The Family Puzzle... Putting the Pieces Together
Session 2 - Encouragement - The Key to Your Child's Self-Image
Lesson 1 - 22 Ways To Enhance Your Child’s Self-Esteem
(Continued 2 of 3)
8. Avoid comparison; celebrate and honor your children’s differences.
9. Encourage cooperation instead of competition.
- Competition often results in children quitting if they can’t measure up.
- We want our children to build close relationships. It’s hard to maintain positive feelings about yourself or someone else when you want them to lose or to appear better than they are.
- Competition breeds conflict. Hurt feelings and arguments are often the result of competition. It is difficult to feel safe, open, trusting, and honest under these circumstances.
- When you compete, you strive to become number one. Therefore, you tend to withhold knowledge from others. As a result, the larger group loses out on valuable information.
- Where there is cooperation, children are more creative and flexible in their thinking.
- When children work as a team, they feel a sense of belonging. It is important to create this feeling of belonging so that children do not seek it from negative sources.
- On a noncompetitive team, children feel like they are valuable, contributing members, which encourages them to develop more self-confidence.
- Where there is cooperation, there is less stress and anxiety about losing or being eliminated. Therefore, their environment is more genuine, fun, and healthy.
- Competition teaches the concept of scarcity – there is not enough to go around, so I had better see that I get there first. Cooperation teaches the concept of abundance. By working together, we can create something far better than we could if we were working alone.
- When you compete, you are always comparing yourself to others. This leads to a false sense of security and arrogance because you feel better than others; or, it can make you feel discouraged because you feel inferior to others. This may lead to quitting.
- Competition breeds a feeling of separation and alienation. Cooperation creates a feeling of unity and togetherness.
- Competition can be eliminated by teaching the following concepts:
a) The value of doing your personal best instead of competing against others.
b) The “joy of doing” instead of the “joy of outdoing” someone else and being invested in a certain result.
c) The “joy of doing” instead of the “joy of winning.”
d) Understanding how much more can be accomplished by working as a team.
10. Help them feel valuable
- Ask their advice.
- Have them teach you something (like how to play).
- Show them ways they can be valuable to their sibling.
- Tell them specifically how they are valuable to the family team.
11. Follow their lead in an activity or play
For example, have your child lead the family in house cleaning, cooking, or a family meeting.
12. Treat them with respect
For example, walk at your toddler’s pace and avoid getting involved with your teen’s conflicts without their permission.
13. Spend time with them when they aren’t misbehaving
Parents often ignore their children when things are quiet and calm. We think it is our chance to get work done. However, if we only spend time with them when they are misbehaving, what message does that give them?
14. Teach them that it is their responsibility to keep themselves encouraged
Parents think that it’s their job to make their children happy. When something negative happens, we rush in to make them feel better. This teaches children that it is the parent’s job to make them happy. Allow them to struggle. They won’t learn this important lesson if we do it for them.
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