How to boost your kid’s self-esteem

The concept of self-esteem can seem abstract. And when it comes to improving your child’s self-esteem, it can be an uphill battle for parents. 

But host Dr. Andy Kahn has some practical strategies for boosting your child’s self-esteem that he’ll share on this episode of Parenting Behavior.

We’d love to hear from you. You can email us at ParentingBehavior@understood.org.

Related resources

• The importance of positive self-esteem for kids

• ADHD and self-esteem: What to say to your child

• Why kids say negative things about themselves  

Timestamps

(0:47) What is self-esteem?

(2:15) Practical strategies

(7:37) Social media and self-esteem

(10:41) The importance of love and care

Episode transcript

Andy: The concept of self-esteem can be really complicated and a loaded issue for parents. And the idea about self-esteem is a little bit abstract, a little bit hard to comprehend at times. So, when we talk about improving your child's self-esteem, this is something that can be really hard to do. But I'm going to help you get through this today.

This is "Parenting Behavior," and I'm your host, Dr. Andy Kahn. I'm a licensed psychologist, a parent, and I've been working with kids and families for over 20 years navigating challenging behaviors. Today's topic is talking about some practical strategies to help your child build self-esteem.

(0:47) What is self-esteem?

What is self-esteem? When we talk about self-esteem, we need to differentiate it from self-confidence. Self-confidence is that idea that you walk into a situation, you're like, "OK, I got this. I know everything I need to do in order to be successful in this situation." Rather, we're talking about something deeper here.

Self-esteem is about sort of how you hold value for yourself and how you feel about yourself in situations where maybe things aren't going well or you might have a failure moment where you're trying to navigate something that's challenging for you. The idea that self-esteem is a core to building self-confidence and other skills.

A great example is learning how to ride a bike. This is a skill that's hard for everybody. And the idea that you're likely to fall, you're likely to tip over and have some failure moments is something that kids with self-esteem are likely to navigate through a little bit better. They feel that they can manage the things that are hard for them or that they're sort of worthy of the activity so that when they hit a barrier or they hit a challenge, they don't just toss the bike and give up.

Having positive self-esteem is super important for kids. It's the idea that it can make them proud of themselves and make them feel that they're confident and capable. When we think about kids feeling respected and feeling like they're valued in their environment, it's also important for building independence, that "This is something I can do without you. This is something that even if I'm not perfect at, that I can navigate."

If we think about effective ways to boost your child's self-esteem, there are some really specific things, and I'm going to talk to you about that next.

(2:15) Practical strategies

One way to help your child build self-esteem is to develop things they're already interested in. So, let's talk this through a little bit. Getting your child to engage in activities is really easiest to do when they have an interest and maybe have a little skill or talent in that area. Not all kids are able to sort of develop or think about what that talent is in advance. So, as a parent, you can give them some direction.

Start putting them towards tasks that maybe they've tried before, things they show some affinity for. And the idea is that we have to give kids confidence in these activities by using praise. And you know, I always talk about this, specific praise. So, your child's doing a drawing activity and you can say something like, "You know what? I really love your drawing there. It's really cool. All that detail that you put into it."

Or if your child's writing a story, "You know, I really love your story. You have so many great storylines here and it's got a nice length and I really want to know how it ends." Giving kids really specific details about what they're doing well helps them build confidence and a willingness to do things that are new and difficult for them.

Let's take an example of something that can be both fun for your child and good for their education: reading. Lots of kids will give you battles about engaging in reading when they're not in school. Here's the reality: Reading can be given to kids and can be encouraged through all kinds of alternative methods. So, for example, if your child is a gamer and they like to play all kinds of adventure games, these can be great options. Lots of texts on screen, lots of information that they can get direction from. And it's stuff they're already interested in. They want to be successful so they're not really thinking about reading.

Another option is thinking about comics or graphic novels or manga. These are opportunities for kids to look at graphical representations of stories and build in language as they go. If they're already interested, it's not going to feel like work to them. So, it can be super, super helpful for them. Another thing to keep in mind are audiobooks. Now, for some people, they feel like audiobooks are sort of cheating when in actuality an audiobook gives kids access to information about how better to comprehend the story.

Sometimes the voice of the narrator can actually help emphasize what certain words mean or the context of a storyline. It's not cheating. It's something that helps them engage in reading and actually helps them improve their ability to understand what text is on the page when they have the physical books in their hand. So, don't count that out right out of hand. It's something that can be super helpful.

As we continue to help your kids develop their interests, we have to think about broadening their horizons and giving them as many options as possible. One of the things in our culture that's really challenging is that if kids have an interest in sports but maybe aren't terribly talented, we find that they fall out of sports way too early. Well, let's talk about this for a second, because as a parent, if your child has sports interests and are playing sports, what else can we do to support them?

Well, first and foremost, think about what levels of sport activity are available. If your child's not going to play travel or elite sports, they can do intramural. They can do pick up after school. The idea that your child's engaged in some sort of exercise, an activity that connects them socially and helps them feel good about themselves is something that doesn't need to be tied to some competitive outcome.

Your child doesn't need to compete at the highest level to feel that they are good or skilled at what they're doing. And talking to your child about these opportunities is really important, particularly if they're not being selected for higher-level teams. But sports can be a great activity for kids to do throughout their lives. The key here is about helping your children think broadly about their interests and developing skills.

Let's talk about self-esteem and some of the parent traps. And this one is really near and dear to my heart. One of the things here is that as parents, your kids don't have to have the same interests as you. And this is something that was really hard for me. When my daughter was young, I was a big fan of rock music, I played some guitar, and I was really hoping I can introduce her to the things that I loved. And sure enough, when my child was about three and a half, she got introduced to orchestra and violin and ballet.

So, I have no knowledge of these things. And as my daughter was engaged in them, my instinct was to push back and say "No, let me guide her towards things that I like or activities that I know." And I got good advice. I had good advice from people around me and from people who were doing sort of the teaching and coaching in that area.

The reality here was if your kids are engaged in things that they like, that feel good, they're going to get access to community, they're going to get access to things like instruction. What I learned from this is that as my daughter engaged in these tasks and showed some established talent, she had to navigate through things being challenging, learning a difficult piece of music, and learning how to be part of a community within a small orchestra.

So, this turned out to be a really positive thing, but I really had to hold myself back as a parent, and that sometimes can be really hard to do. One of the great payoffs from following through in this interest of my daughter's was that it helps her build self-esteem and confidence in what she was doing.

Music gives you the opportunity to develop skills you might not even think about. Things like memorization. Something I didn't realize was that there's math in music. A time signature is a fraction. And while that's not my strength, this is something my daughter was able to make really great use of. Being part of an orchestra or community group can build a lot of confidence for your kids.

Thinking about the moral of the story here: You don't need to understand or share that interest at first, but if you can engage and help your child facilitate those skills and stay involved in those activities, it's a great opportunity for them to build self-esteem and talents.

(7:37) Social media and self-esteem

Next, I want to talk about social media and self-esteem. And this is an area that can be really loaded for parents. But let's start with the positives. Social media can provide kids access to topics that they love and connect with other people who share those interests. Social media has another big advantage. If in your community you don't have access to kids of similar interests, you may be able to find kids from all over the world who share interests with your kid and expand their sense of belonging in that way.

The other thing to keep in mind is that through social media, there may be kids with more developed interests and can share really great information or more resources for your kid to help them become more expert and more informed in areas that they like.

Finally, one of the areas that I love is a creation of community for kids who might be neurodivergent. If we think about it, neurodiverse kids don't often feel connected or they feel different. So, in communities of kids who have differences, they start to communicate. They start to say, "Wait a second. Like I have somewhere where I belong." There are other people who have skills who are being successful, who have talents. And this is something that can really help your kid build self-esteem and feel like they're connected to others.

Let's talk about the social media downsides here for a second. One of my favorite sayings is that "Comparison is the thief of joy." So, what does that mean? If you think about what social media is about for so many of us, parents and kids alike, it's people putting out images and stories about their best vacation, the coolest thing they've bought, their new outfit, how awesome they look with whatever filter the using at that time.

And when you see it, we often compare ourselves and go, "Wow, like my vacation wasn't very good" or "I don't have such cool clothes." And those kind of comparisons, particularly for kids who are really impressionable, can lead them to feel pretty bad about themselves. One of the things that we know is that the research shows that for certain kids, the more they engage in social media, the worse they feel about themselves.

And for kids with learning and thinking differences, they are a vulnerable population. They may not really be able to filter out internally "You know, people are putting out their own best-imagined stories here," and that's something that can be really hard for them to tolerate.

Finally, social media anonymity can provide a really bad place for bullying and mean behavior and things that really need some supervision from us as parents. All right, social media, it's not all bad. So, let's circle back here and talk about some of the things we need to do to have a healthier relationship with social media.

First and foremost, pay attention to what your kids are doing. Within reason, see what sites they're going to, spend some time talking to them about what they're engaging with. If your child comes off of their social media or screen time and they look frustrated, they look sad, they're down, they're in a bad mood overall, this is a good opportunity to say, "OK, what's going on here?" And take a look at what can we do instead of social media for that period of time.

In addition, be really aware that having adequate time away from screens, doing activities where we interact, we have fun, we get outside and move, can all be opportunities to help balance your child's experience of technology and social media.

(10:41) The importance of love and care

Another key to building self-esteem for your kids is showing them that you're there for them, that they have people in their community, people in their corner who love and care for them. So, much of this is about providing a buffer from the bad day, the negative experience, and just knowing that you're there, that there's someone there who shows them caring and attention is such a benefit for kids.

Kids who are isolated may not have this experience, and low self-esteem is really associated with loneliness and feeling disconnected from their communities and their families at large.

So, let's talk about an example here. If your child comes home from school and they've had a really rough day, first thing we're going to do is validate that, "Wow, really, it really stinks that you had such a tough day today. But you know what? At the end of the day, let's plan to do something where, you know, we'll go out with friends or you have swim club this afternoon."

Trying to give your child something positive to look forward to or to think about where they're going to be with their people or their activities of interest. In addition, we can help kids build a stronger sense of self-esteem by doing things like building competencies in the home. Is your child engaged in things like, "Hey, I help take care of my pet" or "I'm great at taking care of my space." Having them build a sense of "I can do these things independently" is a really great foundational way to build self-esteem in your kids.

Little dips in self-esteem are completely expected and normal. If your child comes home and they've had a rough day, your first instinct is going to want to beat it, to sort of break it down and to get all the information that you can. Now, what I would say to you is, hold off on this for a second. Acknowledge what your child is feeling at first and they may not be able to explain it to you in words or they just want to move on from it.

So, don't spend too much time and energy digging into things if your child is able to navigate through them. Remember, sometimes your child's going to share things with you. And a great question is, "Hey, do you just want to share this with me and get out what you're feeling and not want me to have to solve the problem and just tell me what's going on?"

Some kids will find that like a huge relief because too often parents try to solve the kid's problems and all they want to do is moan about what was bad, and then you help them move through. Really important parent skill.

The other thing to keep in mind is that you can be a refuge for your child. You can be somewhere they can go. And if you give them the sense that you're welcoming and validating to their feelings, they're going to be more likely to come to you and share some day-to-day concerns. If you're just there and can say, "You know, this is really tough, I'm really sorry this happened" as opposed to going through all the problems, that's going to be helpful for your child.

Something really important to keep in mind is that knowing that they can come to you is often more important than solving a problem. Our kids need to be able to tolerate frustration and tolerating frustration and unexpected daily negative things is part of what actually helps them build self-esteem. It's unpleasant, I can navigate it, I come out the other side, and I'm good. That's what self-esteem looks like.

Don't spend time harvesting negatives from your child. So, what does that mean? Sometimes when our kids have a bad day, the next day it's right there at the top of our mind and the first thing we want to do is charge it and say, "Hey, did that kid bother you today" or "Did you have trouble with that teacher again today?"

Got to be aware, when you provide attention to something to your child, that's reinforcing, and they may actually bring up topics and ideas to get and keep your attention, particularly young kids. So, asking more general questions can be helpful. Be there for your child. Don't dig deep unless you need to, and you don't have to solve all the problems.

So, let's wrap up here. Your child's self-esteem is a super important thing, and I hope the strategies we've discussed today can be helpful to you. Keep in mind, what we're thinking about with self-esteem is giving your child the strength to navigate frustration and to weather the day-to-day storms.

Thanks for listening to this episode of "Parenting Behavior with Dr. Andy Kahn." We'd love to hear from you if you have any thoughts on the show. You can email us at parentingbehavior@understood.org. I'll put that email in the show notes to where you can also find more resources and links to anything we mentioned.

"Parenting Behavior with Dr. Andy Kahn is brought to you by Understood.org. It's produced and edited by Cody Nelson. Editorial guidance by Rae Jacobson. Music and mixing by Justin D. Wright. Ilana Millner is our supervising producer. Briana Berry is our production director. Neil Drumming is our editorial director.

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