School report - son has "Low self esteem"

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My ds's school report says he has low self esteem. What am I meant to do with this information? How do I give him high self esteem?

Here's how I see it after many conversations with ds about working hard - he can't be bothered. He thinks if he works hard the teacher will reward him with more, harder, work. I'm not there at school with him telling him what to do, so he coasts along and tells the teacher he can't do things even when he probably could if he really tried.

He's within the average field in terms of his attainments at school. He's 11.

What would you do to make a child have better self-esteem or shall I just be fatalistic about it?

Depends.

Does he actually have low self esteem or not?

Does he think he's good at some things?

I think there's loads you can do to improve self-esteem. For example finding outside interests he's brilliant it, praising his effort not his achievement, just plain loving him for exactly who he is.

But if he does not have low self-esteem, but rather is lazy in class. Than diff strategies are required. Personally if my child was lazy and doing average I wouldn't be concerned. Nothing wrong with being lazy. Or at least nothing wrong with doing the least amount of work that you need to do.

He's made brilliant progress lately in the field of being self-conscious and embarrassed by everything. He was banning us from talking about him being a baby once, cos he's "embarrassed", and he never talked to girls in class cos his friends, "friends", kept taking the mick out of him if he tried, and he was going along with this embarrassment straitjacket. I tackled it head on, played tapes of him talking as a baby, said listen to it, it's not embarrassing, and used some CBT techniques to challenge his thinking about "if I do this it might be embarrassing." His reasoning was "My friends might cast it up to my in three years." I tackled this by saying "in three years you might not know them, you might be in another class, another school and you won't remember, and even if you did you would have the time and perspective to laugh at it rather than being embarrassed." I gave him some "I" statements to read at school and remind himself. And talked about embarrassment and courage as two dogs, if he feeds the embarrassment dog it just gets bigger and becomes a monster and eats him, or if he feeds his courage dog (and takes courageous baby steps in socialising) then, he will become courageous which will be good. So if he does something indulding his embarrassed side, that's "feeding his embarrassment dog".

Now when he comes in I say, "Did you feed your courageous dog?" and the upshot of it is, he's now talking to a girl he really likes, he's seeing less of the bossy friend and he actually thanked me the other day for making him stop indulging his embarrassment. That was a good day.

If he has low self-esteem - it's hard. We do try, but maybe we are too strict. I do make a massive fuss of him when he does good things, like if he makes me a nice cup of tea. He's not too old for loads of cuddles. I tell him when I'm proud of him.

my dc self esteem was fine until they started school. I find it a battle between home and the outside encounters especially with current teachers.

Yes, it's only when they start school you hear them saying "I'm no good at this," "I'm rubbish at that." It's cos its what they are hearing from their peers.

So tackle this head on too.

Ask him what he's good at, what he's not good at. Are his responses accurate? Can you make him see why they're not accurate?

Tell him what you think he's good at and not good at. And tell him why........

My son is exactly the same. He is in the top set for maths although he isn't that confident about his abilities. He works slowly on purpose or does not tell the teacher when he is finished because he does not want to do the extension work. If anything it shows they are clever for working this out!

Yes. Ds was diagnosed with AS as a child, and has managed to get by well enough that now he has no one to one help. But I think he is probably very high functioning, and he is a lot like my Dad who obviously has AS. I met a paediatrician when ds was 5 who said my son will never get much out of the general education at primary school but will excel at high school where he can specialise in the subjects that interest him. So I'm holding out for that. He reads a lot himself and is very well self-educated.

Indigo, good idea. But I'm not his teacher so can't really say if he's good as or better than his peers in anything. I know he's much better at maths than dn who lives with us, but that's cos we drilled ds on times tables, and dn lived with MIL who just said to him "You'll always struggle at maths, you're like us, none of us can do maths" and threw in the white flag. headdesk . We have tried to help dn learn times tables, cos without that tool in his brain he is always going to struggle with maths as it gets harder.

Maybe calm down a little bit? I wouldn't be surprised if he feels under pressure from you, and a little scrutinised. He needs to find his own motivations for doing things.

"Here's how I see it after many conversations with ds about working hard - he can't be bothered."
" I do make a massive fuss of him when he does good things, like if he makes me a nice cup of tea. He's not too old for loads of cuddles. I tell him when I'm proud of him."

Do you tell him how much you love him on a daily basis? Does he have a positive record of your voice in his head? (I mean do you say positive things to him, not about what he does/his achievements, so much that that is what he hears when he thinks of you.)

Are you ASD?

Btw "We have tried to help dn learn times tables, cos without that tool in his brain he is always going to struggle with maths as it gets harder." Is rubbish! I never learnt my tables and got a B at A'level back when half the syllabus is now degree level and B's were very hard to get, I then did a degree with Maths. The problem is not learning the tables but the message "You'll always struggle at maths, you're like us, none of us can do maths" .

With my kids who are a) perfectionist an b) have self-esteem issues. I daily tell them I love them (even the 15 year old). I praise them for more than just their achievements, their effort they know means more to me. I thank them a lot. We all join in celebrating any praise they get from school and so on. We have also banned certain words (eg. stupid).

I would also suggest that you start educating yourself on teens with AS, they do have their own special problems, because they just don't react socially in the same way.

Finally if you don't know what to do with anything that is written on your child's report, then go an talk to the teacher about it.
Good luck!

I am not ASD.

I don't tell him I love him all the time. I do cuddle him a lot.

It's awkward with nephew living with us. Nephew resists any displays of love/cuddles, never comes near us. So we try and respect his space. The downside of this is that we are more reserved around the other two as a result.

Sorry for offending you with my theories about maths tables.

Banning the word stupid is a good idea, we never call the children stupid. We never compare them to each other. My dd is top of the class, very bright, but we don't make a thing about that, specially not in front of the other two. We let them read their own reports, not each other's.

If I were to read books on AS in teens, it might start WW3 with dh because he was always resistant to ds having any sort of AS label. I am very very ambivalent about coming out and saying ds is AS, I think it was a convenient label for his school at the time when he was little so they could fund more helpers in the classroom - by the end of his time in that school his helper regularly went off to help others - the school used ds's label to fund more help. Occasionally I think ds shows AS traits. Occasionally. Most of the time I am amazed how Neurotypical he is in his thinking.

the school used ds's label to fund more help. - Are you sure the school gets funding because he has a 'label'?

Does he have a statement?

It's incredibly hard to get a statement. And the school doesn't get any extra funding if your child doesn't have a statement......

The school absolutely does not get any extra funding just because your child has a dx of ASD.

I didn't mean banning you from using the word, I meant the kids. Mine often call each other stupid, which is a no no.

I have to say you DH needs to learn a bit more about AS, I know some brilliant people with AS. Very very successful, however it would have helped me and probably them if we had known this was the case. (One woman was treated for depression, and was only diagnosed with the true problem after her son was diagnosed. In another case it would have been of interest to me, but could have really helped him and his girlfriends.)
A diagnosis of AS is quite hard to get, and comes after a lot of assessment. It helps because such people can often learn the rules to live by if they are taught them. Has your DN got a diagnosis, not necessarily of AS but maybe he needs help because of his past?
I really would suggest that you try to get some more advice from those with more experience, even if keeping it from your husband to start with.

It neverceases to amaze me how people band terms around apparently without knowing what they mean .

As I have always understood it " Low Self Esteeem" is a personality trait and as such is enduring and resistant to change. Its characterised by self deprication and it will remain no matter how many or what kinds of achievements are made. Some of those who have made the greatest of achievements and received accolades still feel that their contributions have been worthless. So what can you do about it? Answer - Not a lot.

It usually does suggest though that an individual has an acute sensitivity to social situations and feels concern.

Herein is the problem , too many people think something can and even must be done about it and that is just nonesense. Even worse, too many people use the term incorrectly. Same goes for many other labels we have these days. Just accept it and the boy would be my advice.

I have an 11yo with low self esteem and I definitely think it has an impact on his school work: he pretends to be more stupid than he is, just in case the teachers should find out how stupid he really is iyswim. There is a massive gap between the kind of reasoning he is capable of if you catch him off guard, and the work he produces for school. He has actually had some counselling to overcome his negativity as it was reaching ridiculous proportions (and he struggles with other health related issues, too), and he has been a lot better since.

But what I am really hoping is that when he goes up to secondary school, he will find something, anything, that catches his interest so that he forgets to think about himself all the time. The way I see it, that is the root to his problems; he is too caught up in looking at himself to ever take any risks and it is difficult to learn without any risk-taking.

Just accepting it would mean we accept that he doesn't learn to tell the time (yes, talking about an 11yo here!), that he doesn't learn basic maths or how to write a legible sentence, because he feels safer as the class dunce, the one everybody feels sorry for.

He knows he is loved- but he also thinks he knows he is not clever. He is a very all-or-nothing person.

jabed - your comment is so interesting .
I have low self esteem and nothing touches it .
My worst problem is how hard I find it to believe in DS , I find it so hard to see him as a seperate entity and am always struggling with the emotion that as it's me that has brought him up ,I'm bound to have done it really badly and ruined him .

Mummytime, I know there are brilliant people with AS, my family is full of them. In that, they are mentally brilliant, very clever people, but socially they have struggled and struggled and struggled, and none of them really found their niche, they have all utterly failed to turn their AS genius into any form of success or happiness. Stuck in dead end jobs, screwed out of money, etc etc. All incredibly bitter and all think the world owes them a living. All intolerant of the AS in each other.

We got the AS diagnosis from a liked and trusted educational psychologist, who said that she wasn't really convinced ds was AS, but she knew it would help us get on with the school/help the school get funding. We didn't get it straight away, it took about a year of visits to her clinic. After that the school got what they wanted but dh was fuming about it, he hated ds being expected to attain less in life just because of this diagnosis. I'm more pragmatic, I thought, he gets the help at school, fair enough if he needs it. Now I don't think he does. He's very intuitive, he can read other people pretty well, he is very good at communicating on a mature level about his own strengths and weaknesses. He is often domineering of others in a group setting, I think that could well be an AS trait.

The idea of reading books/seeking help for ds's AS (if he has it in any meaningful sense) is about as tempting as bashing my head off the wall. We still have dn living with us and we get no state help for that, and I can only fight a battle on one front. If it turns out that ds is struggling hugely at school then I might start asking the school for AS type help but at the moment if it ain't broke I won't fix it. And I don't want to go behind dh's back with anything, we had years of bitter struggling about ds and I'm not getting back on that merry go round again.

DN hasn't got any diagnosis of anything. As far as I am aware he's functioning okay at school, in the average field in terms of class attainment. He works hard and has a good attitude to school work most of the time.

Cory, that sounds really frustrating from your point of view, knowing he can do things but he fights against it.

What I've done is said, what is the worst that can happen? And get your son to think through "What will people think if I can't do it" or "What will people think if it turns out I'm really good at this." Maybe see if he has a domineering friend who is putting all this poison into his head and making him overly self conscious.

Update - I asked ds outright, about his low self esteem, he said he has it about some subjects like English. I said, what makes you think you're rubbish at English? And he said, because there are girls in the class who are better than me. So I said, well my violin teacher is much better than me at violin, but that doesn't mean I'm rubbish, it means I'm good but haven't devoted my life to the perfomring and teaching of violin. And, it's okay for other people to be good at things and you to be good at other things. It was a useful discussion.

I'm very interested in the topic of self esteem and how it relates to achievement. Generally, the research shows that it doesn't. Many of the highest-performing children have relatively low self esteem. Self esteem is overrated in this respect.

It sounds, however, like he has a fixed mindset when it comes to intelligence. He thinks you're either intelligent or you're not (you might think the same - lots of people do - for example, you've used the words 'clever' and 'bright' in your previous posts). His 'not bothering' in class is a symptom of this. I'm a teacher and I find that when a kid says that something is 'boring', this is a euphemism for 'I can't do it'. Children with fixed mindsets tend to avoid tasks that will make them look or feel like they're not intelligent - that is, tasks that they have to work on and think about.

What he needs is to develop a growth mindset, not increase his self esteem. His self esteem will get better when he sees that he can take control of his own learning through hard work.

I can't really explain it all here, but this text is really interesting and provides some strategies. This website also has some fantastic material on the subject. Alternatively, just google the work of Carol Dweck.

I hope this helps and that I'm not appearing to oversimplify your son's situation. It sounds like you have done some brilliant work with him already (I love the courageous dog idea) - I hope the links I've provided can give you a few more ideas :)

Hi Freerangeeggs, we never put people down for being either intelligent or not. Never ever. My parents are both very intelligent and are huge intellectual snobs. My dad would say that stupid people are a waste of space. I utterly, utterly reject intellectual snobbery. So I really hope I haven't taught my son to value intelligence over all other things. I'm more into wisdom than intelligence. I like the sound of a growth mindset. If ds learns something new, I tend to try and remind him of how far he's come, I do the same with dn when he makes progress on the violin so they can see that hard work leads to achievement. To the victor, the spoils.

Ds is a keen reader and he knows a lot in the subjects he likes. I can't teach him anything about science, he already has read it all, lol. Actually, I do know more about medicine than him but that's just because of the books I like and programmes I watch.

Hi greencolorpack. I'm not suggesting for a minute that you'd put down 'stupid' people, or that you value intelligence over other things - it's the very suggestion that such a thing as 'stupid' or 'very intelligent' actually exists that suggests you might have a fixed mindset (of course I don't know you so can't say that for certain). There is some debate about this (in fact there was a really interesting debate on mumsnet a few weeks ago - I'll see if I can find it) and obviously some people have special needs and so on which are very difficult, if not impossible, to overcome. But according to the growth mindset model (which is backed by lots of evidence, if you look at the links above) people generally have the capability to increase what would be seen as their 'intelligence'. These things are not necessarily innate - they can be, but they can also be developed.

A child with a growth mindset understands this and as a result is more likely to 'bounce back' from perceived failure, to acknowledge and work to overcome their weaknesses, and to face any challenges head on.

Your son has low self esteem in English, by which he means he's not automatically good at it like some of the girls in his class. As a result he'll be less likely to work at it for fear of 'failing' or being seen as unintelligent. I was the same. He needs to realise that although English isn't his strong point just now, he can make it much better by working at it and acknowledging the things about English that he finds difficult - which of course is what you were modelling for him with your violin story. He needs to realise that you can learn from difficulty.

I think the teacher might be confusing self esteem with resilience. The article I posted has a few strategies on how to increase resilience. He may well have picked up his mindset from someone other than yourself - it permeates the media and even the education system - but it can be tackled.

Freerangeeggs, this is something I often raise here and I am so glad teachers are becoming aware of Dweck and recent developments in cognitive science.

Many/most (?) teachers talk about their high, middle and low ability/less able pupils. The danger is that these ideas can become entrenched early on a 'low' ability child is unlikely to transform into a high ability child. Higher status is ascribed to perceived 'natural' ability. A 'low' ability child that spurts is likely credited with being a hard worker rather than being recategorised as able.

As you suggest IMO this is widespread and very much human nature. I think if we all saw early achievements (especially) in terms of current attainment it would make a huge, positive difference. I hear parents and teachers saying things like 'Maths isn't his strongest subject, he struggles' and similar about children as young as six. I am quick to say 'he may struggle NOW but it could be a strength next year!' Privately they often disagree. Why? All sorts of self fulfilling prophecies can come into play. Most people believe ability is fixed IMO and this needs to change.

Since I read up on Dweck and developments in cognitive science, 'cells that glow together, grow together' I have achieved more than I thought possible.

"because there are girls in the class who are better than me".

I couldn't believe it when I read this, because my DS who is only 5 and in year one says and has said this most weeks since Reception (now in Y1).

He also has developed huge self esteem issues since starting school and I see the above as one main root of the problem. Although my son is the top of KS1 for English (so better than his eldest sister who is top of Y2), he still believes he is rubbish at reading and writing and nothing I say seems to make a difference.

I know he is younger but there is got to be a key to this. And no, I don't believe that these things are part of personality at such a young age, my little boy was the most confident, outgoing character since starting school and every inch of it has been eroded, despite him being so bright - I am not sure why really. It is very difficult to understand and know what to do....