Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Self Esteem Issues

Hi there,

Does anyone have any books that they'd recommend on raising a child's self esteem. DS7 seems to have some issues that I am not successfully helping him overcome.

Example: At a Cub Scout den meeting, the boys were writing letters to Santa and the Den Leader suggested they open with a sentence saying that they had been good boys. My DS7 would not write that and asked me whether he'd been a good boy. I asked what he thought, and he said he didn't know, so I told him I thought he'd been very good. He wrote, "Mom says I've been a good boy." I asked why he didn't write just "I've been a good boy." and he said that it would have been a lie, and that it makes him cry to say he's a good boy because he doesn't think he is. Another example, if he makes a mistake, he'll hit himself and say he's horrible. If tell him that everyone makes mistakes, and that he's understandably upset but I don't think he's horrible, he'll insist that he is horrible. I'd like to avoid taking him to a counselor at such a young age, and would like to read up first. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks!

I know this isn't really what you are asking for, but do you think he is very literal? Maybe it would help to let him know that people see the world more in shades of gray and Santa really wants to know if OVERALL he's been a good or bad boy?

In the second scenario pehaps spending more time with other kids would help (if he's not already) - he could see that they make mistakes too.

A third thought is that you could make a conscious effort to model an appropriate response to mistakes on your part. He probably doesn't notice a lot of your mistakes, but if you point them out and comment on them he might begin to see homw common they are. For example, "Oh, I made a wrong turn. I should have been more careful becasue so and so is waitign for me. I'll go back around and be more careful the rest of hte trip. I'm sure they will understand if we are late. Next time I will map directions...." I'm not suggesting your responses to mistakes are currently INappropriate! Just that he probably doesn't notice them. If you verbalize them all he might.

I remember being in a jury selection pool once and they asked if any of us had ever committed a crime. I raised my hand and went through the entire list of my crimes:

Jaywalking, speeding, put a snowball in a mailbox as a kid (that's a FEDERAL crime, I believe), underage drinking....

It all ended well as I was NOT selected! Seemed like the defense attorney saw me a potentially problematic.

Take a look through
http://www.amazon.com/Transforming-Difficult-Child-Workbook-Interactive/dp/0967050758

Transforming the Difficult Child Workbook, because I believe that as bright as our kids are, we still have a role to play in helping them focus on reality, and not get overwhelmed by the hard times.

I wonder if your DS7 is 'rather literal' and doesn't want to say he's been a good boy if he can think of even one counter-example.
This is were having a good memory is a handicap.

As far him hitting himself and saying he is horrible, I would actually punish that behavior, as he is hitting (not allowed) and saying mean things to someone I love (also not allowed.)It's also lying (not allowed.) Of course that sounds mean, but I would hope you've worked out some way of punishment that doesn't make you feel like a meanie by this point. (Not that I had, which is why 'Transforming' was so helpful at my house.)

I was under the impression that if I 'punished' a behavior like that, it would just drive it underground and make my son feel like he wasn't safe with me. Now I think that's sort of projecting an adult view of the mind on to a child. Most children, even gifted ones, will actually stop thinking it if they stop saying it. Weird, but often true. I guess if I thought that my kids would just 'drive it underground' then I'd come up with a safe list of alternative behaviors.

I also think it's ok to talk with kids about being 'better able to remember all our mistakes, and all of other people's mistakes' than other kids, and that the tendency towards perfectionism is part of the gift/challenge of being gifted. We also suffer from not having a handy reference group to compare ourselves to. I sort of realized that 'doing well' in comparsion to my agemates was not really anything to be pleased about, and I couldn't often 'do well' in relation to my parents or the characters in books, so it sort of left me floundering in that department. If you have any examples from your own life, I think that can be important to share, and if he sees you fighting for a balanced view of the world and yourself, I think that is so powerful.

I think it's also important to journal/vent/post about how heartbreaking it is to watch your son do these behaviors, and what or who they remind you of. If you have fears about what causes these behaviors or where they will lead, that would be a great thing to process yourself before you try anything heavyhanded with you DS.

Love and More Love,
Grinity

As an example:

Last week, DS (11) forgot his skating gear for his lesson. There was not time to go back and get it once we found out he had forgotten it. However, that same day, I had to go back to my work (after his lesson) to get my purse because I had also forgotten something important. i made a point of making sure that DS knew that I had also forgotten something and that mistakes happen.

Usually, he would have been really down on himself for at least a few days. However, his Coach talked about mistakes and gave him a different kind of lesson. My error and our discussion about it really seemed to help him bounce back quicker than I would have expected.

DS has MAJOR self esteem issues so this was a very positive experience overall.

We're a big "talking things through" family, and I have had several conversations with DS7 explaining the power of words, and that it's important he not say bad things about himself/hit himself, because over time, his brain will begin to believe those things. I've even tried to have him say positive things about himself, in an effort to show him that if you say something over and over, it can affect your thinking. He DOES NOT like doing this.

Grinity, I have told him that hitting is not allowed in our family, and it seems to just put him more over the edge. He just screams more about how he's even a worse child. It's heartbreaking! I'll check out the workbook. Thanks!

JaneSmith, I didn't think you were saying I was speaking inappropriately to him, but thanks for making sure. :-) I laughed at your jury example -- totally seems like something I would say.

elh -- thanks for your input.

I hadn't that about the possibility that maybe DS is very literal. I do think to some extent things to him are rather black and white. It truly seems that he thinks if he's not PERFECT, then he's not good. We've talked about 1) how boring life would be if everyone were perfect, and 2) about how NOBODY is perfect, and yet people are still good. I worry about him tying his self-worth completely to his behavior. He understands that DH and I love him no matter what he does, and he can tell us that, but it doesn't seem to matter when it comes to his idea of himself.

We have tried to model good responses to our own mistakes, but maybe we need to make extra effort to do that. DH and I have our own issues with perfectionism, so it's not something that comes naturally to us.

*sigh* I thought that once we understood DS9, we'd have it in the bag for DS7. I know nobody ever said parenting was easy, but I really never thought it would be THIS hard.

We go through a lot of these things with DS6. He is a very literal child and very black and white in thinking. He also holds very high standards for himself. He will get upset with himself for something and will hit himself in the head, usually when he is very frustrated and emotional about something. It started several months ago and hasn't happened in over a month or so, but for a while there it was happening a lot and we were quite concerned. At first I wanted to add on a punishment for hitting himself because I didn't know how to stop it, but that was not at all helpful and just added more frustration when he was already clearly overwhelmed and didn't know how to handle the strong emotions. For us, getting him to calm his body down and figure out what is going on was more helpful and reminding him that it not acceptable to hit himself when he makes a mistake, and give him other behaviors he can do instead.

He also will self impose punishments. For example if he didn't behave somewhere or didn't do something right he will say to us something like this "I know, I think I am the worst child in the world and you should take everything away from me for a year because that is what I deserve." and of course we respond with things like "no, you are a wonderful child and just made a bad choice, hopefully you will make a better choice next time." and try to explain to help him see it is not all or nothing. He also tends to say things like "it's all my fault" or "it's all because of me." and we often say things like "no it was an accident." Unless of course it was all his fault something happened, lol. Then we tell him yes it was, I hope you do better next time. But usually things are all someone's fault as there is a combination of events. some days are better than others. It is strange to us, because we know that he hears lots of positives, he just tells himself so many negatives I guess. When we tell him the positive he usually is like "oh, okay." He doesn't keep telling himself negatives.

In general he is not a very emotional kid at all, but he has little spurts where he will put himself down a lot. One day he was even putting himself down for getting things right all the time, like there was something wrong with him for that. I think if you keep the communication open and try to help him through not being so literal that will help some. We are in the same boat though. I am a counselor with kids, and have decided to not go the official counseling route with my child yet. It may come in future, but for now I think things are going okay and we are working on accentuating the positive and positive self-talk.

DS7's teacher had told us earlier in the year, she could probably try some in-class differentiation after the first of the year. So, I recently emailed her to ask if there was anything we could do to help her get things started. I just got an email telling me that she DID try before the holiday break and that DS7 refused to start the work. He said he didn't know what to do. All the other kids being given the differentiated work finished theirs and DS7 said he was still confused and hadn't even started, so the teacher sat down and helped him.

I am almost positive this is about his perfectionism. It was something new and he didn't want to get it wrong, so he said he couldn't do it. We see this ALL the time at home. He'll say he can't do it, and then 5 minutes later, he's doing it with ease. I don't know now whether the teacher will try again, and DS is unlikely to react differently anyway. I wish she'd told me this when it had happened, so I could have talked with DS to understand what was going on. Now what do I do?!!!!!! Any suggestions for dealing with DS or teacher?

Mama22Gs, do you think that once he starts being challenged by hard things, succeeding often, failing sometimes and getting used to not being able to do some things on the first try it will get better? My DD is like this, and it's my main reason for wanting the school to give her appropriate work. She needs to learn that it's OK not to breeze through everything.

Hi Tallulah, thanks for your post. I agree that's the issue here. In fact, when we had our P/T conference and asked for differentiation, the longest part of our conversation with the teacher was re: DS's issues with perfectionism and how we're concerned about it. Now, I just need to find a way to get her on board with trying again.

Mama22g we see this with our DD9. She doesn't want to do any work without "checking" first to make sure what she is supposed to do. Her favorite words at homework time are "but, I don't know know what I am supposed to do!!!" (scream cry tantrum thrown in here :-(
Last year she was in an inclusion class with the full spectrum..kids with a mental disabilities to gifted kids..{I know our school dist is wierd}..anyway. Her teachers would give an assignment and then joked to us that they would bet with each other how long it would take our daughter to raise her hand or approach then questioning the directions...saying she wasn't sure what to do....They were giving easy instructions so that the mentally challenged kids could understand yet here she was gifted and just sat there.
We came to 2 conclusions that I believe are all mixed up with each other. 1 perfectionism and 2 anxiety. She is so anxious about doing it perfect she is afraid of starting cause she might get it wrong. We also noticed something else..the easier the assignment the more she questioned and melted down. She couldn't believe the answer or the work could be that simple so to her she must just not be understanding what it was they were looking for ie melt down.
We are lucky. This year she is not in an inclusion class, and she has a wonderful teacher that just responds to her anxiousness in a very positive way. This has led to less anxiousness on her part and an easier year.
Good luck!