How To Help Your Children Have Strong Self-Esteem

1.Tell her on a regular basis that you love her. Actually say words. If you think, “I don’t have to tell her. She knows,” you are wrong. It doesn’t count if you think it but don’t say it out loud. 2.Tell him that you are glad he is your child. Say words and mean them. If you don’t feel it, there is something wrong and you should find out what’s going on. We all have moments when we have a hard time getting in touch with our positive feelings for our children. I’m not talking about those times. I’m talking about in general, most of time, if you’re not feeling good about being your child’s parent, something is wrong. He will never feel good about himself if he senses that you are not connected to him. 3.Give her an example to follow. Take time to teach her steps. Kids need models. It’s unfair to expect that she will know what to do in her daily life if you haven’t shown her how to do it. 4.Spend time with him. If you are absent most of time, he notices, and he probably thinks it’s because he isn’t important enough. 5.Look at her when you speak to her. This conveys, “This is important and you are important.” 6.Look at him when he speaks to you. This conveys, “What you are saying is important. You are important.” 7.Explain why. It takes more time, but it conveys that she is important enough to spend time helping her understand. When you explain why, you are also saying, “I understand that you need to know why. I am going to help you meet your needs.” 8.When he tells you about something that happened, ask him how he feels about it. Take time to listen to his answer. 9.When you ask a question, encourage her to elaborate. Say, “Tell me more about that,” or ask, “What was that like?” 10.When you ask a question, don’t interrupt when she is answering. 11.When you ask a question, watch your responses. Don’t disagree or criticize his answer. This teaches him that it isn’t safe to be candid and will make him edit what he tells you. 12.Say no when you need to say no. Kids need to know there are limits and that some things are outside of those limits. 13.When you say no, explain why. 14.When you say yes, explain why. 15.Set a positive example with your own behavior. You can only expect her to behave with dignity and self-respect if she sees you doing it. 16.When you lose your temper or make a mistake, apologize. Say that you are sorry, be specific about what you are sorry for, and give him a chance to respond.

A Bird's Eye View of THE ENCHANTED SELF and what it means to YOU!

The Rebbe Nachman of Breslow often said, “Always remember-Joy is not merely incidental to your spiritual quest. It is vital.” As years have gone by and I’ve been in practice of psychology over 20 years, I have become more and more convinced that he was so right, that joy is not an option. When we take away joy and we take away a sense of well-being, a sense that we are thriving, we allow ourselves or seem to find ourselves in circumstances that seem to drain, tire and weaken us. We are no longer whole human being that is our birthright! THE ENCHANTED SELF is a positive psychology approach to mental health that works both in treatment room and out. I teach people techniques they need to start to think in positive ways about themselves and their world. Thus I teach them how to see what is right about themselves, rather than what is wrong. I also teach them to appreciate their own life story, its ups and downs; roller coaster ride that we all go on. I teach how to value our potential even if in childhood we were put down or criticized, as so many of us are. I have belief and I teach belief that inside of each of us we know when we are on track and we know when we are living a wholesome life that fits with integrity of our particular spirit. I call this sense of well-being ”The Enchanted Self” and I teach people how to find their "Enchanted Selves" again and again-how to recognize and celebrate states of well-being that signify they are in touch with best of themselves. I stress positive benefit of recalling memories about one's life in a fashion that permits us to discover and rediscover our own talents and resources. I also emphasize how to find in our past kernals of pleasure, and reservoirs of strength, that we can come home to again and again, even if we need to reshape these facets of ourselves to suite new circumstances Basically, this learning involves listening to yourself, and reviewing your own past to see what worked for you, what really gave you pleasure. What aspects of yourself and your life can you identify as necessary to experience a state of well-being?. What do you need to feel whole? For example, if you loved to play piano as a child, then you may not really enjoy watching football games as an adult. You may much more enjoy listening to classical music. However, in order to live a full life, you may also enjoy football games because your son loves them or your husband loves them. Thus there is also an accommodation to someone you care about and a resulting interest develops. I think you can begin to see that what is going to work for each person is so unique to that individual! It involves a review of our history, and it involves analyzing circumstances currently in our lives. If we have a handicap we may not be able to become a ballerina. Even if we have severe arthritis, we may not be able to become a ballerina at forty. However, love of dance since childhood may easily be converted into wonderful yoga stretches that help arthritis and feel 'dancy'. So often, there is a creative turn in road, thinking out of box, that Enchanted Self person develops. You find you have become an ENCHANTED SELF when you havethe courage to put together using your mind, heart, body and spirit new inventive ways of bringing pleasure and meaning into your life. The steps I teach people are rigorous but they are no harder then all habits we learn that keep us in bad moods and keep us depressed. For example, if I teach someone how to review at end of day everything that has gone right in their day, that it is no harder than listing what went wrong. In fact it soon becomes easier than listing everything that went wrong. The reason it becomes easier is that you don’t build up some of rage and some of anger that one can build up when we review problems in our lives. Now we are encouraged rather than discouraged and even may end up sleeping better and feeling better leading to much less energy drain. I have found most effective way to teach people how to access their Enchanted Self, i.e. to find and hold onto feelings of joy, and a sense of well-being is to share Seven Gateways To Enchantment. It is a quick way to catch your Enchanted Self. So let’s explore Gateways and then try an enchanted assignment! The first Gateway is The Gateway of Knowing Yourself In Positive Ways. That means getting to know your own talents and rediscovering your lost potential. This is a fun gateway and it really builds your self-esteem. You can pursue this Gateway, even while driving you car! For example, you can go over your life history, reviewing your strengths and talents. Start back in childhood-look for your strengths and talents, even if they were disregarded by your family, and maybe even yourself. Now, you have maturity and wisdom to recognize these positive parts of yourself. Even play with looking for your lost dreams-what you thought you could do before someone or circumstances may have dashed those dreams! After you take some time with First Gateway, you are ready for Second Gateway. This is one where you begin to fall in love with yourself! At heart level you begin to feel your specialness. This may take time, not to worry. After all our society does not bring us up to recognize what is special and wonderful about ourselves! Some of us get closer to this sense of positive self-love by mentally hugging ourselves as child that we once were. Others practice by intentionally giving oneself a for real quick hug, even if no one else does, or looking in mirror and saying to oneself, "I am special and my strengths are unique and perfectly suited for what I want and need to do in life! Another step in successfully passing through Second Gateway is acknowledging that story of your life is a fascinating fabric of adventures, episodes, happenings, and even mis-haps that have come together to make a most unique person and that is YOU! Once you can begin to see that your triumphs are to be honored and celebrated and that your defeats have within them wisdom and learning that takes you later in life to new heights you are well along on road to Enchantment.