What do you do with a child whose self-image seems skewed in both strengths and weaknesses?
I'm asking for insights, there, if anyone has them. I've been really startled at how UNrealistic our DD's assessment of her own strengths and weaknesses is-- she tends to skew most things in a negative direction. I feel guilt at times that maybe we've fostered that by doing multiple grade skips (so she underestimates her strengths as "somewhat better than average" and overestimates weaknesses as "I'm terrible at that").
What tends to work for us is feedback, feedback, feedback. Providing the right kind of feedback to DD8 at the right time is something of a tightrope walk, though. If the feedback is too negative or too positive at the wrong time... yikes.
As her parents, we're immediately distrusted as biased sources, so we have to continually earn her trust by being entirely honest with her, even if at times it's not what she's looking to hear. That way, when we tell her positive things, she's more likely to believe us. But there's a difference between being entirely honest and being brutally honest... a little spin to soften the blow of negative criticism is not a bad idea. There are some times where she gets a little too full of herself, too, and it's not a bad idea to nip that in the bud, even if this is a kid who tends to err on the other side of self-image. So yeah, you had a great game today, but don't go around telling your teammates you're the best.
Often times DD looks at others for comparison, and she's looking at the wrong groups. In those incidents, we're constantly recalibrating her, by pointing out her age, and what's typical of that age group. So in your case, the next time your DD decides she "sucks at (school subject)" it'd probably be helpful to point out what most kids her age are working on in that subject.
Other times, DD just has misplaced ideas of what she should be capable of, like if she doesn't get something right the first time, and decides she's just not good at it. That's where we step in with our own examples of learning that particular skill, if applicable, or pointing out that she's already doing it better than we could if not. And we go back to past lessons of learning something difficult, staying with it, overcoming obstacles, and gaining mastery over time, because for a great many things, this is the learning process. This is where past success fuels future success.
There's rarely a day that goes by where we're not employing some of these techniques, and our DD is starting to get more realistic in her self-assessments. Hope some of it helps for you.
