How to build your children's self-esteem

A leap of faith of trust in souls that are innocent

by Sotiris Rex

Children can be much smarter than adults in so many ways. They generally don’t yet carry the trauma that blocks their intellect, the self-deprecating voices from naive conclusions constructed by our innocent inner child whenever we are shamed, guilt-tripped, intimidated, rejected, smothered, enmeshed, and physically abused.

Unfortunately, these naive and erroneous conclusions about ourselves, we draw during our childhood when we are innocent, malleable, and naive enough to gullibly believe our abusers; that we are somehow worthy of the abuse, hate, humiliation, and distrust with which abusers burden us.

My niece and my guitar

I love and admire my nieces. The other day, they were visiting. The little one (10), with a reputation for being active and clumsy, and with a tendency to break things, demonstrated a profound interest in my guitar. She asked to play with it. So, I let her experiment with it as long as she wanted, even when I wasn’t present to watch over her like a helicopter parent. She was more interested in the aesthetic of the guitar than actually learning, so she just purposelessly strummed the strings and roleplayed with it. It gave her joy, so it gave me joy. Afterwards, her father (my brother) made fun of me for entrusting a child with my guitar, insinuating that I was being reckless, since I supposedly knew her to be a walking disaster. A delicate acoustic guitar would not be beyond her capacity to dismantle, right?

Indeed, I knew she could have easily destroyed my guitar, and I gladly took the risk. Why? Because children need to build self-esteem more than anything, self-esteem that will define their entire lives ahead of them. And one of the best ways for a child to build self-esteem is to feel trusted by the people whose opinion matters most to children.

You help children feel trusted when you entrust them with things, tasks, and decisions, as long as there isn’t a significant hazard for them. If there is a risk, especially of losing replaceable stuff, it’s up to the (supposedly) responsible, stable, and self-controlled adults to manage and replace.

I knew the risks and the monetary cost of having my physical stuff damaged by an energetic child. And she did manage to untune my guitar. So what? What was the trade-off, though? What did I gain? I gained the joy of helping build her self-esteem, a benefit that by far outweighed the worst-case scenario: the cost of a guitar. By showing I had faith in her, I contributed a little to a child’s self-esteem at an age when she needed it most.

Psychodynamics

A positive butterfly effect can and will improve her life and the lives of those around her (because people with self-esteem are not only empowered… they are kinder, and feel no desperate need to validate themselves by being abusive to others).

And a negative butterfly effect? Showing distrust to a child and being over-watchful and overprotective imbues a child with self-doubt and low self-esteem, depriving them of initiative, assertiveness, sociability, and the energy to stand up for themselves. This condemns them to make self-destructive choices that will then validate their self-doubt and low self-esteem in an endless self-sustained vicious cycle of self-loathing.

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The leap of faith of trust is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you take the risk to demonstrate trust in someone especially a blank-canvas innocent child who helplessly looks up to you to define its worth, they will eventually find ways to become worthy of that trust.

Conversely, if you show consistent and supposedly “credible” distrust by default, they will distrust themselves in every decision they are forced to make, and in every conflict they have to manage. This makes them weak, manipulable, and prone to being victimised and disrespected. If you distrust yourself, you never take chances, and you can’t trust or respect yourself, so why would anyone else? And these experiences validate your initial and unwarranted distrust. To make the prediction of distrust is to ensure it happens, not because it was warranted when we predicted it, but because we said it and we were believed by innocent souls who had no choice but to find our opinion about them somehow “authoritative” or “meaningful”.

I heard a story once, years ago. A father and his little son were outside in their yard trying to fix the kid’s bicycle. For hours, they struggled, and the nosey neighbour had noticed. The neighbour couldn’t contain his curiosity and so decided to ask the father: “I’ve been watching you struggle with this bike all day. Why don’t you just take it to the bike shop down the road? It’ll save you time”. To which the father replied: “I know. But I’m not trying to fix a bike here. I’m trying to build a son”.

The realisation here is that children don’t value stuff as much as adults do. Children value relationships and experiences above all else. Children obsessed with physical stuff have horrible, neglectful parents. Physical possessions for them are just a cheap substitute for the necessary parental connection that they were robbed of. Parents who spoil their children with money and stuff do so so they can neglect them guilt-free.

Impact

One little nudge towards self-esteem can have massively positive effects for a child.

Isn’t this how you change the world? As individuals, we each can have a minimal (but some) impact on the world. All we can do is slightly affect the few around us who trust us enough to allow us to affect them.

Children are doomed by their nature to trust us by default, even when we don’t deserve their trust, which is why we are morally obligated to protect them and nurture them, let alone protect them from any abuse.

We must be EXTRA kind to children because they are vulnerable to us, and they don’t even choose their position in our lives; we choose it for them. They were never asked if they wanted to be born, and they never had a choice of parents or entourage.

Children have no choice but to trust us. Children are at our mercy, helpless against our whims and psychoses left unresolved from our traumatic childhoods, inflicted by the other traumatised adults.

The least you can do for children is give them a leap of faith, a fraction of the total and absolute trust they are forced to have towards you.

I trusted a little child with a measly, easily replaceable guitar. So what? Children trust us with their lives every day, quite literally, as they stand helpless, physically and mentally, next to volatile, snappy, psychotic, and quite dangerous adults.

Children trust you with their all, and you can’t trust them with a replaceable object?

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When you consistently show trust to children, accepting the risk that they may break something with value infinitely less than that of a child, then they begin to build self-esteem, and they gradually become worthy of that trust. But you must make the leap of faith in them first. You, the “adult” in the room, must take and own the risk. So what if they break stuff along the way? Whoever said education was cheap? Who told you you could have children without the responsibility to manage risk?

Moral obligation

We owe nothing to no one, we have a duty to absolutely no one… except to our children whom we choose to bring into this world without their informed consent, without allowing them select their parents, thus condemning them to having no choice but to be attached to us, be defined by us, and put up with us and our issues.

As a parent, you have one job: to build your children’s self-esteem. Your children are biologically programmed to be able to get self-esteem only from you. They are condemned by their nature, imprisoned by instincts that render them desperately needy of your validation. Children are hopelessly reliant upon you, even though you made the choice to have them, not them. They were never given the grace to choose parents. How confident are you that, if your children could have chosen a parent, they would have chosen you? Yes, you choose to have them and have absolute control over how they will turn out. So, because they never chose you, you need to be the best possible parent for them.

You need to love children, but you also need to respect them, and show that respect through trust, and through owning like an adult the risk that comes through that trust.

It is, therefore, your moral duty to do everything in your power to empower your children with self-esteem. Food, shelter, and well-being are a given, and you are owed no credit for providing them. These are your moral obligations by default. Children owe you absolutely nothing for the resources you spend on them. You chose to have children to satisfy your emotional needs and to mitigate your loneliness, so you can’t complain about the time, effort, and resources you must spend on them for their survival. Adults spend more on buying and maintaining a car, and I don’t see them complaining as much as they complain about the minimal costs that a child requires for sustenance.

The “spoiling” straw man

Don’t get me wrong. Building your children’s self-esteem does not mean spoiling them. Spoiling is one of the most traumatic forms of child abuse because it involves neglect. Neglectful parents “spoil” their children with money and free stuff, a way for these horrible parents to buy off their obligation of engaging meaningfully with their children.

Spoiled children are thus condemned to become entitled, but also hopelessly confused because they can’t reconcile the fact that they receive so much from their parents, yet there’s always something missing, which they can’t pinpoint. They get everything except the one thing that matters: connection. Without the parents’ attention, communication, engagement, and validation, no amount of money can compensate for the loss of self-esteem that comes from parental neglect.

Spoiled children inevitably feel guilt (impostor syndrome) from all the unearned things they receive from their parents, and they are tortured by the cognitive dissonance of two conflicting beliefs: superficial arrogance from “having it all” and crippling insecurity from being neglected.

This again reminds me of the scene in the cinematic rendition of ‘Count of Monte Cristo’. Armand remembers when he was young… he had received a pony for his birthday from his rich, neglectful father. Yet he was jealous of his poor friend, Edmond, who was overjoyed for having received a mere whistle for his birthday, but from a father who was kind and nurturing.

No amount of money can buy self-esteem. At best, money can buy fragile arrogance, the mask of festering, underlying insecurity.

Conclusion

The risk of a child breaking stuff is nowhere close to the priceless benefit of that child feeling trusted by an adult, and the self-esteem (and responsibility) that comes with it.

You want to help make your children accountable? You must show them trust, and manage the risk of that trust like the adult you supposedly are.

If the child does indeed break or mess up something, then it is up to you to be self-accountable and assume full responsibility for it. Never blame a child for being a child, especially when you would not blame an adult for the same damage. Funny how we give adults more benefit of the doubt than we do to children.

You are the adult, you are in control, you are responsible for your feelings. You can’t go on an adult’s version of a temper tantrum and lash out at a child. And all I see is adults going on unhinged temper tantrums targeting children… I rarely see children erupt. It’s usually the adults with the accumulated unresolved trauma. It’s the adults erupting towards the easy, undefendable target of children.

Your worth as a parent is judged by how much self-esteem your children have; and I’m not talking about narcissism — masked insecurity, the opposite of self-esteem, the overcompensation for self-hatred.

One of the main ways to build your children’s self-esteem is to show trust in them by taking a leap of faith in them and being adult enough to manage the risk of that trust. Trust them with stuff and tasks (provided they are not too dangerous), and if the children cause some damage to meaningless replaceable stuff, you take it as an adult. Value the experience as an opportunity to teach your child how to improve. Never berate a child for not performing as an adult. You wouldn’t berate an adult for the same damage, so why would you berate a child who has extenuating circumstances, no less?

Instead, praise the child for doing good enough, considering the child’s inexperience. Then show the child how to improve. Any damage to physical stuff caused by entrusting a child is your responsibility as an adult to manage.

Any damage to things you entrust a child to is nothing compared to the benefit of building that child’s self-esteem.

You need your children to have self-esteem. If they don’t, they will suffer in life, and so will you, especially in your older years, when they will subconsciously resent you for it. And you shouldn’t complain, because when adult children mistreat their aging parents, it’s not about the children being vindictive or spiteful. It’s about behaving exactly the way you taught them: mistreating the weak, clumsy, and frail.

Crucial takeaway

You see, children are innocent. This is why, whatever happens, they blame themselves. Parents are unhappy? Children blame themselves. Parents are abusive monsters with crippling unresolved insecurities? Children blame themselves, even when they shouldn’t.

This is why children are lovable: Instead of blaming you for your psychoses, they blame themselves. They are that pure and virtuous. They’d rather dislike themselves than dislike you. You owe children… you owe them to be better.

If you don’t trust children with the smallest tasks, it’s because you are projecting your insecurities through a micromanaging, over-controlling demeanor.

You thus condemn children to innocently conclude that they aren’t good enough to be trusted. And they carry this psychodynamic well into adulthood, which determines their lives through the tendency to make bad choices because of those innocently naive conclusions you helped them draw.

Children’s purity is their vulnerability.

The best way to protect children is to help them build self-esteem. A great way to help them build self-esteem is to take a leap of faith in them, trusting them, and managing the risk of that trust with full self-accountability as an adult.

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