Speaker: How do you foster self-esteem in children? Coach Cynthia Brian explains self-worth takes route by encouraging and empowering your children, everything else follows.
Cynthia Brian: We live in a really tough society today and I want to talk about self-esteem and whether it's something that you are born with, something you learn, something that you master.
If you are fortunate enough to be born into a family like I was born into, I didn't know that there were dysfunctional families out there, but the majority of families today are not so loving and giving, and so the kids grow up without self-esteem. Do you know that every single day, a child hears 431 negatives, you are too tall, you are too short, you are too fat, why didn't you pick up fat, I told you a hundred times. These are not good messages for a kid. We have to spend everyday finding something good, we can love the child in hated behavior, but in order to foster self-esteem and to foster self-worth which I think is even more important to feel that you are important. You as a person, me as Cynthia, I am important to my family and my friends. That is the key to healthy relationship and how do you do that, how do you foster self-worth in kids? If you eliminate the ands and the buts.
You don't say, oh, you did a great job washing the dishes, but you spilled water all over the floor. What does the child hear? The child hears, I am not good enough, I don't know how to really wash the dishes because I spilled water. Instead, just stop it, you did a great job at washing the dishes, and I'll show you how to mop up the floor and that becomes a teaching lesson.
What we can learn our kids now that everything in life is both a lesson and a blessing, and the mistakes are okay. Give kids permission to make mistakes. We cannot live their lives for them, they can learn by some of the things that we have done, that when we foster forgiveness and communication and we give them lot's of love, unconditional love, then that's when they learn their self-worth.
I had an experience with my daughter when she was 16 and were very, very close, and we were -- my husband and I were going to go away for a romantic weekend and she wanted to stay and I said, no, you're going to stay with friends because I want to have an adult supervising you. I am not going to leave you home and I am not going to leave you with the keys of the house.
Well, she was so upset by that, she said, but Mom, I am a good girl, why aren't you trusting me? But it wasn't about trust, it was about, I wanted her to feel empowered that if she was just 16, if 18-year-old guys came and said, let's have a party at your house, she wouldn't know how to say no. Well, once we were away, we got a phone call that a party was going on, in our backyard and what had happened is that the word spread throughout the text messaging and that the kids have today, that her parent was out of town and to her credit, even though she hadn't invited anybody, she took responsibility for it. Any damage that was done, she paid for it, she went along with me to all the parents to let the other parents know and it was a lesson and forgiveness.
I had to forgive her, I had to forge ahead and she had to learn that she was responsible for her action. Interestingly now, that she is a few years older, for her now, she said that, that instance gave her more self-worth because she knew that she had the power to say no, and that she did the best that she could in the circumstances that happen. So give your kids power to empower them, give them responsibility, don't do their homework for them. Instead, help them with it and encourage them, always encourage them and find something good.
Speaker: How do you foster self-esteem in your child, post your parenting stories right here on PeopleJam.
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