Building Self-Esteem In Children

By

Randy Brazzel MA, LPC, LMFT

  1. Encouragement – Recognize your child’s strengths and give them positive feedback.
  2. Respect – Your child is a person and deserves to be treated with love and respect.
  3. Guidance – Teach your child what you want him/her to know. Don’t expect them to magically know what to do or how to do the things you expect of them. Teach them how to respect themselves.
  4. Flexibility – Allow your child to make mistakes. Allow your child to develop his/her own ways of doing things.
  5. Give Responsibility – Show faith in your child’s abilities.
  6. Encourage Participation – Encourage your child to be involved in the decision making process.
  7. Ask For Opinions – Ask you child for his/her opinion and let them make suggestions.
  8. Recognition – Recognize you child’s efforts and improvements in behavior.
  9. Have Positive Expectations – If you look for positive things to happen your child will learn to be positive.

Remember: No one is born with low self-esteem. We learn to feel bad about ourselves when we have been treated badly for a long time. When we are treated with Love and Respect we learn to love and respect ourselves.