Adolescence is a stage of life in which children experience many physiological, cognitive, emotional and social alterations. This series of changes causes a continuous feeling of insecurity in boys and girls that in many occasions negatively affects their self-concept and self-esteem.
In this article, you will learn strategies to help your teenage son or daughter build positive self-esteem during adolescence.
Teenagers make comparisons
Boys and girls don't quite know what they look like between the ages of twelve and eighteen. They simply spend the day comparing themselves to other teens, celebrities, or adult role models with whom they have an affinity.
When an adolescent perceives a very large distance between their behavior and that of their role model, they tend to interpret this situation from a dramatic and pessimistic point of view. For this reason, it is essential that we adults help them to observe the totality of each person, beyond those aspects in which they stand out especially.
How to help you be more objective
Teenagers often talk about their idols or leaders constantly and with such passion that it is difficult to give them the attention they need and to sit and listen to them. On the contrary, the most normal thing is that we complain about how heavy they are and make fun of their exaggerated attitude. Well, in this way we will only be able to reinforce her fanatical behavior.
If we want adolescents to be more objective and therefore less vulnerable to the ideal version they perceive of the people who are important to them, something that works very well is learning together with them about the life of the person they admire.
To better understand this concept, we will use an example. Let's suppose that our adolescent son admires a singer, because what we would do is watch with him or her videos about the biography of that singer, read interviews, reviews and consult all the sources that we can.
In this way, our teenager will realize that his idol is not perfect, but that like any human being has problems, he has had to fight to get where he is, and… not everyone likes it.
Teach him to be proactive
The pressure of the media and the different social groups with which any adolescent interacts, tend to put them in a passive and reactive attitude.
From this perspective, teens want to get thinner, but do nothing to eat it and eat too much knick-knack, or want to excel in studies but don't touch books unless they have tests.
However, they worry that they don't have the physicality of their idols or that they suspend. Therefore, we need to teach them to take responsibility to achieve their goals.
If you want him to commit to what he does, arm yourself with patience
From the parents' point of view, it is very difficult to understand why teenage children do not act more responsibly. However, it is normal that at these ages things start with great enthusiasm and are abandoned by other "more interesting" ones.
To help children behave in a more mature and responsible way, it is important to be understanding with their fickle attitude, but at the same time and with great patience to remind them once and as many times as necessary, of the goal they have set for themselves. Once again, I will use an example to make myself better understood.
Let's imagine that our teenage daughter wants to pass the exams, but five days after the next test she hasn't touched a book. In these cases, instead of saying things like "you're as usual, I'm sure you'll also fail this time", we can surprise her by handing her the book when we go to look for her at her school, saying "take love, I'll leave you the book because I'm sure that you are going to need it to pass that subject that worries you so much ”.
In summary, if we want to help our adolescent children build their self-esteem, we must try to empathize with their way of seeing the world and act as comprehensive guides that accompany them in their development process without putting pressure on them.
Something quite difficult to do, but with what we will get them to build a healthy and strong self-concept.
