My father, in many ways, was a very admirable man. However, he felt that he was a failure and that everything he did and had was a failure or bound to fail. Unfortunately, this included his wife and children.
He was never intentionally abusive. It was just that we were constantly compared to our (apparently) successful peers. My mother, in his opinion, never worked as hard as any other mother, and his fields (he was a farmer) were never as productive or tidy as anyone else's. He was convinced that 'everyone else' looked down on us and judged us (rightly) as less.
His attitude came from being brought up with a very stoic father who expected too much from his eldest son at a time (the Great Depression) when everyone was struggling. His father strongly believed that if you spare the rod, you spoil the child, and that praise in any form would make his son weak and arrogant.
My father died a few years ago, and when my mother was asked to say a few words about him, she said, 'He worried a lot!'. After sixty years of marriage, that is what she remembered most profoundly.
We loved our father, but we had to dig deeply to find any emotional connection, and the love was always tempered by the fact that we felt we were something of a disappointment to him.
As a result, I know the real value of building up a child's confidence and self esteem. Both my sons have special needs and so, they are not fooled by empty platitudes. However, one of them has an affinity with cats, and I tell him so. The other is using much more complex vocabulary and I let him know I have noticed this. Like the poster above implied, we need to focus on all those little wonders that our children evidence each day, and learn to say to ourselves that we are good or at least good enough, and the seeds of self confidence will grow.