do not compare your children with your siblings or friends, you may begin to feel inferior and increase your competitiveness.
4.- Set limits and be consistent with them
For our children to develop properly it is important to establish some rules that set limits to their behavior. These must be consistent and reasonable.
For example, if you tell your child to do homework before playing, do not let him do it backwards one day that you do not want to scold or be on top of him to do things in the designated order.
In this way it is possible to lay the foundations of a good discipline and sense of order, both pillars for the achievement of their goals when they are older and therefore a very important pillar for them to have high self esteem when they see that they are overcoming the challenges That they were planted.
5.- Accept him as he is
Give her unconditional love. You must know that you have support and that it is special. Let him understand that no one is perfect and that we all have a series of defects that we must accept.
Accept their preferences and interests, their rarities and weaknesses. Sometimes we have a very high image of what we want our children to become and we force it to follow a path that perhaps for him is not the most appropriate.
Observe what motivates you, what your passion and potential. Stick to classes you like and support your decisions, guiding you when you need them.
In this article we have shared some tips to help you promote your child’s self-esteem. If you apply some of them to your routine, you will see how within a reasonable amount of time you see results.
If you know someone else, share it with us. We’ll be back next week.