Today, we’re living in world where many people are suffering from the effects of low self-esteem, self-worth and self-love. It manifests in a variety of ways, none of which are particularly productive or pleasant for the person. Many times, people blame their childhood and upbringing for this apparent lack of self-esteem and a lot of therapy work is focused on resolving issues from childhood.
With this in mind, today a lot of parents are much more aware of of the impact certain things (e.g. parents arguing the whole time) will have on their child’s emotional development and wellbeing. We live in a time where people are becoming much more emotionally aware, yet, there’s still much room for improvement to when teaching our kids the emotional strategies to overcome low self-esteem and love themselves for who they are.
Many teenagers find it very hard to deal with their challenging emotions in a productive way as this isn’t the sort of thing they learn at school or from their peers. It’s therefore the job of the parents to ensure they are armed with the emotional resources and habits to create a stable emotional life as they get older, and whilst this isn’t taught in schools, homeschooling can extend way beyond academic studies to incorporate life skills and emotional intelligence rather than just academic intelligence.
The reality is that creating high self-esteem is similar to a recipe, much like baking a cake, in that you need the right ingredients in the right order to get the desired result. There’s a recipe for creating both a triumphant cake and a tragic disaster. The pointers below will help you ensure your children don’t suffer with the achilles heal that is low self-esteem, but before we get into that, let’s look at what self-love actually is.
SELF LOVE
In a world that seems to be suffering with an emotional epidemic of low self-esteem, low self-worth and low-confidence; it’s important we encourage children to learn to love themselves and accept themselves. This can be a challenge, particularly if this is an area that you struggle with in your own life… but it is the remedy to so many parental nightmares such as our children turning to drugs or being dropouts.
See, if someone doesn’t love themselves as a teenager, it doesn’t matter if you get them a fancy sports car or a grand garland of lei for graduation, the external recognition and material validation of their achievements will not compensate for the lack of self-esteem they feel on the inside.
In some ways you could view self-esteem to be the same as self-love, however, self-esteem tends to be more about how competent we feel we are in terms of tangible output and how much we value the impact and contribution we make. Self love, on the other hand, is more about self-acceptance and loving ourselves just the way we are.
See, you can have the most gifted child that succeeds in all their exams and sporting achievements, yet, doesn’t love themselves on the inside. Self love isn’t about feeling good enough due to external achievements – it’s about accepting the less successful and desirable aspects and loving themselves anyway.
It’s about breaking free from the rules that society makes up, such as the idea that you have to be thin to be considered beautiful – and accepting yourself for how you are, viewing yourself as beautiful on the inside and outside; irrespective of external factors.
Louise Hay, one of the world’s leading experts in this area of self-love states: “Self love is a deep appreciation. When I talk about loving ourselves, I mean having a deep appreciation for who we are. We accept all the different parts of ourselves—our little peculiarities, the embarrassments, the things we may not do so well, and all the wonderful qualities, too.”
She goes on to explain that, many of us make self love conditional by creating unnecessary rules, such as that we will love ourselves WHEN we lose weight, get a better job, or drive a better car… meaning, it’s constantly being put off until tomorrow. We put external conditions on our internal sense of self-worth, which is what creates unhappiness, as it’s like a carrot dangling in front of a donkey’s nose… it’s always just slightly out of reach.
- HOME
Having a stable sense of home is imperative. This should be their “safe place” that they feel comfortable and settled in. The well known saying “tidy house tidy mind” is true when it comes to modelling stability – if you have a clean, tidy, and well organised home this has a significant effect on the whole family’s emotional health and wellbeing.
- FINANCE
It’s important to teach the principle that you don’t need to be rich in order to be stable. You do, however have to have an income.
- HEALTH & WELLBEING
Your health is your foundation. You can have all the money in the world but without your health, life has a tendency to feel very unstable. The term “prevention is better than cure” is true when it comes to having stability.
- EDUCATION
Education is imperative as it creates more options in life and the more options you have the more emotionally secure and independent you feel. If you have a particularly intelligent child it’s important they are stimulated, and there are many gifted education programs that can provide specialist support to such children.
- PERSONAL CARE
Taking care of one’s personal appearance on a daily basis is vital for one’s emotional health and sense of pride. It’s important to emphasise the emotional benefit of basic routines such as cleaning our teeth each day, showering, and trimming our nails. As boys become teenagers, this is particularly imperative.
- MINDSET & EMOTIONS
At times, it can feel like you aren’t in control of your emotions but the following principle can help offer your boys gain some perspective. It’s important, particularly if your child is being negative or pessimistic to remind them that “where attention goes energy flows” and “thoughts become things”.
