How You Can Help Build Up Your Child's Self Esteem

Fostering and building a children's self-esteem is an ongoing job for a parent.

One that begins at birth and continues through childhood and into adulthood. A child with a healthy self-esteem will have confidence in himself and his abilities.
Self-esteem can serve as a protective armor that will help a child grow and get through the turbulent adolescent years to become a successful, confident adult. Fostering a healthy self-esteem in a child can be done by practicing attachment parenting, supporting childhood accomplishments and giving a child a strong foundation of unconditional love.

Attachment parenting is an important way to begin to raise connected children that have a healthy self-esteem. Parents who respond to babies cries and hold a baby frequently are fostering self-esteem in the child. How a parent interacts with a baby also helps lay the foundation for a healthy self-esteem. In order to develop a healthy self-esteem, a child needs to learn how to do things on his own.
Parents can help a child accomplish difficult tasks, set challenging, yet realistic, goals and offer encouragement to meet those goals.

As a child grows, parents should step back to let him solve problems and complete tasks on his own.
A child will have many chances to learn how to be independent and competent as he grows. Parents should allow as much freedom as possible and only step in when the child is getting overly frustrated.
A healthy self-esteem will flourish as a child develops his own special gifts.

To build confidence and self-esteem, a school-aged child can be given chores and allowed to participate in the age-appropriate activities that spark his interest. Chores allow a child to contribute to the home and family in a positive way.
Activities that are challenging, but doable, give a child a sense of pride and a chance to set achievable goals.
The self-esteem of peer-oriented children will always be dependent on the way others perceive them.

A positive self-esteem means that children and teens consider themselves to be valuable even when they are being judged by others.