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Building Teen Self EsteemBuilding Teen Self Esteem Self esteem is the most important ingredient for the teen in their growing years. In fact, you could say that the teen years are about testing of and using their self esteem, and all else is secondary. The important point is this is a very good time to help create teen self esteem. The truth is life and their parents should have established their self esteem long ago in early childhood. If it is not a strong part of their fiber now, it is very important to begin in building their teen self esteem as soon as possible. However, we are used to doing things that are time sensitive such as restoring emotional assets on short notice. You can do it too, and we can help. Welcome to our web site. Thank you for visiting us. Building teen self esteem is much like developing an assault rifle or a new grenade launcher in the middle of combat. In time of dire need is not the time to work on developing something that is critical. However, if that is what you have to work with, you can do it and do a great job. If you are the parent of a teenager and you want to begin building teen self esteem, you can do it, but it will require a lot of effort on your part. We commend you in seeking ways to be a better parent. If you are a teacher or coach and are involved with a teenager with questionable self esteem, we also thank you for being here. We can do this, for we are used to doing difficult things, for we do them all the time! We must begin right away. Some teens have a reserved nature, and others are outgoing and comfortable with being in front of everyone. What we are looking for are teenagers who you have a gut feeling about that have an unnaturally reserved and noticeably withdrawn nature. Building teen self esteem in them is very important. Your experience with your child or if you are a youth worker, your experience with many teens, will give you a sense for this. We are not just looking only for clinically definable symptoms, but for your gut feeling about a certain teen or teens, in how they see themselves. Your Gut Feeling is a powerful psychic tool that will tell you if they are comfortable with themselves or if something is wrong and they are acting out of character for what you know they should be like naturally. Experience is the best teacher and granter of this gift. Building teen self esteem means first finding them, which can be hard because they are experts at staying invisible in the background. With a little practice and being concerned for them you will be able to pick up on them as they stay in the corners, where thy do not want to be, for they are lonely there. For some, they will be resistant, but building teen self esteem in them will be an effort they will remember you for all their lives. During their growing years, the teenager is nothing but a big sponge of ego need. You could say the words teen and need of self esteem are synonymous. Teenagers are gluttons of self esteem need. To a teenager with self-doubt, every social encounter is a critical test of his or her self-value. That is not what it really is, as you and I as adults see it, but to the teenager, that is how they see it. To understand the ego needs of a teenager, we must understand the setting in which they live, and their world as they see it. A teenager’s world On one hand, a teenager needs their parent’s recognition of them now more than ever. Studies indicate their emotional relationship with their parents is actually more dependent now than in earlier years. Parents can do more in building teen self esteem now than in earlier stages of growth. Divorce affects teenagers more deeply than it affects their younger siblings. Teenagers now see their parents as adults for the first time, and they desperately need their parent’s endorsement of them as adults and of their adult individuation as well. Developing teen self esteem is now transitioning to two sources of input. On the other hand, teenagers feel overwhelmingly this herding instinct to go off and find their own kind and to find their rank within their own peer group, whatever that group may be. Interaction with others in their group can make or break a developing teen’s self esteem. Their standing within their group is the only standard that matters. However, they also need the full permission of their parents to go forth and find that right place in life. Their hearts feel the calling to go and to be a part of life happening somewhere out there. Their hearts tell them to go, and it tells them to get the love and understanding of their parents, before they go and do so. They need to know that their parents love them, approve of them, and give them their blessings to go forth and to do ‘teen stuff.’ Having their parent’s understanding and approval of their need ‘to go and to do,’ is very important for them. They cannot have a building teen self esteem without knowledge that it is okay to go. They must have this parental approval as a moral basis for their developing teen self esteem. Above all, they must know that you the parent do not feel they are abandoning you or your relationship with them as they leave you and find a life of their own. That is rule number one! A teenager who knows his or her parents do not like them as adults, or who knows their parents feel abandoned by their leaving will have shame and guilt with which to deal. What the parent will teach them is that following the yearnings of their heart is wrong, and nothing could be a more poisoning lesson that that! The building teen self esteem is comprised from two sources, how their parents encourage them to find their place in life as adults, and how popular they are with their peers at school. The remedy is to look for signs in conversation with your teenager that they may have an inner conflict at home or from their church. They may feel that they have to go against the will of their parent or pastor by not following the direction senior adults want for them. You must give them reassurance that they as individuals are doing what is right by following the desires of their heart for social acceptance from peers, and trying different roles as an adult. That is not only correct, it is a healthy and natural evolution of their life to do so. They must feel encouraged to leave, not rejected, to have a building teen self esteem. The next thing in developing teen self esteem is to understand a unique deficiency in the teen that we do not have. There is a missing tool in the teenager’s social inventory, which we do have in our adult inventories. Teenagers do not have the ability to put what they are feeling into words. They cannot sit down and quantify what their emotions are, specify their needs, or layout their dilemmas are as we adults can. They cannot verbally define a situation in the emotional spectrum as we adults have advanced skills to do. If you ask a teenager to tell you what is bothering them, they will not know where to begin. A teenager will have no clues other than something is all screwed up! They will not come up to you and be able to tell you, “I need to go and find my place in life with my friends. I need to find out who I am, and I need your love and approval of me to feel free and go and do it. I feel you are making fun of me in my awkward attempts at finding my adult self. I am sorry I am so awkward at finding whom I am and I feel like a clumsy failure. I want to be refined and complete but I am having a hard time, and am failing. I hurt and need your love.” They cannot tell you what is wrong between you and them, or confusion inside themselves. If you can show them how to put things into words by repeated examples, that will help in building teen self esteem. It will help them understand their emotions by defining them in sentences and thought which they can quantify, which is an advanced adult skill. That is not their job to tell you how to be a parent, diagnose, understand, and nurture them. That is your job. In building teen self esteem, you will have to be the one to understand their world, for it is not their job to figure you out and explain their life to you. We are not picking on you parent, but as you have long ago learned in being a good parent, you need to have thick skin sometimes and now is one of those times. In working with their building teen self esteem, you must have all your ego needs met first, so you can be emotionally available to them. This is their time to be in the spotlight and to get their needs met, as they emancipate themselves. Do not use your teenagers to get your emotional needs met, they are not there to serve you; you as the parent are there to serve and nurture them. So much of a teenager’s emotional pain arises when the parent feels the teenager is there to serve the needs of the adult, which they are not. Your love of them acts as permission and as an encouragement for them to go out and conquer the world, if you will just give that to them. They more than ever before need your patience with them, as they try on the clothes and the roles of adulthood, and learn how to fly from the nest. The next obstacle in developing teen self esteem is their concept of ‘we can have a perfect life.’ All teens have the concept of perfection is an attainable standard. This hardly does their developing teen self esteem any good when they go comparing what exists in how they see themselves with what they believe they should look like and be like. This holds especially true for girls. For some strange reason, physical beauty can so easily become the standard and an obsession. It is a unique trait of teenage girls to see more beauty, poise and dignity in their girlfriends, than they see in themselves. Never equate personal value with physical attributes in girls or they will get the wrong message. Building teen self esteem for them means looking at them for what is on the inside, in personality, and in their individuality within, never on a capability or a stage of growth. All teenagers see life as ‘perfection attainable,’ and they all want everything all at once right out of the chute. They all want their first car to be a new one and their first living arrangement to be the nicest apartment or a home, and all want their first job to be their career office setting with unlimited income. Some teenagers feel anything less than that is an absolute and dismal failure. The remedy for that is in part, time exposed to the adult world and in part shared insight from you the adult in their life. Biological changes are showing your teenager a whole kaleidoscope of feelings they have never felt before as well. They will need to answer the question of how significant am I in the overall scheme of things in the adult world? They will need companionship from the opposite sex, and recognition from their own gender, to answer these questions. All teenagers will have to answer their own questions in their own way. Literally, everything a teen does centers on the answering of that question, in one form or another. Okay, now back to building teen self esteem. As we can see, the teen world is full of smoke and mirrors, glamor and glitz, ideals and dreams yet undefined and unclear. It is also a whole parade of crushes on girls you simply must marry if you are a guy, and crushes on guys you cannot live without if you are a girl. It is a world of callings, yearnings, and things untried that need to be tried. How can you possibly build teen self esteem in such a transitional and superficial world as that? You are the adult that no teenager in his or her right mind would listen to or wish to be around, or be like. To the majority of teenagers, all adults are the social plague and must be avoided at all costs, especially parents. The surprising truth is you do not have to understand all the complexity and transitional nature of the teenage world. We only tell you a little of it here to bring back some of the memories of your teenage years when you were young. Now aren’t you glad you are not young anymore and have to live through all that over again? We sure are glad we are older! We are glad we are helping to build teen self esteem in others, and not have to go through all that with ourselves again! The absolute weapon of choice in building teen self esteem is your honest respect and love for the teenager. If you reach out to them with sincerity and authentic caring, they will sense it, and they will respond. There is one gift all teenagers have and that is the psychic ability to recognize sincerity, even more so than adults, because they need it so much. As you age, most people tend to turn off their psychic abilities and not use them anymore, a bad mistake! To reach out to teenagers, in whatever role you play in their lives, go back to how you were when you were young. When you were your original self as a child, you were the most authentic ‘you’ that ever was, before life and time changed you to be what the world needed you to be, which is the public self you have to be today. With teenagers, you do not have to be what the world needs you to be, you can be who you really are, and the teenagers will accept you just that way. Teenagers will notice your sincerity and your authenticity and respond. By you choosing to be sincere, you will invite them to be sincere, and they will let down their guard and relax spiritually, which for them at their age, is a very good thing. Teenagers learn by imitation, and your posture regarding yourself, will invite duplication. Believe us; very few other adults are doing this with them to any great degree, and the young crowd will flock to you in droves! Do not worry about what you should talk to them about as regards the advice you should share. Say that which is on your heart. You are an individual and you will have different lessons to teach the teenagers in your charge than another adult will have. Your relationship with them will be different and unique to all other adults, and your gifts to them will be different and uniquely your own as well. You will build teen self esteem in a different manner than will another adult. What matters is that you share your special gift to your young teens in the way that is authentically you. Being yourself and sharing yourself, whatever it is, is the best way to build teen self esteem in a needful young person. The next thing is show them that you unconditionally love them just as they are, even screwed up, confused, or emotionally needful. Most teenagers will try things ‘not them,’ but do not tell them that something is not for them, let them get uncomfortable with something and let them get rid of it on their own. By them trying different things, they are learning what is and what is not their type of thing, and they need to learn that for themselves, you cannot teach it to them. Sometimes building teen self esteem means let them crash and burn several times on their own. Never make fun of them in their efforts to find themselves. Most of teenage life is trial and error and they cannot shortcut the learning process as they try on the various clothes and roles of adult life. As teenagers notice your sincerity, and they learn that they can trust your respect of their boundaries, they will come to you with questions from time to time, often about very personal things. Be emotionally available to them. If you are a busy person, and who in the adult world is not these days, there is no better way to show their importance to you than to be willing to take time with them, at the times when they need it. Sometimes this will be very inconvenient, but if possible spend time with them when they avail themselves for a few moments of conversation. It is okay to say things like, “I am very busy right now, but I am never too busy to take a few moments with you because you are that important to me, because you matter.” Alternatively you could say, “I am very tight for time right now, but you matter to me and I want to give you the time that you deserve, could we spend a few moments after school today instead?” The message comes through loud and clear either way that they are important, and that is a message they desperately need to hear. Remember, in the netherworld of Teendom, attention translates into love and respect, and they will understand. Not every conversation or interaction with teenagers must be a level five sincere soul exchange to be relevant. You do not need to have your teenager bear their soul to you with their worst life’s problem to be building teen self esteem. Taking their views on things seriously and respecting their choices as they learn how to conduct themselves as adults will build their self image. If you are the parent, then now is when your teenager needs you more than ever. If you have been neglectful of their emotional need in the past, now is the perfect time to acknowledge those failures and ask their forgiveness. Ask them for suggestions on how you could be a better parent for them today. This is a polite way of conceding soul space to them as adults. You are now telling them clearly that you expect them to ‘see things through their own eyes,’ and not yours. This request for suggestions is a statement of adult approval they may not have had previously, and they will notice it. This gives to your child a badge of adulthood they will cherish dearly. Building teen self esteem in the final analysis is our skill as adults to love and respect our teenagers, and to tolerate their awkward attempts at adulthood until they finally get it right. If you just be yourself and bask in your own significance, you will show them how to be their selves, and they will take notice and copy your example. If you emulate sincerity that they can trust, they will again copy you. The very self-value you wish to instill in them, you can demonstrate that you have and again they will copy you, for teenagers learn by example, not necessarily by instruction. For more on building teen self esteem, and for ways to heal the inner child within yourself and for them as well, please consider or first in series book, Overcoming Depression from Emotional Abuse/The Tools of Your Mind. In our book, we will share more on the other boundaries of our Soul Space besides ‘seeing things through our own eyes, such a ‘feeling our own feelings, thinking our own thoughts, and making our own choices.’ All these are areas with boundaries, which the outside world must respect. Also in our book, we talk about the whole overview of our soul’s journey as we follow our heart’s dreams to our ultimate destiny. We answer many questions about selfishness, prosperity, psychotherapy, and finding our dreams and happiness. We also talk about the spiritual controls we have within to bring our good to us. Those controls are our Sincerity Switch, Spontaneity Switch, and lastly our Feelings and Dreams Switch. Thank you for visiting us and please keep in touch, sharing your trials and your victories with us. We promise to answer personally every Email that we receive. Shayne and Lori North in Aurora, Colorado
Overcoming Depression from Emotional Abuse/The Tools of Your Mind The Book
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