The Self-Esteem Trap: Wrong Ways to Promote Self-Esteem in Children

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“After promoting self-esteem for two decades, we are seeing more depression and anxiety in young people, not higher levels of self-confidence. It turns out that telling kids they are great all the time doesn’t help them that much; instead it makes them suspicious of adults because they can see that they’re not as good at doing some things as other kids are.”
-Michael Thompson, Ph.D. (2012, p. 118)

The self-esteem movement is a prime example of how good intentions can so easily go astray. Self-esteem and self-confidence are indeed quite important for children. Unfortunately, many adults go about trying to boost a child’s self-esteem in all the wrong ways.

Some attempt to protect a child’s self-esteem by keeping all negative experiences at bay. Not only has this fueled the destructive trend of overprotective parenting, (something that cripples children every bit as much as abuse and trauma does), but it’s had a negative effect on children’s self-esteem: Kids don’t build confidence by being shielded from life’s hardships. They develop confidence by being challenged and overcoming diversity. Overprotective parenting sends precisely the opposite message, suggesting to kids that they’re incapable of handling life by themselves.

Others attempt to improve children’s self-esteem by offering unearned praise or telling kids how wonderful and brilliant they are all the time. All this does is turn children into narcissists, leaving them ill-equipped to handle any sort of criticism. It also traps them in a cycle of inferiority: we grow from making mistakes and learning how to improve. But if kids are regularly being told everything they do is perfect as it is, there’s never any reason to improve. It also makes them more likely to give up whenever they encounter something challenging, since they’ve been conditioned to believe that everything they do should be perfect without any effort.

For several decades now, adults have been showering children with praise and avoiding anything that might arouse uncomfortable feelings. We’ve ensured every child gets a participation ribbon just for trying, or even eliminated the prizes for first, second or third place altogether, so as not to confront our kids with the awful truth that others might be better at something than they are. We’ve even gone so far as to stop keeping score in youth competitions, lest children be exposed to the discomfort of losing.

Psychologist Wendy Mogel reports that “a principal at an elementary school told me that a parent asked a teacher not to use red pens for corrections, because the parent felt it was upsetting to kids when they see so much red on the page. This is the kind of self-absorption we’re seeing, in the name of our children’s self-esteem.” (Gottlieb, 2011, p. 74)

And yet for all these efforts, kids seem to be growing more vulnerable and incompetent, not less so. “Many people who grew up in the ’50s say, ‘Nothing I did was ever good enough for my parents,'” says psychologist Roy Baumeister. who has studied self-esteem. “‘Now we’re seeing the pendulum swing, and you hear from coaches and teachers who have been at it a while that kids have become more fragile. They don’t take criticism well.” (Elias, 2008)

Ashley Merryman, co-author of +Nurture Shock: New Thinking About Children,+ argues that we’ve somehow come upon the belief that “children are very fragile and that any bad outcome they experience, no matter how big or small, could damage their developing self-esteem.” She adds: “Science has proven that it’s just not true. Achievement builds self-esteem, not the other way around.” (Sholnik, 2012)

Self-esteem can’t be artificially manufactured through happy thoughts or unearned praise. The type of true self-esteem that actually helps a child comes from experience, not from adults telling them how wonderful they are all the time. True self-esteem comes from knowing that other people are better at certain things, and that’s okay, because you’re secure enough in what you are that this isn’t perceived as a threat. It’s about weaving what you’re good at and not so good at into a collective identity and being happy with the outcome.

It also comes from knowing that you have the ability to tackle the challenges that might arise in life, and that you can improve your lot by putting in the effort. Stanford psychologist Carol S. Dweck has done extensive research demonstrating that competence comes from understanding the basis of achievement: i.e., that success comes from things like hard work and perseverance. She’s found that practice helps students see themselves as more competent, which in turn translates into self-esteem of the real kind. Other studies have found that who becomes an Olympic champion depends less on athletic prowess and more on things like the ability to focus, mental toughness, the ability to set goals and see them through, competitiveness, confidence, coachability, drive, optimism and control of emotions. (Subotnik, Olzwewski-Kubilius & Worrell, 2012)

None of this is achieved by showering kids with empty praise, plying them with cheap participation trophies, or handling their challenges for them. Which means most of the things adults have been doing to boost children’s self-esteem are not just unhelpful, but extremely counterproductive.

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