By: Gabriela Córdova Olguín (psychologist)

One of human basic needs is to feel good with oneself. This way of feeling good with oneself comes from childhood and it is called SELF-ESTEEM.

In order to get to a personal satisfaction and a true enjoyment of life, it is necessary to have a high self-esteem and this is only possible if one accepts oneself with all the faults and defects that one may have.

The best present a parent can give a child is helping him to have a high self-esteem, in this way we will help our children to have confidence in what they can do, to be willing to learn new things every day, to have an acceptable and satisfactory social life, and above all, to enjoy what they do.

On the other hand, when self-esteem is low, the child does not develop appropriately at all, he is not able to enjoy his activities, and he starts to develop an inferiority feeling that will lead to an attitude of criticism towards others in the future. Children with low self-esteem becomes sensitive to any comment, they worry too much about what others think of them and loses interest in what they must do.

Through their development, children have pleasant, unpleasant, painful and distressing experiences. Keeping a positive self-esteem depends on how successful the integration of their positive and negative images is, that means, to feel good sometimes and bad some other times, but above all, the feeling of being valuable is what is going to make them stronger to face mistakes, faults, frustration and external criticism

As parents we must know that there are certain conditions that help children feel good:

• Acceptance is essential; the most important thing is that parents accept their children just the way they are, with their virtues and defects. Children grow, and the image they have of themselves depends on how people around them treat them and what they say about them. If they are well treated they think they are valuable people; on the other hand if they are told to be “good for nothing”, ugly, or that they bother the people around them, then they will grow with the idea that they do not deserve anything and that they are not important to others.

• Respect. This characteristic is very significant and it is associated with those values that influence our society today. When adults yell at children, mock at them or shut them up aggressively saying that they do not know what they are talking about, little kids may react hitting other children, arguing or becoming shy and it is probable that they think it is natural that others treat them the way they were treated.

• Limits are important for kids because they constitute guidelines to know what it is expected from them. In this way the kid can understand what happens if he/she obeys or disobeys the rules and the consequences, and he/she will feel more secure. Without limits kids do not know if they are acting good or bad. It is very important to ask kids to follow the rules with love and firmness so that they have a good reaction; on the other hand if you do it harshly and without love, the kid will try to disobey.

• Support. Kids must learn what they want and make their own decisions and set and achieve their goals, when children know what they want and how to achieve it or what they need to achieve it, they focus all their efforts towards that goal and feel a great satisfaction when they achieve it. This is achieved little by little with the guide of the parents letting the child free to choose, for example, notebooks and pencils for school, clothes, activities, knowledge, likes and dislikes, etc. Support is different from overprotection, the latest means that parents solve all kids´ problems, talk for them, inventing pretexts so that they do not look bad before others, always justifying his behavior; in this way, kids will always need someone to solve their own problems, being always in a less favorable condition in regard with others because they do not know how to act and do not find their own answers to be successful.

Let us give our children the possibility of being and feeling good with themselves, this will contribute so that they appreciate themselves and appreciate what they do, think and feel, only if they appreciate themselves they will be able to appreciate others and this will result in better labor and personal relationships fulfillment in the future. If they have in addition a hobby, they will feel complemented and enriched as human beings. If you, as a parent want your children to be able to do something and face problems with confidence, you can help them by not telling them what to do or how to do it.

Every time children achieve something they feel more secure, self-confident and become more independent, on the other hand they will try new things and their self-esteem will grow.

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