How To Help Your Children Develop Good Self-Esteem

[eddienzoeysmom]

by Christopher Ebbe, Ph.D.

GOALS:
1. The children will feel valuable and worthwhile and will believe that they are important to you.

2. The children will believe that they are deserving of pleasure, joy, and good things in life.

3.   The children will perceive themselves to be basically OK and "good" rather than "bad," so that they can believe that they are deserving, and they can seek to achieve their goals in the world without having to worry about hiding their "bad" parts from others.

4.   The children will be free to understand the truth, so that they will know what is in their best interest, and so that they will not have to restrict themselves so that others can feel secure or happy.

5.   The children will believe themselves to be basically equal to tohers (and not inferior, or superior).

6.   The children will feel pleasure and joy in being themselves and in using their abilities to meet their needs.

7. The children will be generally successful in goal attainment, so that they consistently create good outcomes for themselves.

8. The children will believe and feel that they are "good enough," as well as OK.

9. The children will take good care of themselves and treat themselves well.

10. The children will be able to be autonomous when it is in their best interest to do so (to understand things differently from how others understand things, and to do what is in their best interest regardless of what others do).

BEHAVIORS
1. Give your children unquestioned right to be alive.

2.   If you are ambivalent about having the children or do not want the chidlren, get some help to resolve and hopefully change those feelings.

3.   Take good care of your children--confidently, with a spirit of love, and with the belief that what you have to give as a parent is good.

4,   Meet your children's needs reasonably, promptly, and reliably, especially as infants, so that they learn to feel deserving of good things, and to help them establish trust in the world.

5.   Give your children affection and love generously, first through feeding and skin contact, and later in ways that meet the emotional and security needs of older children.

6.   Give your children the unquestioned right to seek and to feel pleasure and joy, and don't restrict their happiness with your own attitudes about pleasure and joy.

7.   Recognize and acknowledge your children's needs, feelings, and behaviors, thus helping them to know that they are seen and that they have an impact on you.

8.   Accept your children's needs and feelings, so that they can feel that their fundamental selves are OK.

9.   Be honest with your children.   Don't lie to them to cover up for yourself or for others.   Let them see the truth about you (and that despite the truth, you are still OK).

10. Be understanding about what your children are experiencing, through your empathy and through remembering what it was like to be a child yourself.   Express your understanding to them.

11.   Accept your children as they are in all respects, including their needs, feelings, and behaviors, so that they can feel that their fundamental selves are OK. (You do not have to like everything about them or accept everything that they do, but treat them in such a way that they know that it is OK to be themselves.)

12. Help your children to understand the difference between the basic, real self of a person and the superficial show that that person may put on (appearance, status, position, etc.) and to center their valuing on the real self.

13.   Show your children that they are valuable, worthwhile, important, and deserving of nurturance and good things in life.   Show them and tell them how important they are to you.

14.   Make sure that your children do not blame themselves for mistreatment they receive from others.

15.   Treat your children with respect at all times (even when disciplining them).

16.   Help your children believe that they have the same right as anyone else to the good things in life that are available to everyone.

17.   Treat your children basically as equals in the family.   Respect their equal rights, and demonstrate that they deserve equal treatment (even though they may have different rights and duties than you).   
Make their needs just as important as anyone else's in the family, including your own.

18.   Make sure that resources (food, money, etc.) are distributed equitably and fairly among all family members, including yourself, and that your distribution demonstrates the basic equality of all.

19.   Don't ask your children to feel bad, to feel bad about themselves, or to restrict themselves so that someone else can feel better.   Don't force harmful, negative relationships on them.

20.   Help your children to feel joy in being themselves, by showing happiness in being yourself and by showing your pleasure in their accomplishments and expressions of themselves.   Encourage them to express themselves and to take pleasure in being themselves in the world.

21. Openly praise and encourage your children's efforts and successes.   Actively provide comfort and support in times of frustration and failures.

22.   Find things to like about your children (and tell them that you like them).

23.   Help your children construct positive self-concepts by making positive statements to them about themselves whenever possible.

24.   When they are ready,   help your children understand that others' opinions and feelings about them (including your own) are only opinions and feelings, may not be "true," and do not express the whole 
truth about them.

25.   When they are ready, encourage your children to take increasing charge of their self-esteem--to decide for themselves how to feel about themselves instead of allowing the opinions and feelings of 
others to control their self-esteem and automatically feeling bad about themselves because of the judgments and reactions of others.

26.   Allow your children to develop as unique individuals.   Emjoy the unfolding individuals which your children are becoming.   Tolerate some differences between them and yourself in feelings, opinions, and views.   Value them if they are different from you.

27.   Hold appropriate, clear, consistent expectations and standards for your children, which can be readily understood and met.   Help them learn how appropriate, humane standards are chosen and modified.

28.   Don't cause your children to see themselves as "bad."   Distinguish clearly between your acceptance of your child and your acceptance or non-acceptance of his/her behavior.

29.   Be satisfied and content with your children (and with your own efforts at childrearing).   Help them to be satisfied with themselves. 

30.   Don't compare your children with other children, either to build their pride or to shame them.   (They are OK just the way they are.)

31.   Help your children learn appropriate self-control and responsibility (so that they can be successful in the world and can create consistently good outcomes for themselves).   Help them to develop positive 
reasons for controlling themselves, rather than continuing to use only negative childhood methods like guilt, self-criticism and self-punishment.

32.   Help your children learn how to get along comfortably with others and in contexts outside your family.   Help your children understand the impact of their behaviors on others.

33.   Help your children understand the impact on their self-esteem of their relationships with others.

34.   Help your children learn to expect and insist on reasonable treatment from others, and to leave relationships in which they are mistreated, demeaned, or abused.

35.   Help your children learn to take good care of themselves and treat themselves well, by taking good care of them yourself and by taking good care of yourself.

36.   Set an example for your children of having good self-esteem--being pleased, satisfied, and happy with yourself.

37.   Teach your children how to provide self-support--how to comfort themselves and how to use their reasoning, values, and understanding to make their own reasonable and humane assessments of themselves and their behavior.

38.   Give special support to children who are victims of trauma or who chronically receive negative messages about themselves from others (including children who have had severe physical trauma, been abused, had special problems in school, or lost a parent).

Order his book: http://www.amazon.com/How-Feel-Good-About-Yourself/dp/1587411113/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1253485052&sr=1-1