We talked yesterday about self-esteem in children, from our own personal image in an emotional sense and also about our important role as protectors of our children before those people or situations that can undermine them.
Now we will address the issue from the positive point of view, learning, within our Maternity and Paternity Course, how to promote self-esteem as parents and educators.
Attachment
Our entire Maternity and Paternity Course is, in reality, a review of a attachment breeding in everyday life and an attempt to offer parents resources to, raising with respect and empathy, give children the basis for building a solid, flexible and self-confident personality.
How important is it the attachment? My resounding answer is an SI, capitalized, round and round. Attachment is based on understanding and respect for the child's natural needs.
The baby and the child need the physical contact, the signs of affection and feeling accompanied at all times. The denial of his demands for arms and hugs, for a shared dream, for food on demand, for understanding his fears and tensions grows with the idea, almost physically induced and reinforced by stress, that he really has no right to receive what he asks for and that his demands, deep down, are not legitimate or well received.
Learn to endure without complaining or complaining to be able to withstand dissatisfaction, a recipe, in my opinion, infallible, but not to achieve something desirable, but to destroy self-esteem from early childhood.
When the child cries asking for food, arms, caresses or being accompanied and we respond coherently, we transmit the assurance that it is appreciated and respected, who has our consideration and who has the right to wish to feel good.
This need for response is even greater in the children who demand a lot, which are precisely the ones that may be most at risk of being ignored by exhausted parents.
Despite this difficulty, denying those demands or transforming them into a label of a heavy or spoiled child, they do not help the child to develop a strong and healthy image of himself, but will let him know that his needs are undesirable. Looking for a personal balance parents can, with empathy, attend to the child and trust that, precisely the attention will help them build a more balanced personality in the future.
The food on demand and body rearing, the accompanied dream and a serene attitude towards the tantrums are precisely the basis for a strong self-esteem, because the little one learns that he is valued and not ignored. Frustration is precisely the basis of insecurities and leads to satisfaction being sought dangerously even in later years.
Limits
I think we have already indicated that the limits are not incompatible with respectful upbringing, moreover, they are necessary.
The limits are inevitable and in the discovery of the world the child learns them directly. However, parents must be attentive and build a physical and emotional universe that transmits the boundaries in a coherent, clear and loving way.
Same as our son deserves to be respected and we will not use or allow physical, verbal or emotional aggressions to be used with him, we have the obligation to teach him, if he harms another, that the other also deserves the same consideration.
Although young children when they harm someone do so more for lack of control or understanding than for desire to harm, one should not be permissive in this. When we do not act and let them harm others by their actions, words or unconsciousness without intervening or giving them a correct guide, we are only teaching them that they have rights but others not so much.
Marking limits, explaining them, agreeing when possible, offers the child the necessary security in themselves, in their environment and in ourselves. Without limits the child feels lost, does not understand that human relationships are based on mutual respect and it will be increasingly complicated to be able to develop relationships in harmony and not with imposition.
Of course, the limits are also taught by example. In fact the children of what they learn is from our example. Therefore, we must not show them that we enjoy the suffering of others, neither of people nor of animals, that we do not insult or lose control aggressively in any situation.
A parenting of attachment and respect and consistency in the limits we offer our children are a basic recipe for help them build a personality with self-esteem and empathy for others, a necessary balance in every human being.
