Self Esteem - Building self esteem and self confidence...

It can be very difficult to watch your child endure social situations that cause so much suffering on his or her self-esteem levels. The inclination is often to protect children from feeling bad by removing them from the situation or stepping in to make it better. For example, when my little sister hid behind her mother's legs rather than say hello to a new child, her mother would say, "Marisa is just a little shy.

She is very happy to meet you, though!" Or when my best childhood friend felt afraid at his friend's bowling party, his father took him home only minutes after they arrived. Although parents do this with the best intentions, it is almost always a bad idea. By stepping in to make things right - by speaking for your daughter or making it easy for your son to leave an uncomfortable situation, you wind up reinforcing your child's fears.

By understanding this, you know about the importance of exposure, of facing your fears gradually and repeatedly until the anxiety associated with the situation loses its intensity and fades away. This principle applies to children as much as it does to adults. The difference, of course, is that parents are in a position to inhibit their child's exposure to low self-esteem provoking situations.

When children are very young, particularly prior to age 8 or 9, you have a lot of power to guide them in the right direction when it comes to increasing their social confidence. As they become older, particularly when they become teenagers, parental influence is often less intense. Teenagers, as anyone who has ever encountered one knows, don't like being told what to do. Consequently, parents need to figure out ways to help their teenagers without getting into a power struggle with them.

This is a very important aspect of helping a child of any age, knowing how much to push, and finding ways to get the child to buy in to the program. In our experience, this is the piece of the puzzle that parents often have the most problems with. Children will usually resist doing things that make them uncomfortable, and telling them that it is for their own good rarely works. We have found that parents who spend time explaining the plans to their children beforehand tend to experience the least resistance. Depending on the child's age and level of understanding, this explanation may vary.