020: Preserving Your Child’s Sense of Self Worth

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A healthy sense of self worth is tied to one of our most primal needs: the need to be accepted by our community. Our children are born with this need and, as they grow, look for any bit of evidence in support of or against how acceptable they are. Sometimes we as parents unintentionally lead our child to question their worth through some of the parenting methods we’ve learned growing up or from our culture. We also have the power to free our children from the trap of believing their worth is tied to their behavior.

In this episode Ben and Rachel talk about what we can do, and what we can adjust in order to protect and preserve our child’s sense of self worth. They discuss how to get to a place where we have the freedom to communicate openly about our child’s strengths and weaknesses without causing them to question their place in the most important community they’ll ever be a part of: the family.

Highlights, Takeaways, & Quick Wins

• The work you do overcoming your own wounds can help your child develop a healthy sense of self-worth.
• Self-worth finds its roots in acceptability.
• Don’t put your own fears on your children—let them dream big.
• Our children’s accomplishments don’t make them any more or less worthy.
• Help your children understand their worth isn’t defined by how good or bad they are compared to somebody else.
• The truest community we experience is with people who realize that our worth is not tied to our accomplishments.
• If we give our children a good picture of what a healthy community looks like at home, they’ll know what to look for later on in life.
• We’re going to make mistakes as parents—our children are not going to leave home without some kind of wound that they need healed.

Show Notes

• 05:33 Ben: I asked this question in the seanwes Community chat room: “What are some things people have said or done to you that have influenced your sense of self-worth, either positively or negatively?” I got a variety of great answers, and a lot of people have similar experiences with self-worth in their pasts—the things that caused them to question their self-worth and ways that they were encouraged. It was apparent to me that, regardless of your experience, you’re not alone. Maybe you’re a parent and you’re listening to this show for your kids, but you’re thinking to yourself, “I had a negative experience growing up.” There are a lot of people who share that. You’re not alone in feeling those things, and those feelings are okay and valid. You can work through and overcome those things.

The work you do overcoming your own wounds can help your child develop a healthy sense of self-worth.

• 07:01 Rachel: It’s valuable for us to remember some of those things because we can better protect our child or know how to approach these conversations with our kids.
• 07:16 Ben: We do one of two things with the way we were raised: we either incorporate those things by default and they become tactics we use to raise our children, or they become things we try to steer clear of completely, and we go to the other side. One of the great benefits of working on your own wounds in this area is that you get to identify what some of those things are and not steer clear of them. Being more self aware of those things helps us understand how our words and actions influence our child’s sense of self worth.

What is Self-Worth?

• 08:11 The definition of self-worth is going to inform a lot of what we talk about when we get into the areas where our words and actions can influence our child’s self-worth. Self-worth finds its roots in acceptability. For all of human history, we’ve been dependent on community to survive. The systems that are built in community are what make it possible for us to go to the grocery store, for example, to buy food. Before there were grocery stores, the commerce that arose out of community was what made it possible for us to get ahold of goods and services that we didn’t have access to or couldn’t provide for ourselves. Going even further back, there was protection in community. A group of people was less likely to be eaten by wild animals than a single person.
• 09:08 It comes down to this primal survival instinct. Even somebody who considers themselves very independent in today’s world is still very dependent on the systems that are set up by community. Our sense of self-worth informs how valuable we are to the community that we’re in, and the more valuable we are to the community we’re in, the safer we are. We know that our position in that community is secure. Our sense of self-worth comes into question when it’s challenged, and it also causes us to question whether or not we are acceptable in that community and the protection and provision that comes with that. When that’s called into question, it cuts deep to that primal need we have to be in community. That’s where the root of it is.

Self-worth and self esteem are about belonging more than they are about what we do or say.

• 10:30 As we walk through these next several items, we’re going to approach it from the standpoint of belonging to community. That’s going to shape the way we use our words and, hopefully, help us to get out of some habitual things we say and do.
• 10:59 Rachel: Something that will help us have a little more grace on people who bully and lash out is that, a lot of times, that stems from the feeling that they do not have a place to belong. When I write articles online and I get lash-backs from people, it’s typically through a Facebook comment. I’ll go and see what their profiles are like, and a lot of times, these people don’t have a lot of community around them. They’re posting things that say, “People are stupid,” and that kind of thing.
• 11:46 The reason people fall into that is because they feel like they have no place to belong in a community, they feel different, or they feel like an outcast. Part of what we’re doing as parents is ensuring that our kids don’t become those kinds of people. We’re concerned with their self-worth, preparing them for a future where they will either meet those kinds of people or they will try not to become them. That has helped me a lot with the haters.
• 12:35 Ben: It’s difficult. Sometimes people have some pretty negative things to say, and I think, “Where did that come from?” I feel cut deeper when it feels like their argument could be valid. Some of us have a really hard time getting any negative comment or feedback on the things we share, and it’s really important to try to have that relationship to that person. Realize that this isn’t about you; it’s more about them and the void that they feel.

Encourage Dreams

• 13:23 In past generations, this was more of an issue than it is today. Parents of today tend to be a little bit more accepting and encouraging of dreams, but this is still an important topic to go over. I had this thought that I really like:

Nothing world-changing ever came out of a practical dream.

• 13:50 The things that have been world-changing, that have been truly meaningful and phenomenal, started with something that was impossible. People who did these things probably had to work back from that and say, “We’re going to shoot for this impossible dream, but the journey to getting there is going to take us far beyond what we believe is practical.” I love that mentality because, ultimately, it isn’t about whether or not the dream is possible, it’s about what the belief in that impossible dream empowers us to accomplish.
• 14:42 Rachel: I don’t know that we can say that no great things ever came from a practical dream, because when I was in college, I dreamed of being a writer. That wasn’t a very practical dream, so I changed to journalism, which would actually pay bills because I could work for a newspaper. The world of journalism can have amazing affects on the world. I remember spending months on a series on women in addiction. It was something that raised awareness about women caught in addiction, who they were, and who people had made them out to be in their stereotypes. That was a really good thing, and I might not have done something like that if I had just followed the big dream.
• 15:42 Ben: I agree with that, but you can’t throw out either one. You can’t throw out the practical, but you also can’t throw out the dream; find where the two can coexist. Rachel didn’t let go of her dream of writing. There were some practical things she had to do to work toward it, and out of those practical things still came some really amazing things. I would argue that her dream was a motivator driving her behind those practical things. I also don’t want to say that even when we’re not purposeful about it, amazing things don’t happen, because they do.

Encourage dreaming—no dream is too big or impractical.

• 16:54 As parents, because of the failures and hurts we have experienced, we tend to want to protect our children from our experiences. We don’t want them to go through those same things, so we try to protect them. Especially when they’re little, we might say, “You’re so cute for dreaming so big.” While it is cute, there’s a balance we need to have between seeing that as something that’s cute and childish and really taking it seriously as a tool our children have in their lives to help them accomplish things that are bigger than themselves. When we project our fears on our children, it thwarts that whole process.
• 17:56 We should be encouraging of them and deal with our own fear. Don’t put your own fears on your children—let them dream big. The world is going to put them through the ringer one way or the other. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t help them to have a practical relationship with their dreams, but there’s a difference between coming alongside them, being there for them, and guiding them through that process, vs. shooting it down from the beginning because you’re afraid of where that road might take them.

All Feelings Are Valid

• 19:03 The object might seem inconsequential because of the experience and context we have as adults. With that red toy car that our kid fell in love with and just has to have, we know that car isn’t important. It’s a silly thing, but the feelings they feel about not being able to have that car might be as intense as our feelings about losing our home.
• 19:42 Rachel: Kids don’t have the cognitive ability to imagine something like losing a home, so losing a tiny toy car has the same effect on them.
• 20:00 Ben: When we validate our child’s feelings, we are telling them that their feelings are acceptable, and that acceptability extends to them as a person, because their feelings are so intertwined with who they are.
• 20:18 Rachel: When I was a kid, I remember being told by multiple important people in my life that I shouldn’t cry. I was always a weepy person; I have big emotions. I’ll cry in a movie or when I see one of my sons do something amazing. I cry all the time. I was told often that I shouldn’t cry because it wouldn’t accomplish anything, that crying was something I needed to tuck away try not to feel. That’s not helpful for a sense of self-worth, because what if you are a person who feels things intensely all the time? That’s who you are, and if you’re being told that you shouldn’t feel those things, you’re being told that you shouldn’t be who you are.
• 21:15 Ben: One area that’s been difficult for us, that we’ve been working on, is when we’re all at the dinner table and the noise level is already just below too much. Something happens to somebody and they get really upset, and they scream-cry. In that situation, the words we use to manage that are really important. I’ll ask them first, because I want them to be self-aware of their emotions, “It looks like you feel sad,” so I’ll try to get that acknowledgement. Once we’ve identified the emotion they’re experiencing, I’ll say, “It’s okay to feel sad, but it’s not okay to cry that loudly at the table. If you need to cry that loudly, you can go in that room over there where you’re not so close to everybody else, and that’s okay.”
• 22:31 Rachel: It’s extremely hard, because dinner is at the end of our day. We’re already almost done, so it’s hard to maintain, especially for me as an introvert. I feel like one more noise is going to send me over the edge.

Accomplishments Do Not Define Worth

• 23:25 Ben: I really like to use the phrase “proud for” instead of “proud of.” When our child does something remarkable, at whatever level, and we say that we’re “proud of” them, we’re inadvertently saying that our pride in them is attached to what they did. That’s not true. We’re proud of our children regardless of what they do. We’re saying, “We feel proud for you.” It’s a subtle difference, but it’s saying that the feeling of pride belongs to us, but it’s not attached to who they are and what they’re worth. “I feel proud for you. Do you feel proud for you? You should, because…” That subtle difference can disconnect your feelings of pride from their sense of self-worth, which is really important.
• 24:36 Rachel: This is something we learned a few years ago. There are multiple experts who talk about the importance of this wording, but there is also a book called Parent Talk by Chick Moorman. It addresses a lot of the things we take for granted and the way we say them, especially in praise and encouragement. It helps you make this small shift to better encourage your children. It’s an easy read; it’s not very long, and it helps you rearrange your wording. We implemented it all three years ago.
• 25:27 Ben: It takes time to get used to it and build the habit, but now I hear these words come out a certain way because we’ve been practicing them. Let me give you a practical scenario for another thing we can do. Our son Asa draws a really colorful picture, brings it to me, and says, “Daddy, what do you think of my picture?” I like that he cares about what I think of his picture, but I want what he thinks about that picture to be more important to him than what I think about it. That goes across everything. It’s okay to share what you think, but put the emphasis on what your children thinks about something they accomplished.

Instead of communicating what you think of something your child has done, it’s better to make observations about what you’re seeing.

• 26:52 Rachel: Asa, or second son, was very dependent on what other people thought. We were working really hard to try to get him independent of that, so that he would believe that he was good enough on his own and he wouldn’t require someone else to say, “Yes, this is beautiful,” in order for him to believe it himself. We worked really hard with him, especially with coloring, which he loves. He’s always got some kind of drawing or coloring sheet that he’s done. One way we turned it around was by making observations: “You mostly stayed in all the lines,” or something like, “You colored the sky blue, and it’s a really neat color of blue.” Observe something about the paper instead of talking about how the picture is beautiful or not.
• 27:56 Ben: There are times as a parent when it’s going to be useful and our children are going to want some real constructive feedback about what they’re doing. They’re trying to grow in a skill, they’re trying to become better, and they recognize that we might have some expertise in that area. Hopefully, they will seek that out from others in their life as they grow and develop into adulthood. We really want our children to grasp that their place in the community is not tied to their accomplishments. Those two things are completely separate.

Our children’s accomplishments don’t make them any more or less worthy of being a part of the “community” that is the family.

• 28:46 With this approach and belief, they are more equipped to receive constructive feedback. Think about it: the reason we feel sad or we have negative feelings associated with constructive feedback is because of a belief that our worth in whatever community is tied to our ability to accomplish or do something. There are jobs for which that is true. Your worth to a company can be tied to how well you perform. That exists. The truest community we experience is with people who realize that our worth is not tied to our accomplishments. The security we feel in that extends to other areas of our lives, so it’s really important for us to help our children develop that kind of relationship with their accomplishments.
• 29:52 Rachel: Someone in the chat asked, “But don’t they need acknowledgement, too?” I think this is driving at childrens’ need for acknowledgement for how well they do at something.
• 30:09 Ben: Feedback of any kind, constructive or affirmative, is really just information. It’s not tied to self-worth. You have a lot more freedom to share something constructive or affirming when it’s not tied to their sense of self-worth, because then it’s simply useful information. They now know what they can do with this thing. If somebody can’t carry a tune, maybe you’re a vocal coach and you know all the things you need to know about how to use the voice properly, so constructive feedback could go into depth, recognizing the areas where they need to practice and improve, or it may be out of your league. You may say, “I only know enough to tell you that there are some things you need to work on.” If you’re serious about walking your child through those things and that’s a dream they have, point them toward resources to help them develop those skills. It’s okay to be objective; you don’t have to tread as lightly when their sense of self-worth isn’t attached to those things.
• 31:40 Rachel: Our eight year old loves to write books and draw comics. He writes these short scenes, but he calls them comic books. Every now and then he’ll bring them to me because he knows that I write for a living, and he’ll say, “Read this!” He’s interested in hearing what I have to say about it. I encourage that creativity in him, but every now and then, I try to sneak in a little bit of instruction because I know characterization, dialogue, plot, and conflict. I know how a story structure should be, and sometimes an eight year old isn’t as familiar with that kind of thing as someone who’s been doing it for a long time. I’ll sneak things like, “You could work on this character a little bit,” or, “How about we pursue a scene with just that person, and we can work on some characterization there?” Sometimes he’ll listen, sometimes he doesn’t, but he knows that I’m invested in what he’s doing because I’m giving him feedback.
• 32:57 Ben: Just like a community, we are there for each other as resources and as an encouragement to help guide our children in growing these skills and abilities. Wouter asked a great question: “Knowing that they have what it takes is a ground question, right? They can’t learn their worth from their own.” He’s getting at something we’ve been trying to focus on lately with our boys, which is reminding them that they can do hard things, that they do have what it takes. I believe that this is a foundational idea: you have what it takes. It is amazing to me that our seven month old can get on his hands and knees and rock back and forth, when just a few months ago, his hands were his enemies. He was constantly hitting himself in the face.
• 34:12 Can you imagine how hard it is and how brave you have to be to go from not being able to walk, not having any muscle coordination whatsoever, to starting to take steps. From the beginning, all we know is that there is something we can’t do. We see other people doing it, and we’re brave enough and believe in the impossible enough to take a chance and do those things. That’s who our kids are. Let that foundational belief be something you hold onto tightly and communicate to them regularly.

Your children are capable of doing hard things—things that seem impossible to them right now.

• 35:17 Rachel: We try to communicate to our kids that they don’t belong in our community because of what they can do for us or what kind of talents they have. They belong in our community simply because of who they are. When our boys go off to school, the last words I say to them are, “Remember who you are.” This is the most important thing to me for them, that they remember who they are. It doesn’t matter if they come home with a yellow sad face on their behavior chart. It doesn’t matter if they get a 70 on a test or anything like that. It matters to me that they simply remember who they are.

Failure is Not the End

• 36:05 Ben: Failures are really scary for some people. They’ve had a very negative emotional experience with failure, and maybe they had people in their lives who were so focused on an outcome they wanted that they projected their sense of that person’s self-worth on them based on their failure. That can be a really damaging thing. We want to help our children understand that failure is not something to be feared, but it’s a part of life. I heard a phrase recently that I really liked: “Failure is a comma, not a period.” It’s not the end. It could feel like the end, and we can validate that feeling, but we can help our children walk through that failure, overcome it, and not feel afraid of it because they’re capable of working through failure.

In the end, success, accomplishment, and failure are just information.

They’re experiences we go through that we can learn things from.

• 37:10 When come out on the other side of it, we can look back and say, “This worked,” “This didn’t work,” or “This worked pretty well, but I could have tweaked it and done it this way.” When we have that kind of relationship with success and failure, when we see it as information, our self-worth is not tied to those things. We see it as great information for moving forward, something we can take with us on the next leg of our journey.
• 37:50 Rachel: Some of the times I’ve learned the most have been the times I’ve failed at something. It’s so scary as parents to watch our kids go through that, because we just want to fix everything. Our kid has a broken heart, and we want to fix it—”That stupid girl!” Times come when we have to let our kids learn from that kind of thing. Last year, our son never wanted to check his homework. When we would check it, we would see things that were wrong and say, “You might want to look over this again.” We didn’t tell him what was wrong, but he chose not to look back at it. As a result, his homework grade wasn’t as good as it shouldn’t have been. He didn’t get in trouble from that, but he got to learn from that experience.
• 38:50 Ben: Because that doesn’t inform who he is, it’s just information. It’s a number on a piece of paper, not his identity. It’s up to him whether he’s okay with that number. We’ll have to have an episode about school and academics. The path to what you’re purposed to do in life is different for everybody, and some go through the path of getting really good grades, scholarships, college, and all of that. Some go through the path of performing very poorly in school, understanding that’s not where they belong and thrive, and because they understand that, they’re able to focus on their strengths and find a different path to their purpose.
• 39:43 I would love for Jadon to see that number and decide for himself. If that number is higher, it’s a useful tool for him, and he might want to make that number higher. Or, he might think, “That number is inconsequential because it’s not going to lead me to the thing I want to do.” It’s hard as a parent, especially having grown up with grades being such an important thing.
• 40:11 Rachel: It was super important. We got money for good grades. I made As so I could make a few bucks. We just had this conversation yesterday, because I told our son to get his homework off of the counter three times, and he’s very much a creative kid who lives in his own mind. After three times, he just left it here. I said, “What are we going to do with him? I don’t know what to do. He’s going to get this awful homework grade.” There isn’t much we can do.
• 40:49 Ben: I told Rachel, “Maybe he’s like me, and he’s never going to get that administrative thing down. Maybe he should be hiring Asa, his brother, to take care of that stuff for him.”
• 40:59 Rachel: Asa is extremely good at remembering things, packing up, and getting things together.
• 41:08 Ben: He doesn’t quite get an allowance right now. We’re working up to that in our budget. Once he has an allowance, it is valuable for him to realize that certain things are not his strengths, but if they have to happen for him to be successful at what he wants to do, he either has to develop the skills to make sure they happen or he needs to make the money somehow to pay someone else to do it. We came up with our own idea for a solution, but it would be good to bring the problem to him and say, “If this is a problem for you, how do you expect to solve it?” Kids can solve problems; they’re really good at it.

Avoid Comparisons

• 42:14 We talked about avoiding sibling conflict in a previous episode and we talked a lot about comparison (Related: e018 Getting the Siblings to Get Along). Avoid comparison between a child and their siblings or other children. We may not be aware of how, in our children’s hearing, we talk about other people’s circumstances or our own circumstances in comparison to some ideal.

Help your children understand their worth isn’t defined by how good or bad they are compared to somebody else.

• 43:13 They are valuable inherently, by themselves, as a part of this community. Also, we need to recognize for ourselves and demonstrate for our children that our self-worth isn’t tied to how good or bad we are compared to somebody else. It can go both ways. We can talk about how bad we have it. Behind us is a house that is five times bigger than the one we live in, and we could talk about how we wish we had a house like that. On the other side, we could say things like, “I’m glad we’re not like them, like that person who’s in such a hurry to get to work that they speed through our neighborhood.” Those are small things that creep into our lives, so we want to be careful about how we talk about those things and even how we feel about those things.
• 44:29 What we feel and think internally often comes out. Rachel mentioned something about when somebody breaks up with your child and they are hurt by somebody. We want our children to remember who they are, and part of that is remembering that they belong to a community. They belong to this family, and their position in this family isn’t influenced by anything they do. They are secure and safe here. We get hurt when we try to find our self-worth in a community in which we don’t belong. One thing we can do to help our child when they are hurt by somebody, whether it’s a bully at school, a teacher who doesn’t understand them, or a girl or boy who treated them poorly, we tell them, “That person was not your community. This is your community”
• 45:47 It’s not to tie them to home indefinitely and say, “This is the only place you’ll ever find community,” but unless they understand what community really is, they won’t know how to look for it in life when they leave home. We want them to know what healthy community looks like and how people who are in community really treat each other.

If we give our children a good picture of what a healthy community looks like at home, they’ll know what to look for later on in life.

• 46:22 I would love to protect our children from ever having a negative experience with others. I don’t want them to go through heartbreak, be misunderstood, or be bullied.
• 46:38 Rachel: Our eight year old has been bullied by a few people. I remember when he would come home with an awful attitude, and it was immediately apparent to me that something had happened, so I opened the conversation. I was asking him what went on at the playground and I asked him about some of the friends he has, and it came out that someone had called him an ugly name. He was devastated about this name someone had called him, and I remember asking him, “Are you this?” He said, “No, but they think so.”
• 47:32 I went through the whole process with him. I said, “It doesn’t matter what these people think about you who aren’t part of your community who loves you. It matters who you know yourself to be. You know yourself to not be whatever they called you.” Part of what we try to do as parents is to take our children back to the root of knowing exactly who they are when they’re hurt by a friend or a girl. There’s also value in showing them that the people who hurt them are not bad people, and most of the time they don’t do those kinds of things on purpose.
• 48:33 Ben: If everyone was perfectly secure in who they were, understood their self-worth, and felt like they belonged to community, there would be no need to put somebody else down. Hurting somebody else comes out of hurt. While it is done intentionally, it’s probably not out of pure hatred. People are not evil; people are wounded, misguided, and sometimes in very dark places, but that’s not their identity.
• 49:19 Rachel: I remember going up to the school and seeing this little boy who said these things to my son, and it was so very hard to be kind to him. I know a little bit of his background, and I have to remember where he’s coming from in these things. When we are wounded children, we do lash out at different people. I had that as a kid when people would lash out at me. I did it as a kid, so I know what can cause that kind of thing. We just need to open our kid’s eyes to these kinds of things.
• 49:57 Our boys have a mostly normal background. They have two parents who love each other, which is more than a lot of kids have nowadays. A lot of kids they’re coming into contact with, who may try to affect their self esteem, are coming from a much different background than that. I remember what it’s like to come from a background like that, and it’s hard. It’s hard to feel like you have community when you don’t have it at home, when one of our parents is gone or one of them did something awful.
• 50:38 Ben: Remember back to the beginning of this episode when we were talking about that primal need we have to feel like we’re in community because that’s where protection is, where we get the food we need to eat, and where we get the affection we need. It’s all there, and when we feel like we don’t have that, it’s like backing a wild animal into a corner. That’s the kind of thing that’s going on in people’s hearts in those circumstances, to whatever degree.

We are inherently valuable.

• 51:20 Again, I don’t want to do this to the detriment of experiences they will later on in life, where their ability to keep a job does depend on how well they perform their duties. That’s not about their self-worth; that’s about what they’re worth to that company, not to community. Any value they bring through the things they do or say is added value to something that’s already inherently valuable.

Everyone Parents Imperfectly

• 51:57 I was talking to my old youth pastor on the phone the other day. We were talking about business stuff, catching up, and kids, and he said something that I really loved. He said that one of our jobs as parents is to help our children realize that they need counseling when they’re adults for the wounds we have caused. He said that tongue-in-cheek, but it’s true that you’re not going to do this perfectly as a parent. You aren’t always going to be able to preserve your children’s sense of self-worth.

We’re going to make mistakes as parents.

Our children are not going to leave home without some kind of wound that they need healed.

• 52:55 It’s just a part of being human. We don’t want that to happen, but it’s unavoidable and it’s okay. It doesn’t make you a bad parent. If you spend so much time trying to avoid that and be a perfect parent, you’re going to disappoint yourself a lot, and that’s going to cause other major problems. Don’t focus on being a perfect parent, but embrace the fact that there will be wounds and that’s okay.
• 53:33 Rachel: As adults, there have been a lot of people who blame a lot of things on their parents. I came out of childhood with a lot of wounds and a very low sense of self-worth. Working through that stuff as an adult is extremely valuable. From when I was in my 20s till now, in my early 30s, it’s been a complete turn around.
• 54:11 Ben: It is work, because you have to dig some of that stuff up. I’m not prescribing anything here; there are a lot of methods you can use to work through those things. One thing I’ve experienced is called Freedom Prayer, and it was through a ministry in our church. We sat down and had a time of meditation, asking for imagery and revelation for places in our minds that are buried deep and seem impossible to access. Sometimes, through this process, we end up finding our way to those memories and emotions, and we end up reliving those experiences. That’s a part of working through it. The power of the mind as a tool for your own healing is amazing to me.
• 55:17 The things you don’t think about from day to day, those memories that were buried so deep, suddenly surface, and you experience those things again and you’re able to see them in a new light. You’re able to point to how you felt when a certain thing happened, and maybe then you can see why you have certain tendencies. It’s extremely powerful, so I highly encourage you to find a way to have that kind of experience and work through those things. As you do, you’re going to be more equipped to help your children have a healthier sense of self-worth.
• 55:58 Rachel: Writing does a really great job of this, too.
• 56:05 Ben: There are a lot of different ways. For Rachel, as she’s going through her memoir, it’s causing her to retell the story, and it’s amazing how retelling stories from childhood causes you to come across details you’ve forgotten.

One of the most valuable things we can do for ourselves is to retell our narrative in a positive way, even if we came from a narrative that was not positive.

Praise Your Kids the Right Way

• 56:42 Ben: Sarah asks, “What is the right amount of words of affirmation you should tell your children? When does it become too much and inflate their self esteem in a bad way, and how do we use them wisely to let them know they’re loved but also keep them humble?” Cory Miller had a similar question, “Where do you draw the line between encouragement and reality? I struggle a lot with feeling like parents over-encourage and distort reality so kids think they are actually the greatest person on the planet, but I also understand that kids need to be encouraged to do and be better at what they do. As a parent, how do I build my child’s esteem without boosting their ego too much?”
• 57:54 I’m going to bring this back to the idea that whether we’re good or bad at something is not tied to our sense of self-worth and our belonging in a community. The more we can separate that, the more freedom we have to be objective with our children. We can still be encouraging, there for them, and willing to walk through their development. When you get objective feedback and you can receive it without it affecting your sense of self-worth, it can be humbling in a good way. It helps you to be more realistic about your place on the spectrum of how good or bad you are at something and how much you need to improve.
• 58:56 Rachel: It also has to do with the kind of praise we’re giving as parents. Cory mentioned that he has a hard time with kids seeming over-praised, and I think that’s because we’re praising the wrong way. We’re trying to encourage them and we have good reasons for doing that, but we’re using the wrong words. The example I was thinking of was the kid who can’t really sing; how would you not be able to lie? You could say, “You hit that one note really well.”
• 59:50 Ben: This is where we have to get creative as parents. We have to be more aware of what’s going on; we have to pay attention more. We can’t just be playing on our phones when they’re singing the recital. They’re missing all the notes and it’s cringeworthy, but as we watch them, we see that they’re very expressive and confident. They have a really good presence, so that’s a good observation. You can say, “You seemed so confident. You stood really tall, and I could tell that you felt comfortable.”
• 1:00:34 Hopefully there is never a situation where there is absolutely no observation you can make that satisfies that question, but again, let your child know their thoughts about their accomplishments are more important than other’s thoughts. Their ability to receive constructive criticism comes from their self-worth not being attached to their accomplishments.
• 1:01:13 Rachel: Sometimes it’s hard to see, but I think that kids also inherently know what they’re good at and what they’re not good at. The thing that muddies that up is when we are encouraging in the wrong way. As a kid, I knew exactly what I wanted to be, but then I got to school and I was really good at school, at math and at science. Then I wanted to be a marine biologist, and all this weird stuff, because I was praised all the time for my grades and things I could do.

Our kids have the ability to know what they’re really good at, so we can stop trying to encourage them in everything.

• 1:02:06 Ben: There’s also the issue of the path to getting there. Rachel is probably smarter than I am, but I consider myself to be a fairly smart person and I always have. When I was growing up, I didn’t do very well with my grades. I was told, “Ben, you’re so smart, talented, and creative. If you would just apply yourself and focus, you could really do well.” I walked away from that agreeing that I was smart and talented, but I also believed that I was not a focused person. Because I was not a focused person, I thought I couldn’t accomplish those things. Maybe your child is so creative and they seem like their head isn’t attached to their body, like they’re floating in dream world all the time; those people can still do amazing things when they recognize their weaknesses, accept them, understand that those things are a part of who they are, and find other ways to accomplish their goals.

Supporting Self-Worth During a Break-Up

• 1:03:40 The last question is from Robert, and this is the hardest question I’ve ever had: “How do you help your kids with self esteem when they’re going through a break-up?” I don’t know. I promised him that I would take a stab at it. Our oldest is nine, so we’re probably a few years away from that experience. This goes back to understanding where your true community is. When your child is hurt by someone who is not a part of their community, we do need to acknowledge their feelings. We don’t want to dismiss their feelings and say, “They don’t understand who you are, so don’t feel bad.”

Never be dismissive of feelings, because the pain our children feel is real.

• 1:04:43 They believed for some period of time that this person was part of their community, so there is a sting from that. We acknowledge their feelings, help them process through those things, and remind them of who they are. We remind them of their worth. Once they’re able to work through their feelings, the truth of who they are, that foundation you’ve built into their lives, is the thing that’s going to continue to support them and that they can continue to stand on after that experience.
• 1:05:24 Rachel: As a teenager, I was engaged at about 16. I was totally in love with this guy I thought I was going to marry, and it ended pretty badly. I was heartbroken because, obviously, I was planning to marry this guy. My mom didn’t really say much, but I remember her being there. I would fall apart on my bed like the world was ending. When you’re a teenager and it’s your first love, it really feels like the world is ending. I still remember the feeling that I could not wake up in my bed tomorrow.
• 1:06:20 I remember her being there and stroking my hair. She wasn’t even telling me stories or cliches, but she was there. Part of our self-worth comes from knowing that we are worth enough for someone to take time out of their schedule to be there. She was a busy mom; she worked several jobs because my dad had left, and just knowing she was there helped me get through something as traumatic as a breakup.
• 1:07:02 Ben: My heart breaks so much for people who have grown up in a home, developed that sense of community, and having their self-worth attached to these people who, for some reason or another, reject them. It can be difficult as a parent. I can’t think of anything that would cause me to reject my child. Whether I agree with their decisions or not, however I feel about the choices they have made, it’s okay for me to disagree and say that once they’ve really established who they are and are confident in that. It’s more important than anything that I am there for my child, that the sense of community doesn’t go away.
• 1:08:18 Rachel: Even four years later, when Ben came along, my mom didn’t say, “I told you so! All you had to do was wait for the right one.” She was very gracious about it.