What Contributes to a Child's Sense of Self?

Question

Answer

As children are learning to work in the world around them, they're also learning about themselves. There are some different aspects to the sense of self that we influence as we are working with young children.

Self-Awareness

Young kids become aware that they're separate from other people. Think about toddlers, who eventually realize that the child in the mirror is them. That's when they realize, "Okay, that's me and I'm separate from my mom, who's holding me." Kids start to understand that they can do things on their own. They recognize themselves in pictures and refer to themselves by name. Again in the toddler years, they are testing that independence that is coming along. They want to do things on their own. As kids become aware of who they are, we provide information to them to help them learn more about themselves. We tell them stories about who they are. We support them by praising them and by offering encouragement. You have to have support from caring adults in order to understand who you are. The adult's role in children figuring out who they are is huge. You have to have adults that are aware of what children see in themselves.

Some kids in our center were tracing their body outlines. They were actually creating giants, but after tracing their outlines, they started realizing different things about themselves. As they looked at the outlines they had done, they saw some people had a dress on, some had a ponytail, some were much taller than others, or their feet were bigger. They were noticing the similarities and differences, which helps them appreciate and understand themselves as individuals even more.

Self-Concept

The idea of self-concept comes after self-awareness when children are now understanding who they are and what they bring to the table. They understand characteristics about themselves. They understand their capabilities and what they like to do. Little kids start with very concrete observations about themselves, like "I'm two. I have yellow hair. My name's Amber." They understand things that are very concrete and then as they get older, those understandings about who they are become more abstract. They may think about things like, "I'm a good friend. I'm kind. I'm smart." It's not always those observable characteristics.

We have to give children a chance to hear about who they are so that they further understand what they look like to other people. You can have your own vision of who you are and your vision of what other people think about you and those meld together. It's going to change as children mature and experience different things. As you realize that you're really good at a particular sport or you could read at an early age or people rely on you for something, those help shape what you think about yourself. For example, you might think, "Okay, people need me. They like for me to help them with this." Those are some things that happen as children age and experience things that help shape what they think about themselves and who they think they are.

There are some differences culturally, one being the difference between what is often expected of girls versus what's expected of boys. While there shouldn't be a difference, sometimes there is because sometimes people view what children do differently. That helps shape self-concept because if a little boy is told that he shouldn't cry and then cries, he might be viewed differently or he may think differently about himself. Those differences from your social and cultural background certainly shape who you think you are. It's the same with your expectations culturally and socially, regarding whether you are more focused on yourself as an individual or if you are more focused on yourself as part of a group or family. That's the individualistic versus collectivist idea.

Some families would prefer that their children not brag or boast about things that they do, whereas other families may be really thrilled that their child has a first-place ribbon in something. They may want to share that with everyone. There are different views on that and that does help shape what children think about themselves. This is that piece where children are thinking, "Who am I? What do I do? What are some things that I do?"

One of my favorite things to share with young children is a book by Jamie Lee Curtis called When I Was Little. It's a child's memoir of her youth and is about a four-year-old girl that reflects back on things that she used to do and what she can do now. That's part of that maturation process where children think about what they used to be able to do compared to what they can do now. We hope that children view themselves as getting stronger and getting better at the different activities that they engage in. It's so fun to watch kids come to see themselves as individuals and really understand who they are.

Working with preschoolers, I'm used to children being very blunt about who they are and talking about how good they can draw a picture or how high they can kick the ball. I'm used to kids being very positive about that, which is great. Young children often have a more positive view of themselves than older children or adults. As early childhood professionals and parents, we have to provide children with support. A lot of the support that we provide children is through our encouragement, our interactions with children, and making sure that we're providing appropriate praise. We'll talk about praise in a minute, but we need to provide that appropriate support so that children know that we're on their side and we think these awesome things about them too.

There's a great poem called "Children Learn What They Live" by Dorothy Law Nolte. It's all about if children experience this at home or where they live, this is what's going to happen. For example, if children experience support in feeling good about themselves, they're going to feel good about themselves when they're not around us, not in the home, or not with these adults. We need to make sure that we set the stage as adults in these children's lives, and provide good support so that eventually when we're not around, these kids still feel really good about themselves.

Self-Efficacy

When I think about the idea of self-efficacy, I always think of The Little Engine That Could, and the phrase, "I think I can, I think I can." This is your belief that you can do something and you're going to be successful doing it. This is where you see determination. Several children were stacking and building large cup towers with inexpensive plastic cups from the store. One child was very determined to make it taller, which was evidenced by the way he was holding his lip as he stood trying to stack the rims of the cups together. For kids to feel like they can do something, they have to have been allowed a chance to do it.

We have to follow children's budding independence and their desire to do things on their own. We have to let them try to do things. We want them to be confident. We want them to attempt things, sometimes even when they can't do it successfully. We want them to have the belief that they're capable of doing it. They might need some assistance, but it's really fun to step back and allow kids a chance to carry out some tasks. Could an adult help them stack these cups? Yes. Does that teach those children very much? No. You have to give kids a chance to do things on their own, fail, try again, or be successful and be proud of what they've done and keep trying and helping others and doing things in a different way.

The idea of self-efficacy with young kids is so fun to watch when they are so very determined. If you work with toddlers, you get a lot of, "Me do it!" because they want to do it their way. They don't want your help. They want to be successful in doing things on their own. Sometimes it's hard as an adult working with young kids to step back and let them try things. Sometimes we see what's going to happen and we know it's not going to be successful, but letting them try it and giving them the support that they need to carry on and do it a little bit differently is certainly very helpful in shaping what children feel and think about themselves. Again, allow that independence and allow kids to carry out those tasks so they become very confident in their ability to be successful.

Self-Esteem

We have all these words that all begin with self. Self-esteem is your evaluation of yourself. This is not just who you are, but what you think about yourself, how worthy you feel, and how competent you are. The three different areas of self-esteem include your worth, competence, and control.

Your worth is your value and how much you like yourself. Adults can help a child feel worthy by being warm and caring, greeting a child, praising a child, calling a child by their name, recognizing when a child feels left out, recognizing when a child looks sad, and allowing a child to contribute to a conversation. We want kids to feel worthy. We want them to feel like they're liked, loved, and important.

The idea of the competence part of self-esteem is that you feel like you can accomplish things. With appropriate activities and opportunities, children will feel competent. That's why we want to make sure that the materials that we have for young children fit their age and developmental level so that they can be successful and feel like they're competent. There are many things as an adult that I go into thinking I can accomplish and it should be pretty simple, but I fail because I've not been supported and I don't feel very competent. You may think, I have a college degree and all this experience, but then I'm shocked sometimes when I can't do something and I don't feel competent. We don't want kids to feel like that. As an adult, we feel like that every now and then and sometimes think, "Oh, I feel silly because I can't do that." For little kids, it can be devastating when they feel like they can't do something. Allow them that feeling of, "I can accomplish this."

Control when thinking about self-esteem is the idea of how much influence I have over the outcomes of situations in my life. If I do this, this will happen next and it happens because of me. Children come to understand that they're in control of the actions in their world by adults who call attention to it. For example, the adults make a comment of, "Wow, you really got those blocks to balance because you were really patient and you lined them up just right. You could see that they were tipping and you straightened the blocks. That's why your tower stood up." We should be specific in our praise with children and the comments we make with children. Help them realize that they're in control of the outcomes of their actions, rather than saying, "Oh, aren't you lucky that your tower stayed up?" Or, "What a great job," which isn't very clear praise. Kids don't realize that it is the way it is because of me. We want kids to realize that they have an impact on the things that happened in their life. We want them to realize that they have that control.

A lot of children's self-esteem, especially early on, comes from great positive interactions with adults. We want adults who are kind to children. We want adults who are supportive of children, who allow them to express themselves, who accept them for who they are, who provide positive praise, who allow them a chance to be successful, and call out the reasons why they're successful. We want children to have those good interactions with adults.

Earlier I mentioned that, in the early childhood years, children tend to have an overall positive self-esteem. They feel worthy and feel like they can do things. Hopefully, they feel like they're in control of some things in their life, especially as they mature and don't have adult support. Many children entering elementary school, middle school, and beyond may not always have that great support. Think back to middle school and junior high. A lot of times your self-esteem was not as great as it was when you were in kindergarten or preschool, because you had a more positive sense of who you were when you were younger and because you had more adult support.

I certainly have picked the right age group to work with because I don't think I would want to deal with the up and down rollercoaster of feelings that middle school and junior high kids tend to face, especially when it comes to self-esteem and trying to figure out who they are at that point. If you haven't had great experiences up to that point, it's even more difficult. In the early childhood years, we certainly want to make sure that kids feel like they can accomplish many things. 

This Ask the Expert is an edited excerpt from the course, Helping Young Children Develop a Positive Sense of Self, presented by Amber Tankersley, PhD.