Within our Maternity and Paternity Course we have talked about self-esteem in children.
But it is still a topic that worries parents a lot and we are going to analyze the aspects that will most influence their development and the usual situations that can be a challenge to maintain or an opportunity to increase it.
Aggression, rejection and mockery
Children learn from their environment and, unfortunately, not everyone is used to being treated with respect and being cared for. Then, inevitably, in relationships with other children they reproduce these behaviors: the mockery, the aggression, the emptiness. And it is hard to see how a child suffers from this.
Faced with situations like these, we should not deny what the child suffers or take away from it with the usual "are things for children." They are not, or, at least, in children educated in empathy and respect, they should not be. And it is not healthy to accept physical or emotional aggressions by letting them pass as if they did not matter because they are suffered by a child.
No one has the right to harm us. That may happen because of lack of attention or ignorance, and, in those cases, we can talk with our child to expose his feelings to the other or, in serious cases, direct our concern to the other adults responsible for the children involved.
You don't have to be friends with everyone
But when there is no agreement or improvement, I think we should teach our children to make their limits clear and break the relationship if it does not develop in a climate of mutual respect. Better to have few friends than to have fake friends or interact with those who harm us. Is that not valid in children as it is with adults?
Teaching our children that they don't deserve to be mistreated nor damaged by others and who do not have to endure it, we are giving them the most important lesson of self-esteem in life, which will allow them to react consciously and protectively in the future.
Before a new person who comes into our lives It is good to be open and willing to achieve a good relationship, which, depending on the affinity, may become friendship or simple cordiality. That is great and acting kindly and sympathetically helps us all expand and maintain the networks of human relationships. But up there.
Do not open your heart to the first change to a stranger, friendship is built on trust and mutual respect and is not purchased with submission or immediate delivery. And I think that teaching is also positive for children. Friends are one thing, other acquaintances and children with whom to share a kind of friendly game time, another.
I am not talking about returning violence with violence, but about cutting off any aggression, asking for help at the first sign and learning to relate exclusively to people who make them grow and be happy. You don't have to be friends with everyone. The sooner this is understood without guilt, the better.
Egocentrism
In addition there is another circumstance, which, if we continue to happen, in children, in a phase of their egocentric psychic development, is more notable: identify any behavior as a personal rejection.
If other children are playing something and do not automatically include it or do not want to play what our child proposes, they will not always do it because of rejection or bad intention, they simply prefer to play something else or are not thinking of integrating anyone, but in the fun.
That is when our role as educators is more important, explaining what is happening not as a problem to him, but as normal game dynamics.
The novelty
When, for example, our son has a little friend and he, when another child arrives, turns to him, it is not that he despises our son, but that get carried away by the novelty or the desire to see the other.
We can, then, help you remember situations in which the roles were changed and you will soon assimilate that it is something normal but, in addition, you will learn to be careful with the feelings of others and, with your own maturation and example, you will introduce into the group more empathic dynamics and we will reinforce their self-esteem.
They want everyone to be their friends
But frustration It exists and it is essential not to deny them the right to feel it and teach them, in addition, that for many desires they have to be accepted and valued, nothing is more important than being oneself and that the group should not change them or demand change.
They want everyone be your friends, but that is not always possible, in fact, I think it is not desirable, we cannot be friends with everyone, although we must respect them.
We can tell you, since we are your reference, all these people who have crossed our lives in all our years: people with whom we have laughed, played, cried, lived, fought and even hurt each other. In the end, surely, of those alone we have two or three true friends left, so, in reality, what matters are the experiences and the people who remain faithful to a friendship, the stars, not those who pass like fleeting comets to disappear.
The radical independence It is a fundamental value, which allows us and will allow them to know and respect each other, being true to themselves and to those who deserve their love, not being carried away by the tide or the mass.
I think that all those sometimes negative and sometimes simply difficult experiences are orPortunities to take advantage of to increase your self-esteem and his personal independence. Let us take advantage of them.
