It may surprise you to know that most of the emotional problems children encounter can be the result of a low and unhealthy level of self esteem.

The level of self esteem a child develops is a reflection of the child’s early experience in the family and the experience they have at school.

Children with a low level of self esteem may either develop to be very aggressive, violent and blaming, as the child is not able to control these negative emotions they can usually vet them by bullying.   

On the other hand the child may develop to be extremely passive, withdrawn, apathetic, shy, timid, fearful and depressed and again not knowing how to control these emotions they set themselves up to be the target of a bully.

Children with low self esteem suffer and pay a high price not only during childhood but also later on in their adult life.

As parents we are fortunately able to assist our children to develop high levels of self esteem.  You see children have two basic but very important needs to be met.

They need to know that they are unconditionally loved and unconditionally accepted.

It is unfortunate that sometimes these two basic needs are not met and as parents we can unintentionally cause our child a lot of insecurity by the way we communicate with their child.

Now I know that Children have a natural ability to test parents’ patience by either not helping with chores when asked to and I also can relate to the frustration parents experience when having to repeatedly ask a child to do something can result in the parent letting out this frustration by blurting out comments like “ You’re just plain lazy or you are good for nothing” 

Now we know that a parent does not mean this literally and these comments are usually rattled off out of frustration or anger.  However you must understand that the child’s subconscious mind takes everything you say literally.

Another example would be when a child displays a bad attitude or shows disrespect by answering back or throwing a tantrum when they don’t get their own way. 

I know most parents have experienced this type of behaviour and most would have probably reacted in anger and perhaps said something like: “Get out of my sight you make me sick” or “ When you carry on like this I don’t want to know you”. 

Once again this type of comment is said out of emotion, however once again you, as a parent, need to remember that the child does not realize that you are reacting out of frustration and anger so they do take the comment literally.

These types of comments cause the child to feel very insecure and not loved.

 This insecurity does little to build a child’s level of self esteem. In fact it is the catalyst to the development of a low level of self esteem.  The child being emotionally immature to be able to reason that the parent is angry reasons to themselves ‘if my own parents don’t want me around I must not be worth much’.

And ‘ if my parents don’t think I am good for anything then maybe  they are right.’

Now I know that the last thing a parent wants to do is to contribute in a negative way to the development of their child and I know that you as a loving parent would be interested in doing a health check on your child’s level of self esteem.

 The best way to start this is to identify whether your school age child is shy, timid, overly reserved, extremely quiet, attention seeking and clinging or does the child have a tendency to be aggressive and bullying?  If you find evidence that this is so, then you can suspect that these are usually indications that the child doubts his/her lovability.

 On the other hand if the child is frightened of and resistant to new changes, if they are fearful of failure, or easily upset by mistakes; if they have a tendency to be over nervous of school tests; or perhaps they has a tendency to expect perfection in all that they do or are overly diligent about school work; or perhaps even go to the other extreme and be evasive of homework then it is reasonable to suspect that these are indicators of the child’s doubts about his/her capability.

For more information as to how you can assist your child to develop a healthy level of self esteem and for more information relating to behavioural traits associated with both over-control protectors and under-control protectors I invite you to visit our consider our Metaphor bedtime story CD Series these can be of enormous benefit to assisting your child in overcoming emotional upsets.