Q:Our daughter has had a rough time at school, and even though her Grade 4 teacher is more supportive than her previous teachers were, our daughter does not want to go to her classes.
She had her fill of criticism when she was in Grades 2 and 3 and her self-worth is rock bottom.
How can we best help our daughter recover her sense of self-esteem?
A:You are probably tempted to give your daughter mountains of praise and perhaps you should give in to that temptation. I am not sure why people are reluctant to praise children.
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Children are no different than the rest of us. If you love to sit in a climate of praise, why wouldn’t your daughter also enjoy it?
Don’t stop with praise. We get positive rewards from two sources. The first is from being sensitive to the needs of other people.
The second is from the contributions we make to the well-being of others in our families or communities.
Your daughter’s ability to be sensitive to the needs of other people starts inside of herself.
She can start by identifying and talking about her feelings. Then it is a matter of recognizing similar feelings in other children. The more success she has here, the more success she will have with her school friends. Her self-worth will increase as she contributes to others.
Children are getting by these days without doing chores. Perhaps this is the outgrowth of an era when their parents, as children growing up, were overburdened with too many chores.
Your daughter should contribute to the well-being of the house. As she understands that she is a giver in the family and not just a receiver, her self-worth will improve.
At nine, she is young enough to change her self-concept to positive from negative. But don’t wait too long.
Our studies tell us that children respond more quickly to help before they are 10 years old. Change is not impossible for children later but it is more difficult.
Jacklin Andrews is a family counsellor from Saskatchewan. Contact: jandrews@producer.com.
