A healthy sense of believing in one’s self is at the core of a happy, productive, and successful life. We want our children to develop healthy self-esteem.

Unfortunately, the more concerned we become about our children’s self-esteem, and the more we focus on building a strong sense of self, our efforts often create the opposite result.

In other words, in trying to build their self-esteem, we weaken their self-confidence. While this might not make sense initially, when we are observant, we can see this in action. Whenever I work harder at esteeming my children…than they do…I see them losing confidence.

It would be like taking your child to the gym to get a workout, and you carry them around the gym. They cannot develop muscle in that way. Likewise, children do not develop the “muscle of self-esteem” if they carry too much weight.

To avoid this, consider these three secrets to nurturing self-esteem.

Your children are always esteeming themselves…either positively or negatively.

Self-esteem is not a thing. It’s a way of thinking about ourselves, and a set of beliefs about who we are. Children do not inherently have negative messages in their heads about themselves, but unfortunately, they pick up these messages from the world around them.

Healthy self-esteem emerges in the absence of negative, critical esteem robbing experiences. Therefore…

Limit your children’s exposure to negative esteem robbing experiences.

Children can learn to think negatively about themselves based upon a variety of esteem robbing experiences. I would encourage you to ask these questions:

a.) What do my children see and hear? Do they hear critical parents? Do they hear lots of negative comments? Are their parents critical of others, or critical of themselves? Criticism in the “outside world” only breads internal criticism.

b.) How do kids entertain themselves? What shows do they watch? What videos do they play? Do they live an active life, or is theirs a passive life where “the box” entertains them? Too often children are entertained passively, and they escape from the real-life requirements of the world, such as the demand for exercise, or mastering relationships with peers, or engaging in the responsible, academic effort.

Such passive activity is often an escape from living life, and such escape never produces success…it never produces joy…it never builds resilience and strength.

c.) Do they hear parents constantly nagging? Nagging is like sending two messages. The verbal message is, “Take care of that.” The non-verbal message is saying…” you’re doing it wrong…you’re doing it wrong…you can’t get it right.”

The impact of nagging is that your children hear that message as one of failure and incompetence. If you are a constant nagger, then understand that your children are constantly hearing the “hidden message” that they are not doing it right.

Stop trying so hard to build self-esteem and allow their inner strength to emerge.

There are two ways that our efforts can destroy the emergence of healthy self-esteem. First, when we begin to offer constant praise and encouragement, and offer repeated statements about how wonderful and unique and smart and intelligent our kids are, we don’t help them in any way. Just test this. Notice if your kids begin to behave in ways that reflect a greater sense of self-esteem. You’ll find that it doesn’t work.

The second way that we can undermine self-esteem is by continuing to correct children when they complain against themselves. In other words, children will sometimes make highly self-critical statements. They complain about their appearance, or about their intelligence, or how other kids don’t like them.

As your kids offer these complaints, notice that they are rarely offered in a manner suggesting a desire to solve a problem. Instead, these are self-directed complaints.

What can you do?

Rather than trying to repeatedly counter these complaints, become completely disinterested in them. Why? Because these are lies! Children are lying about themselves, and you are not interested in such self-directed lies.

The more that you engage in the self-directed complaint (or lie), the more that you validate that complaint about your child. It’s as if your very effort to try to have them drop that complaint about themselves deepens the power of the complaint.

If children are predictably able to obtain the attention and energy of the family when they offer negativity, their brains begin to believe that the world cares about negativity. This is a formula for failure.

So turn this around. Walk away from these repeated self-complaints and lies.

Instead, reserve your attention for those moments when there is a positive event. Reserve your attention to notice a moment of cooperation…a moment of effort…a moment of responsibility…a moment of kindness. Put your energy into what you want WHILE IT IS HAPPENING and notice that their esteem will begin to grow.

Behind these three simple principles are the tools that give you true power and influence as a parent. For a complete solution to this problem, check out my new program, The Confident Child. You will find it on my website at www.TerrificParenting.com.