Building a Child's Self-Esteem

Attachment Parenting, Childhood Accomplishments & Unconditional Love

Oct 9, 2008

Many parents worry about raising a child with a healthy self-esteem. Building self-esteem begins at birth and continues through childhood and into the teen years.

A child with a healthy self-esteem will have confidence in himself and his abilities. Self-esteem can serve as a protective armor that will help a child grow and get through the turbulent adolescent years to become a successful, confident adult. Fostering a healthy self-esteem in a child can be done by practicing attachment parenting, supporting childhood accomplishments and giving a child a strong foundation of unconditional love.

Practice Attachment Parenting

Dr. Sears, the father of the term attachment parenting, states that kids that are connected are confident and have the ability to realistically self-appraise. Attachment parenting is an important way to begin to raise connected children that have a healthy self-esteem.

The basic principles of attachment parenting result in parents being responsive to a baby’s needs. Parents who respond to baby’s cries and hold a baby frequently are fostering self-esteem in the child. The baby quickly learns that his needs are important and that he will be cared for and loved by his parents.

How a parent interacts with a baby also helps lay the foundation for a healthy self-esteem. Parents should react with kindness and compassion to a baby’s negative emotions, like fear, anger and sadness. Likewise, sharing in the baby’s discoveries and joys teaches the baby that he is important and likeable.

Support Childhood Accomplishments

In order to develop a healthy self-esteem, a child needs to learn how to do things on his own. Parents can help a child accomplish difficult tasks, set challenging, yet realistic, goals and offer encouragement to meet those goals. As a child grows, parents should step back to let him solve problems and complete tasks on his own.

A child will have many chances to learn how to be independent and competent as he grows. Parents should allow as much freedom as possible and only step in when the child is getting overly frustrated. A healthy self-esteem will flourish as a child develops his own special gifts.

To build confidence and self-esteem, a school-aged child can be given chores and allowed to participate in the age-appropriate activities that spark his interest. Chores allow a child to contribute to the home and family in a positive way. Activities that are challenging, but doable, give a child a sense of pride and a chance to set achievable goals.

Give Children a Strong Foundation of Unconditional Love

According to Gordon Neufeld, Ph.D., author of Hold on to Your Kids [Ballantine Books, 2004], modern parents make a mistake when they encourage their children to blend into a peer group in an effort to boost self-esteem. The self-esteem of peer-oriented children will always be dependent on the way others perceive them. A positive self-esteem means that children and teens consider themselves to be valuable even when they are being judged by others. Peer friendships can be fickle and superficial and can leave children, especially those dependent on them, devastated when they fail.

Instead of focusing on making a child likable to his peers, a parent should focus on loving the child unconditionally. The child should know that he is loved by his parents because he exists, not because of what he does, what he wears or who his friends are. A strong self-esteem comes from a strong foundation of unconditional love.

Fostering a healthy self-esteem in a child begins at birth and continues through the teen years. Parents can practice attachment parenting to build self-esteem in a baby and young child. Older children need confidence building accomplishments that can come from age-appropriate chores and activities. Parents of teens need to continue to show unconditional love to a child and not push him to look for self-esteem in a peer group.

Neufeld Ph.D., Gordon and Mate, M.D., Gabor. Hold on to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More than Peers. New York: Ballantine Books, 2004.

Ask Dr. Sears website, Attachment Parenting: Growing Up Connected, accessed October 8, 2008

The copyright of the article Building a Child's Self-Esteem in Parenting Methods is owned by Barb Hacker. Permission to republish Building a Child's Self-Esteem in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.