Resources

SELF-ESTEEM

Self-esteem is liking and believing in yourself. It means feeling good about yourself and having confidence in whatever you do.

Self-esteem training helps learners to try new things, try again after failing, face challenges, learn and grow well.

Children who feel good about themselves have the confidence to try their best at new things and feel proud about what they can do.

Self-esteem helps children to cope with mistakes. It motivates them to try again even if they fail at first. Thus why punishing children for mistakes destroys their self-esteem. They become afraid to try due to fear of failure, punishments and being laughed at. 

Encourage children to cheer their friends for trying and also not to laugh at those who do mistakes because mistakes are done only by those who try new things.

Self-esteem helps children to do better at school, home and with friends.

Children with low self-esteem feel unsure of themselves, lack confidence to try out new things. They give up easily after failure and sometimes they may not try at all. This explains why some children live gaps in exams or in given exercises. They hand in work to teachers for marking without answering the questions. To make matters worse teachers respond by punishing them for handing an answered work. This proves the need for teachers to have a self-esteem training workshop if they are to deliberately foster it in learners.

These learners with low self-esteem allow others to treat them poor simply because they lack confidence to stand up for themselves, they are bullied all the time. They fear to join others with thoughts that they may be rejected. And when it comes to adolescents, the situation worsens.

Children need attention when they are facing challenges, crying or feeling bad. Avoid dismissing, criticizing or denying them a chance to report what happened to them as this lowers their self-esteem. It makes them feel not loved and accepted, so it is very important to always welcome those with challenges even if they are the stubborn ones.

Most learners who perform poorly have a proper IQ, its lack of self-esteem that leads them to poor performance due to lacking confidence and motivation to try their best

It is very essential for schools to provide teachers with self-esteem training workshops and on how they can develop it in learners as well as having self-esteem lessons for learners.