I completely disagree with the self esteem generation. I believe that you can and should help your child develop a healthy but realistic self esteem. By realistic I mean, not everyone is winners, teach them how to lose with grace and dignity. If an adult in authority reprimands your child, teach your child to respect and listen to the adult. Don't excuse the behavior and discuss in front of your child 100 reasons why the adult was wrong and the feedback is not applicable to your child. Teach your children compassion, accountability, responsibility and respectfulness. These things should help your child develop a pretty wonderful self esteem on their own.
VERY nicely said.
We struggle with this because my daughter's life (really, not any exaggeration) sometimes depends upon her ability to defy others-- even adult authority. It feels like a tight-rope act, because NO WAY do we want to be raising a "the rules don't apply to me" child. But we DO want her to actually-- um-- "grow up." So there we are. Rock and a hard place.
At the same time, this is very much our philosophy as parents. We also believe in quite hard boundaries-- and a sense of free-range parenting within those boundaries.
Frankly I'm always astonished that other parents do so much of the environmental controlling the way they do. It boggles my mind when I stop and think about it. I mean, we're worried (for good reason, and we have ample history to support our
level of obsession about it) about never seeing our daughter breathing and laughing again-- what are THEY worried about? Everything, or so it would seem. They aren't willing to take ANY risks with their children, and life is filled with risks. I'm just more aware, I think, of what is silly to worry about that way, and what is more evidence-based. Maybe that's arrogant of me, but I also fervently believe it to be true after 14 years of watching this sideshow. I tend to ask myself "what is the worst that could happen? Really? How statistically likely is that?" before freaking out and intervening. I'm all for helmets, but I'm not going to keep my DD from skateboarding. Life's for living.
I also believe that the thing that has taught my daughter most of the positive traits on that list is being marginalized and discriminated against herself. She
looks for ways to support and be kind to others, and to be more inclusive-- something which is all too rare among her peers. Well, not HER peers, because she's kind of picky about the company she keeps in a lot of ways-- but her peer cohort, perhaps I should say.
They think nothing of excluding others, and are really dismissive even when someone like my daughter gently (but assertively) says; "Hey, did you think about...."
At the same time, I'd say that my daughter's self-esteem is probably "not awesome." She's very hard on herself.
