For their birthdays and Christmas, we all want to get the best toys and gadgets for our children and teens. In this series of articles, I share some suggestions for giving your child or teen the greatest gifts of all: self-acceptance, self-compassion, and self-direction.
What Does Your Struggling Child or Teen Need?
Children and teens with executive functioning problems often lose esteem because of continued failures and struggles. They negatively compare themselves to their peers who don’t struggle, and over time, they can become unmotivated. Poor motivation can lead to negative self-beliefs, harmful actions, and a cycle of continued failure.
Children and teens tend to “generalize” their challenges with school work and getting along well with others at school to their overall abilities. Even though a child or teen may perform well on non-academic tasks, if she struggles at school, she may make statements like, “I can’t do anything right!” or “I’m a total failure.” Over time, these statements become a self-fulfilling prophecy and she may develop learned helplessness.
Give the Gift of Self-Compassion
The good news is that parents and educators can help change a child’s or teen’s trajectory in life by helping them develop self-compassion.
Self-compassion is not self-esteem where one compares ones’ self with others. It is also not self-centeredness where one feels that one is better than others. True self-compassion involves understanding one’s strengths and needs, being kind to one’s self, arguing with one’s inner critic, and developing self-direction through problem-solving and achieving goals.
In this series of articles, I outline how to build up your child or teen’s resilience step-by-step.
The Gift of Self-Acceptance
The first step in improving your child’s resilience is to help her accept both her strengths and her needs. These articles outline steps to help you and your child.
Helping your child/teen understand his or her worth
Helping your child/teen understand her challenges
Identifying role models
Becoming a strength detective
Identifying and emphasizing your child/teen’s talents
The Gift of Self-Kindness
True self-kindness involves your child not only understanding her human-ness but also being kind to herself by learning to defend herself against her inner critic. It also involves learning how to problem-solve in a safe and nurturing atmosphere.
Helping your child/teen recognize negative self-talk
Helping your child/teen change negative self-talk
Modeling good problem solving
The Gift of Self-Direction
Self-direction grows out of self-compassion. Once your child or teen starts to recognize his true worth and starts to develop realistic self-talk, he is ready to start to gain self-direction through a structured approach to setting and achieving goals.
Goal setting: identifying goals
Goal setting: clarifying goals
Goal setting: visualizing goals
Goal setting: setting goals
Goal achieving: taking daily action
Goal achieving: evaluating progress often
Step-by-step, you can change the trajectory of a struggling child or teen! One of the greatest rewards in life occurs when your struggling child or teen has gathered strength from you.
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(C) 2010-2014, Monte W. Davenport, Ph.D.
