Ways to raise a self-confident child with high self-esteem

• Have a wall of accomplishments, display trophies, awards, photos and achievements. These positive reminders of a child's successes will help to keep their confidence high.

• Monitor your child's friendships and friends. Discrete attention to who he is seeing, how he interacts with them, and how his social skills are developing, will allow you to intervene when necessary to support him or make small adjustments to his activities. The support of his parents, acting for him in all situations where his confidence might be impacted, will be a powerful boost to his self-esteem and confidence.

• That also goes for his other activities outside the home. It's no use relinquishing responsibility for your child to church groups, scout groups or schools: he's ultimately your responsibility, as is his welfare. That responsibility extends to his developing self-confidence as well as his physical welfare. It may, for example, be necessary to introduce your child to suitable playmates if he seems unable to find the right set for himself.

• By inviting his friends to your home, you'll be much better able to monitor who he's mixing with and what the likely effect of these friends will be. After he's about seven, his peers will begin to have an increasingly important effect on him, and since not everyone he associates with will have the same values that you do, it is probably a good idea to keep tabs on his friends by having them to your house.

• When children have had adequate attachments in their childhood, they are much better equipped to handle different environments which may have different rules. For healthy social development and complete self-confidence, a child first must feel secure with himself and his parents before he can feel secure with others.

• Don't label your child. There's a tendency for a family to scapegoat one member, or at least to label him or her. Calling a child "the shy one" or "the clever one" or "the unhealthy one" may give them a label to live by (or live up to) but it isn't likely to do much for their sense of self or self-confidence.

• Monitor how your child is doing at school. One of our clients reported hearing a primary school teacher saying to the mixed sex class in her "care" that "all the problems in the world were due to men." What message the boys in the class must have internalized from that is easy to imagine. That kind of influence needs to be corrected: generalizations like this, no matter what the reason for their delivery, can severely impact a child's self-esteem and self-confidence.

• Your child needs neither complete protection from the outside world nor complete exposure to it. How he or she responds to the different behaviors that they meet in the world depends on how strong their attachments to you have been and how strong their self-confidence is. What's for sure is that school can be a confidence-destroying experience if a child does not have the resilience to withstand the negative influences of the people they will meet there. This includes the disruptive behavior (bullying, aggressiveness) of other children who cannot cope because their confidence is not strong enough to withstand the change of environment.

• One point to keep in mind is that a child who has been exposed to a clear code of values early in life has a strong base from which to work when exposed to the value systems of others. And with a high level of self-confidence the child will be able to work out for him or herself what values he or she wishes to live by. The best way to get your values across to a child is to live by them.

• Don't overprotect your child: the consequence of this is that your child may end up unable to think for himself.

• Don't under protect either: that leaves a child lacking in confidence and open to the negative influences of people who offer some form of security - usually acceptance by the group, which may be  undesirable.

• Give your child responsibilities. Let them learn assigned tasks, preferably things they have already shown an interest in. Giving a child responsibility for a task which he or she is capable of completing is  a good way to build self-confidence, and helps to develop a sense of responsibility to self, family, and eventually society. Some jobs will be paid, others will be ones they are expected to do because that is their responsibility. By contributing to the smooth running of the house, children feel needed, valued and competent.

• Be clear about what is expected of each family member.

• You'll always want to encourage your children to express what they feel. That doesn't mean expressing emotion in an uncontrolled way, it means giving them the confidence to express what they feel in an appropriate way. You don't want to raise a very reserved child nor one with too much emotional expressiveness. But keeping feelings inside doesn't do anyone any good. For one thing, it conveys the message that feelings are threatening - which they can be, if a person is not used to their expression - and it denies them the natural need to express themselves. If feelings are denied, disapproved of or not expressed, a child can come to the conclusion that it isn't worth feeling anything; and if a child believes his or her feelings count for nothing, they are likely to come fairly quickly to the conclusion that they too are not worth much.

• Being uncaring about how a child feels is one way that parents can teach a child to suppress emotions. Another is to react angrily when a child feels something and expresses it in words or emotions. In essence, the caring parent who wishes to build a child's self-esteem will accept their emotions, not judge them, and help the child work through whatever is bothering him or her.

You don't have to worry "giving" a child about self-esteem

It isn't something that needs monitoring on a daily basis. Children go through ups and downs, just as we all do. The secret of giving a child strong self-esteem and a high level of confidence is to be there with them in what they experience, go through life supporting them, caring for them and letting them develop naturally, all the while being around when they need you. It's not about force feeding an agenda that you have for the child, or passing on your own expectations. Nor is t about falsely protecting them from the rigors of life.