How do we go about building our child’s sense of self-worth and self-concept, especially as they enter young adulthood?

Strategy 1: Dialogue

Building self-worth begins with the basic message that your son or daughter – and every human being – is inherently good and loved by God. Sometimes we assume that our children somehow know these things. But the truth is, our children need to hear these messages repeatedly. They are hearing other messages all the time: messages like, “your worth depend on how good you are” or “your worth is defined by how much money you have or by your social class.” Our children need to hear the truth. Their worth is defined by God.

Remembering that children (especially those growing toward adulthood) will respond more favorably to dialogue than to lectures, have frequent explicit dialogues with your son or daughter about their self worth. Start the dialogue by asking questions. You might begin your first dialogue by asking, “what do you think it means to be created in the image of God?” Entertain their ideas and ask clarifying questions. But within the course of your discussion be sure to clarify the following

1. To be created in the image of God is not a physical description. God has no body.
2. We are in the image of God because we reflect who God is (His attributes).
3. God made us in His image because he wants to have a very real relationship with each and every one of us. God gave us an intellect so we could come to know him intimately. He gave us a will so we could freely choose to love Him.
4. Every human being has an incredible worth and dignity because we are able to give and receive love – even with God!

Another emphasis to make with your son or daughter is our status as co-heirs with Christ. From the very beginning God intended us to be His children. But the Sacraments of Baptism and the Holy Eucharist unite us so closely to Christ that we become one with Him. And He is the Son of God. We are therefore all co-heirs with Christ. That means that through Baptism we are made children of God, and therefore princes and princesses in the Kingdom of God.

Make this truth relevant to your adolescent son or daughter by using royalty as a standard of behavior. For example, you might say, “Son, that’s not the behavior of a prince.” Or you might catch your daughter doing something good and say, “Now that’s a true princess of God!” If statements like these get too much eye rolling, you may have to find your own way to get the message across.

Finally, stress the social as well as the personal aspect of self-worth. Not only is your son or daughter a child of God made in His image and destined to be a prince or a princess of the Kingdom, so is everyone else. Even though some people aren’t yet adopted into God’ family through Baptism, and others have disowned themselves from the family due to sin (like the Prodigal Son), God want everyone to be members of His Family. Therefore, everyone we meet is worthy of dignity, respect and love.

Strategy 2: Foster True Humility & Interdependence

Now that we’ve laid the important foundation of self-worth let’s talk about specific ways to nurture a healthy self concept in a young person’s life. Keep in mind that young people just begin discovering their self-concept during the middle school years. This is when the brain begins to develop the ability of abstract thought and we can truly begin to think about “who we are” and what other people think of us. Also keep in mind that the self-concept for most young people is very unstable. It tends to be filled with exaggerations on both ends of the spectrum. Young people can at the same time see themselves as indestructible know-it-alls and ugly, worthless failures. This is the time that they really need the reasoned, balanced voice of a caring adult. Yet, this is unfortunately the time that our culture tells us adults should leave them alone.

One of the most important things you can do with your adolescent son or daughter is to walk them through a self-assessment of their strengths and weaknesses. Help them to see that they do have strengths. Also help them to realize that everyone has weaknesses, and that these weaknesses do not make us any less important as individuals. Here’s where that bedrock foundation of self-worth comes in again.

What we’re doing here is fostering in our children true humility. Our culture tends to think of humility as enforced mediocrity. According to this misunderstanding of humility, we downplay or dismiss our strengths so we don’t appear different from those around us. But this isn’t how God created us. God created each of us to be a unique, unrepeatable member of the Kingdom of God. We are each given our own set of strengths with which to serve the Kingdom. Likewise,  we are created to live in community and therefore to help each other. So none of us is strong in all areas. We are not self-sufficient. We are called to be interdependent – to rely on each other in our areas of weakness. So true humility means to accurately know your strengths and your weaknesses, and to accept them both.

The next step is to encourage your children to think about how they can use their strengths to help others. Pride is the sin that opposes humility. Pride is the “inordinate” (over-the-top) desire for praise. We all too easily fall into pride when we think that our strengths and abilities define our self-worth. We also get into trouble when we assume that our strengths and our abilities are meant to serve us. It is tempting for youth to think that they will “find themselves” through self-fulfillment, the Second Vatican Council and Saint Pope John Paul II reminded us frequently that we find ourselves only when we make a sincere gift of ourselves to others. What gifts did God give your son and daughter? And how is He calling him or her to use those gifts to build up the Kingdom? By the way, encouraging young people to consider this question frequently is a great way to foster vocations rather than focusing on “what do you want to do with your life,” focus on “how has God equipped you and what is He calling you to do?”

Dealing with weaknesses doesn’t have to be troubling either. Once young people recognize that everyone has weaknesses, the next step is to figure out how to deal with them. There are really three constructive responses we can have toward our weaknesses.

1. The first response is to strengthen them through practice and the formation of good habits. For example, let’s say your son just has no concept of time. He is late for everything. Your first step might be to work with your son to develop better time management habits. You might help him get himself prepared ahead of time, to get dressed earlier, and to leave plenty of travel time to get to his destination.
2. The second response to our children’s weaknesses is to devise strategies to work around those weaknesses. Back to the example of your son with a time management problem, perhaps he can find a smartphone app that alerts him when he has to start getting ready, or to set his clocks a little ahead to help him be ready earlier. The first strategies are to strengthen the weakness by establishing new habits. The second set of strategies helps the young person function despite the weakness. 
3. The third response to your children’s weaknesses is to encourage them to seek help from others. Notice how closely true humility is connected to interdependence. Interdependence helps us to realize that we don’t have to be good at everything. God designed us to be able to help others with our strengths and to be helped by others in our weakness. 

All three of these strategies can and often should be used at the same time. Through it all, remind your children that their strengths and weaknesses don’t define their self-worth. Their self-worth has already been defined by God.

Strategy 3: Preserving Self-Worth In Discipline

Finally, a very important part of nurturing good self-worth, self-concept and self-esteem is to be careful in the way that we discipline our young people. As parents, we need to make sure that we are disciplining the behavior without attacking the person. Remember that the goal of discipline is to shape the behavior of our child so that they grow in virtue. There are many strategies we can use to help us to remember this even when our emotions run high. Let’s take a quick look at three of them.

H.A.L.T.

The first strategy is HALT. This is an acronym that reminds us not to have important discussions when we are Hungry, Angry, Lonely, or Tired. This acronym can help us realize that we need to put off conversations when our children meet these conditions. But it also reminds us that, while we may need to take care of the immediate situation, when it comes time to give a consequence and have a serious discussion about future behavior, we should wait until our anger has subsided and we are otherwise in a rational, fully functioning mood. So address the immediate situation as necessary, then take a cool-off period before you discuss the behavior and consequences with your young person.

I-Messages

The second strategy is the use of “I-Messages.” This is a formula of response that explicitly reminds you to focus on the behavior rather than the person. It focuses the conversation on your perceptions and your needs rather than on attacking the other. The basic “I-message” formula is

1. First state what you observe: “I noticed that you scratched the car.”
2. Second state how you feel and the reasons for your feelings: “I am very upset about that scratch because it shows a lack of concern for our family’s property.”
3. Third state the your expectations: “I expect every family member to respect this family’s property.”
4. Fourth state the consequences: “Since that didn’t happen in this case, I am going to ground you for two weeks and I am going to ask you to write me a sincere apology letter at least two pages long.”

Notice how this process keeps you focused on the behavior and the consequences and keeps the conversation away from blaming or belittling. That’s the goal.

Problem-Solving Approach to Discipline

The final strategy is to take a problem-solving approach to discipline. This is a lot like the “I-messages” that we just discussed, but it is a little less of a formula. In a problem solving approach, you might begin like we did in the above example using I-messages, then you invite the young person into the conversation. You might say something like, “what can we do to make sure that something like this doesn’t happen again”? Or you might be a little more personal and take the approach of tackling a weakness, “It seems to me that you have been getting a little careless about our property. Let’s think of some ways that we can make you more aware of the need to be careful with our things.”

Don’t Be Afraid to Call Out Character Flaws

Let’s end by making a couple of points very clear. A self-esteem first approach to discipline may tell you never to bring up character flaws or to call behavior wrong. An approach to discipline that is founded on self-worth and seeks to build a healthy self-concept demands that we do point out character flaws and bad behavior in a loving way that preserves our children’s sense of self-worth, and then work with the young person to fix them. Discipline and consequences are good things. They just need to be administered according to the Catholic understanding of authority – in a way that leads them to the good of becoming better people.

If we are able to follow the strategies we just discussed and nurture in our children a strong sense of self-worth and a healthy, balanced self-concept, we will also be nurturing in them a more stable sense of self-esteem. Our goal as parents should be to do all three.