Low self-esteem

[Tooearlyforachristmasnameyet]

My 7 year old ds, like majority of children, has his strengths and weaknesses. However, he doesn't see any of his strengths, and thinks he is useless at everything.

For example, he is a purple belt in karate, (this is one off a brown belt then there are 3 brown belts and then you are a black belt, there are 6 belts below him). In his karate group there is one child who is in the school year above him and is a brown belt, and another who is three school years above him and is a black belt. Everyone else is at least 2 belts below him. He'll rave about how good these other two kids are, but says that he is useless at karate, and is one of the worst.

When you point out that the majority are below him, and therefore he's not useless, he doesn't see it.

This happens with everything, even where he is the best, he believes he is useless at everything.

Has anyone got any ideas of how to help with building up his confidence? I don't want him to be arrogant, but he really has a low opinion of himself. All the kids in his class are ultra confident, and will readily say they are the best, or if not THE best, one of the best. But he says he's the worst at everything, even when he's not.

Do you praise him, also can you ring people, even if it is just ringing daddy at work etc each time he achieves something good. A special meal when he goes up a belt, a trip to a swimming pool with flumes when he goes up a level etc. It sounds as if he needs people to go ott for him to accept that he might have done something ok. Dd2 is a bit like that. At first he might not like the extra fuss, but over time if he sees that you and his family are proud of him, he might feel more confident. Worth putting the effort in now in preparation for teenage years.

He does get a lot of praise from us, but he sees it as us being his parents i.e. of course we're proud and we should be, but it's not real achievement in his eyes.

He feels like that we are saying he's good to make him feel better, not because he's actually good.

We've tried quantifying his ability to him in situations where it is easy to quantify. But even then he just doesn't believe that he's really any good.

Would it perhaps help to try and switch his focus from external factors (such as how others are doing) to how far he has come along himself? e.g. by praising how much better he is this year than last year or praising the effort he has put into something rather than the end result?

(He sounds very much like me as a child BTW. I think it's to do with perfectionism!)

That's a good idea, will give that a go.

As an adult TheRedQueen do you find yourself focusing on the negative rather than the positive? I.e. if doing a task you made minor mistakes on the way but had a good end result, do you focus on the minor mistakes.

Mistakes really don't bother me, I should probably try to be a bit more perfect, but I certainly am not troubled by perfectionism, so trying to understand my ds.

Tooearlyforchristmasnamesyet

First I agree with TheRedQueen - that you need to gradually shift the focus to how he's doing.

Two things occur:

One is teaching your DS that he can't control how the other person is doing. (This is a really hard but fundamental lesson to learn). If he wants to get good at judo (or anything else for that matter) he has to focus on what he needs to do.

You need to work out whether this negativity is a plea for attention. Do you drop everything and shore him up when he says something negative. If you are expending more energy on him when he says something negative than when he says something positive - then you need to work on how you react as well. If he comes home and says Mum I've got the best score on the maths test today in class and you just blow him off with 'that's nice dear' but have a half-hour conversation about how he's much better than he thinks he is at judo - you can see that from his perspective it is more rewarding (in the sense of attention from Mum or Dad) to be negative.

We've had real problems with DD2 (now Y2) because she's learned since nursery if she puts on the waterworks everyone comes running to the poor sobbing girl. We've had to ask teachers not to respond. We've had to all ask her to go sit somewhere at the side and calm herself and then rejoin the others/ or us whilst we get on with things. It's really hard to do at first - the instinct is to comfort - but you've got to really observe the behaviour, determine if it's negative and attention seeking and then work hard to break the habit, which is no easy thing I can assure you.

HTH

He focuses very heavily on how badly he's doing, and won't compare himself to others, and it's me pointing out others to him.

I'll continue using the karate example:

I'm rubbish at karate, no your not, yes I am, but look at the level your at, where are other people, X is on black belt, and y is on brown belt and they are amazing. And where is everyone else - I don't know, yes you do they are lower than you. Yeah, but they are better than me, and I'm useless at it.

I will certainly look at my behaviour when it occurs. But for example spelling tests, he does week in week out and I forget to ask. He'll come in one evening and say 'I'm rubbish at spellings I got 9/10 today', and I'll say hold on how are you rubbish at spellings what did you get last week, '10/10', so how does that make you rubbish. So looks like I need to ask every week, and reward the 10/10 and then play down the I'm rubbish comments.

Thanks for that pastsellbydate, writing the response made me think how my actions are impacting.

Hi

I just got a book 'Thow to Talk so kids will listen and listen so kids will talk'.

It was recommended on another thread.

Having just read the first couple of chapters, it has made me totally rethink how I respond to dd. It is a real eyeopener. It may be worth a look, as has lots of strategies which will also help with self esteem.

Hi. I have a son in year 3 who sounds very similar. In some ways, he is a perfectionist, and cannot accept 9 out of 10 in a spellings test etc (mind you, he is also very untidy, loses things, puts trousers on back to front etc. If he does lose a Mark in a spellings test or maths test, it will be be side he's made a careless mistake ).

He is mellowing and gaining confidence as he gets older, but it has taken a lot of work with us and the school.

He used to really compare himself to others, and set himself very high targets. He has many talents, but of course always finds himself with children who are slightly better - swimming was a memorable one. It took ages for him to realise that he'd never be top of his group, because when he reaches the top, he gets moved on!

I just kept plugging away at it, telling him how well he was doing, pointing out that a child who is in a higher swimming group probably can't play the piano etc, and I think it just sinking in with age.