The building of your child’s self-esteem starts early. Self-esteem means learning to accept who you are. It means realizing that you have imperfections and still choosing to love yourself. Each new accomplishment, large and small, builds on your child’s self-esteem. There are many ways parents can help build their children’s self-esteem including offering encouraging words.
In 365 Ways To Help Your Children Grow, by Shelia Ellison and Barbara Ann Barnett, the authors offer several innovative ways to help your children build their self-esteem. For example, they recommend a Feel Good Notebook. Each member of your family receives a small spiral notebook or journal to write in. Each night after dinner or before bed, have everyone write six things that made them feel good that day. In this way, you focus on the positive things that happen and avoid thinking only about the bad things. Family members can either share their thoughts or keep them private. For kids who are too young to write, they can draw pictures or have someone write their list for them.
Another idea is to Outline the Good Qualities . In this activity draw an outline of each person’s hand on a separate piece of paper. Then take one hand at a time and talk about that person— what you like about them, how they contribute to the family, etc.—and then write down all these things inside and around the hand. When you are finished, hang up the hands for everyone to see.
Planting Positive Seeds of Thought is another great idea to build self-esteem. “If you want high self-esteem you don’t plant seeds of negative thought”, the authors tell us. In this activity, family members write one seed of positive self-talk on at least five pieces of small paper. Then fold and take the paper outside, dig a hole and bury them. Plant something on top of them or sprinkle seeds that will grow into something beautiful as a reminder that you have to plant positive thoughts in your mind in order for them to grow.
The book offers many more activities to bolster self-esteem, including:
Have the family sit in a circle and finish this sentence, “We are a great family because…”
Have your child create a scrapbook .
Before going to bed at night, think about something nice a family member did that day and write them a note or draw a picture about it and give it to them at breakfast.
Sit down with your child and make a list of all the things they like about themselves.
This is a wonderful book with chapters on self-motivation, communication, manners and more. In upcoming blogs I’ll talk about some of these issues.
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