Teaching your children to love themselves
Children need to learn to modulate and use their weaknesses, rather than letting the weakness control the child. Helping children to know themselves well and to manage themselves to best meet their overall goals is one of the most helpful gifts any parent can give a child. Here's how:
1. Know your child. Pay attention to what you love about him, and also to what drives you crazy. Those "negatives" may come out only with you -- parents have special privileges, after all -- but they probably emerge in the rest of his life too.
2. Accept your child’s weaknesses. Everyone has them. Think about those "negatives" in the context of our hypothesis that they may be the flip side of a strength. If she has trouble controlling her anger when her brother disrespects her, is she an equally passionate fighter against other injustices she perceives? Is his dawdling a sign of immense imagination -- like Calvin of Calvin and Hobbes, is he secretly Spaceman Spiff?
3. Help your child to understand her strengths as well as the areas she needs to learn to manage. Talk with your child about what you see. Be sure to frame it positively, starting with how you've noticed this wonderful thing about her. Be honest about how the flip side of this trait is a challenge to live with. Point out how that ends up being a problem for her, too, when she impacts negatively on other people.
One caveat to this: Your goal is to help her notice something about herself, and to learn to manage it, not to label her in such a way that she feels locked in to your expectations.
4. Contextualize - Children need to know that they don’t make mistakes because they are bad, but because they are human, and, in many cases, because they are children. This is especially important when she slips and feels bad about her progress. “I know you didn’t mean to yell at your friend when you got upset. You’ve been working hard not to lose your temper. I had a hard time managing my temper when I was eight too. It will get easier as you get older.”
5. Be patient. You may be amazed at the change after you begin talking about temperament, and you may not. Sometimes self awareness and clear intention is enough to effect remarkable changes. Sometimes you need to keep talking, keep reminding, keep exploring ways to manage whatever his challenge may be. And what works will evolve as he does. But once you've found a way to help your child see his whole self positively, he will be on the road to learning how to manage even the most challenging character traits.
