This week herald’s the end of the academic year and the start of the clock ticking for the new one. Helping your child to develop their positive sense of self-esteem has never been more essential. I share three tips for parents to use to boost summer self-esteem.
Go on! Take a sigh of relief. You are nearly there, you have got your child to the end of summer term 2021 but time travels fast and before you know it we will be facing the Autumn Term again.
For many children and young people with dyslexia, school is a challenge that can affect the development of poor self-esteem. Constant assessments and comparisons can prove to make a child feel weary and if they are finding that their strengths do not seem to translate into good grades then this can start to reinforce a self-belief of not being good enough. But good enough for what?
For many kids in school, exams and assessments will seem like the be all and end all. Yes, they are important, but when they start to have the emotional and psychological effect that seems to blinker a child’s view of their own value in so many other aspects, then, we as parents need to facilitate a more focused set of activities that promotes developing good self esteem.
Three Essential Tips For Boosting Summer Self-Esteem.
I am going to share three tips on what you as a parent could do to help your child feel good about themselves through the summer holidays. If they feel good about themselves then the difficulties in schools start to become challenges to overcome, rather than mountainous overwhelming experiences.
Read on to find out more…
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Tip One: Do Fun and do lots of it!
Your kids deserve to enjoy life and to switch off from the intensity of education. Weirdly, the more anyone switches off, the more relaxed they are and more likely to absorb information. There is learning in having fun. There is a reason why little kids play, as play is key to learning. As parents we will remember how we coaxed our kids into being able to walk through play or how we helped our children to learn how to draw or to play an instrument. It all starts with having fun, building engagement and then learning from it. For some reason as we get older we lose this sense of playfulness and then we wonder why we struggle to learn new things!
There is learning in everything and if we can give our kids constant new and fun experiences then they will start to not only learn new things but also realise that they have capacity to learn and what works for them in terms of being able to absorb information.
I realise this means investment of time and money over the summer holidays, but it will be an investment. The sun is shining so let’s get our kids away from those devices and out into the fresh air, jumping into streams, playing games with friends, climbing, drawing etc.
Tip Two: Highlight strengths and be honest and objective about weaknesses.
Whilst having all that fun, have conversations with your children about what they are experiencing. In an objective way help your children to evaluate what they found that they were good at and what they were weak at. Don’t give your children false positive feedback, they will know. It is OK to sit with them and help them to work it all out. It promotes ownership for dealing with their own challenges and it helps them to acknowledge what they are good at. For a child with poor self-esteem, the narrative is constantly telling them that they are not good enough, so helping them to acknowledge that they were more than good enough (without us telling them directly thus trying to forcibly change their thinking, as that approach simply doesn’t work) through questions that get them to acknowledge the truth.
For example, rather than saying, “You were fantastic when you climbed that tree. Don’t worry about the fall, you were still brilliant!”, you could say “When you were climbing that tree, I saw that you were effective at using your hands to grab hold of branches to pull you up, but I noticed that it was the placing of your feet that caused you to slip and fall. I am wondering what you thought about that and what could help you to use your feet more effectively?”
Giving feedback in an objective and unjudgmental way helps our children to think in this way. Afterall gaining experience is not gaining experience if we don’t mess things up along the way and learn from them, but we don’t have to get stuck in that judgmental ‘not good enough’ narrative.
Tip Three: Do empathy NOT sympathy.
This relates to point two, when a child is feeling like they have failed and are feeling down about it, the temptation is to fix that situation for our children but when we do that, when we give sympathy in those situations, we almost confirm the hopelessness in it all. Empathy is a skill where you seek to sit with someone with their difficulties, allowing them to share what’s happening from their perspective and encourage them to change the situation themselves.
Rather than “You poor thing, that didn’t go well. Never mind I think that you should try this solution …” maybe something like “I can see that you are not feeling great about that situation. Why don’t you tell me what you are feeling? What do you think could be done differently next time?”
Giving the child space to talk without us as parents pushing for a fix, empowers the child to find their own solutions and develop self-advocacy skills to ask for what they need from others (aka teachers) to unlock their brilliance.
Are difficult emotions getting in the way of you negotiating support for your child at school?
Having dyslexia can often be genetic in nature and so our children’s experience of dyslexia might make it difficult to objectively work with the school to get the best support put in place. If you would like to explore difficult emotions that are triggered from having a child with dyslexia, then therapeutic counselling will give you a safe and confidential space to explore and understand what you are feeling and help you to manage these feelings during negotiations for support.
What are your thoughts?
Has this blog article been useful to you? Do you agree with what I have suggested? Do you disagree? I want to hear from you. The more we as parents talk about this the more we can work together to get the education system to provide our children with the support that they need to be the best version of themselves. Please pop a comment in the comments box below and if you want to join my Parenting Dyslexia community then click here.