Like everything important in our life, self-esteem is laid in the communication of a child with adults. Until the age of eight, children see themselves through our eyes. The way we treat them, the ratings we give them, our ways of punishing and rewarding them, they all learn, and on this basis their self-esteem is built by adolescence.
Each of us has self-esteem. And many psychologists believe that it belongs to the core of personality. It is also interesting for writers: Dostoyevsky’s classic novel Crime and Punishment was written about it, and Philip Roth’s modern The Case of the Tailor (Limbus Press, 2003) is about her.
Like everything important in our life, self-esteem is laid in the communication of a child with adults. Until the age of eight, children see themselves through our eyes. The way we treat them, the ratings we give them, our ways of punishing and rewarding them, they all learn, and on this basis their self-esteem is built by adolescence.
It would seem that praise the child more often and more — and you will get a person with high self-esteem. If only everything were that easy! Vague praise is harmful. Well, we tell the child that he is “smart” or “beauty”, but he doesn’t care. Because these words are incomprehensible to him, behind them there is nothing that he owns. He has no instrument with which to reproduce what he has been praised for. The child, regardless of himself, is smart, this is not his personal achievement. Today the daughter is beautiful, but who tomorrow? In other words, such praise only increases the child’s anxiety, because it does not contain a strategy for achieving, maintaining and reproducing significant qualities. And kids always want to be liked. They know for sure: if adults like you, you will have many benefits and all sorts of pleasures. How can a child arbitrarily achieve that state that important adults call «beauty» when he does not yet have his own criteria for assessing appearance, intelligence, or any other valuable quality of his own?
HOW WE COMMUNICATE WITH THEM, WHAT ASSESSMENTS WE GIVE THEM, WHAT WAYS WE PUNISH AND ENCOURAGE — THEY LEARN ALL THIS.
A very dangerous situation arises. Imagine that you are in contact with aliens. They either do good or bad for you. When they do well, they explain that this is because you have, say, “noos”. And you don’t even know what it is and how often to show this very “nus” so that you feel good. How will you feel? Terrible. And the child feels the same way when he is praised for all sorts of “nouses”.
Praise for deeds. The more specific the praise, the clearer to the child that adults appreciate what they think is good. Requirements can be anything, even tiny, as long as the child understands how to fulfill them. Help set the table. Make your bed in the morning. Put away the toys, take out the trash. Such desirable actions should always be praised. This is how a son or daughter will learn and learn to accept good things about himself, understand how to change behavior to achieve his goal, and as a result, the child will have adequate self-esteem — an indispensable tool that allows, without generalizing and without going to extremes, to determine whether everything I have in me to solve an urgent life problem.