Teenagers and Children and Addressing Their Low Self-Esteem? Articles | Parenting

By: Parenting Procedures

Where low self-esteem gets particularly dangerous in teenagers and children is when their desire for uniform approval results in their not saying “no’ to drugs, alcohol, illicit sex, and other harmful behaviors.

If you want a child or teenager to have the boldness to stand against the bad wishes of the crowd then you must encourage and help them maintain a high level of self-esteem. Without high self-esteem, the teenager thinks he or she cannot amount to much. These same persons will not set out to challenge themselves and have a healthy self-confidence that much can be accomplished with the right attitude and effort. We as adults must encourage our kids to have high self-esteem.

The teenager goes through many changes rather quickly and their emotions go wild. The side effects are that they get fearful and confused. This emotional roller coaster also can cause them to not have a high opinion of themselves and the result is they make poor choices that could affect the rest of their lives.

Of course as parents, you need to be able to spot some of the indicators of a child or teenagers having issues with their self-esteem. These indicators include:

• Negative Self-talk. Your child will start to engage in negative self-talk. You will hear them always speaking lowly of themselves and be extremely difficult to encourage. They will see the challenges they face as impossible hurdles and they will be very difficult to interact with when it comes to personal relationships. Even when they are successful, they won’t take a compliment.

• They will all of the sudden change the way they look and how they take care of themselves. One day your child who always took care of his or her appearance with great detail now doesn’t even bother to wear clothes that are ironed, comb their hair, or even take a shower. You’ll notice that they really don’t even bother with their appearance because in their opinion no one would notice anyways.

• You cannot get them to try anything new. Kids and teenagers with healthy attitudes usually want to try new things, new challenges, and have fun in different ways. A child who becomes a creature of habit and won’t step out to try anything new may have self-esteem issues.

• He or she takes perfection to the extreme. A child who thinks he or she cannot do something will hide it by trying to be perfect. This will manifest itself when the child cannot seem to take any criticism at all. Also, this manifests itself when the child cannot accomplish anything because of trying to be perfect in one thing and it keeps anything else from getting done.

Of course recognizing these problems is only half the battle. The next step to take is to begin helping your child overcome self-esteem issues. Here are a few ways:

• Set the example. Practice what you preach. If you are in the habit of setting unreachable high standards on yourself then your children will probably try to be like you.

• Be careful what you tell your child. Make sure any criticism offered to your child is constructive and genuine praise is given when appropriate.

• Always make your child feel important and secure. Make sure your child knows that he or she is important and that they feel secure in this.

• Affection goes a long way with your child. You show your kids their value by giving praise, hugs, and high-fives. You make them feel worth your praise, attention, and love.