What Are Strategies for Promoting a Positive Sense of Self?

Question

Answer

Let's look at some strategies for promoting a positive sense of self. The first and most basic thing that we can do is to make sure that we are functioning in a developmentally appropriate world for children. Our interactions and guidance should fit what this age of child needs.

Developmentally Appropriate Practices

There are three core considerations for developmentally appropriate practices: commonality, individuality, and context. Commonality is what you know about how children grow and develop. For example, if I'm working with three to five-year-old children I need to understand how preschoolers grow and develop. I need to know what's typical and what are they capable of doing so that I can provide experiences that are appropriate for that age or that developmental level. When providing materials, I need to make sure that I'm providing materials that are appropriate for preschool-age children, not for toddlers or third graders. In order for those preschoolers to be successful, they need to be curious about the material and have a little bit of understanding of the material. It needs to be slightly challenging, but not so challenging that they give up. Make sure that you use that commonality or that age and developmental appropriateness to pick your materials, to set up the environment, and to determine the type of guidance you use. It needs to work for that age of the child. You would guide a toddler differently than you would guide a 12-year-old child. You are going to probably talk differently to that child. You have to take age and developmental level into consideration to make sure that you are helping that child be successful by gearing things to what fits their needs.

The next consideration is individuality. This is where you make sure you understand the needs, interests, and special characteristics of the kids that you work with. It means being aware of a lot of little people's preferences and what motivates them. That's going to help you plan what to put in the environment and what you're going to talk to that child about. For example, if you know a child loves dinosaurs, you can talk about different dinosaurs that you know about.

I once met a young child who was getting ready to enroll in our preschool program and he was really excited. As his mom was filling out paperwork, he was talking to me. His mom was asking me questions and the child was trying to talk to me and I was trying to talk to both people. The child was telling me about dinosaurs. He said, "My favorite dinosaur is a mosasaur." I had to stop and think for a minute then I said, "That's the one that swims, right?" He agreed that, yes, that was the one that swims and then I had to think a little bit more. My building is right next to a science building on campus and I looked at the mom and I said, "When you're finished, do you guys have a little bit of time to go on a little trip with me?" She said, "Oh yeah, sure." I said, "I think your son would really enjoy something that's in the neighboring building."

When we had finished filling out the paperwork we walked next door. In the lobby on one of the floors, there is a huge fossil of a mosasaur on the wall and I took him over to see it. I have never had such rockstar status with a child in my life, but that child was so thrilled that I was interested in something that he was interested in. Knowing that he was interested in something, I gave him an experience that some other kids wouldn't have appreciated, but that helped him feel good about his interest in dinosaurs. I am so glad that I remembered that his favorite dinosaur was next door. You have to listen and really take note of what children's preferences are so that you can provide experiences that are appropriate and exciting and help them see that they're important. He felt so important that we had gone next door and his mother was very excited too. I didn't know any other dinosaur that I could have talked to him about, but I did know that one.

The last aspect of developmentally appropriate practices that you have to be aware of is the contextual element. That is being aware of the social and cultural backgrounds in which children are coming to you from because that's going to help you make decisions about how you interact with them. Maybe their family consoles them in a different way. Maybe they still pick up their six-year-old and pat them and rock them to help calm them down. You have to be aware of what they're used to in their background because that's going to help them make sense of a new situation. If they're with you for an early childhood program, it's going to give them something familiar. It's going to allow you to honor what their backgrounds are instead of saying, "Well, we don't do it like that here." We're honoring what that child is used to. Make sure that that helps guide your decisions as well.

Also, the context of your program helps you guide your environment and your planning, as well as really understand where those kids are coming from. It takes some time to build those relationships and to better understand families and what their backgrounds are. Not all families are very open to telling you everything about themselves. Sometimes intake sheets or "all about me" sheets can help you learn more about the families that you're working with. Make note of things that children say that give you an idea of what their background is like so that you can apply that to help that child be successful in your program.

Relationships and Guidance

Developmentally appropriate practices help guide relationships and guidance with young children. In order for kids to feel good about themselves, they have to have close relationships with families and caregivers. We want to encourage attachments. We want to make sure that children feel welcome and comfortable with the people that are caring for them or who are teaching them. Allow those attachments to happen. Allow that child who really seems to be taken with you to be attached to your hip every now and then, because obviously they feel comfortable with you and they need that closeness. We don't always know how closely attached children are to their primary caregivers. We don't often know what those relationships look like behind closed doors. As early childhood professionals, we need to be sure that we do what we can to help children form those good close attachments.

One of the ways that we do that is through warm, caring relationships. We can be kind to children, be welcoming, call them by name, get on their level when we talk to them, and listen to them attentively. We want to make sure that we put out an invitation for children to develop those relationships with us and that we help maintain those. Take an interest in children and be excited to see them in a genuine way. It's not enough to greet every preschooler with, "I love your shoes today" because that's very generic. It's not very genuine, but if you talk to a child and say something like, "I'm glad you're here today. We missed you yesterday when you were out sick." Make sure that children feel important in the program and important in your life.

Some of the ways that we interact with children through appropriate strategies will help children develop those socially competent skills. Model pro-social skills, such as holding a door open for someone because they're carrying too many books. If somebody's shoe needs to be tied and you know another child knows how to tie a shoe, coach them to go help the other child by tying their shoe. These strategies help us promote great skills that are going to lead children to be socially competent, which will help them feel good about themselves.

Redirect children. Don't simply tell them, "No, don't do this. Stop doing that." Redirect them to the activities that are appropriate. It's such a simple technique. I think many of us do it without even thinking that we're redirecting. Sometimes we redirect our family members at home that are adults because we're used to doing that with children. Those are the strategies that we want to employ so that children build those relationships with us and feel comfortable with us. We want them to feel like we are guiding them in a positive manner so that they do want to do the things that we're suggesting. We want them to want to be successful because they know that we are supporting them and that we're going to encourage and praise them when they are successful.

Modeling, coaching, and redirection are all great guidance techniques and help teach children skills. They're great techniques for guiding children, but authoritative guidance, or authoritative parenting styles, is the best approach for helping develop socially competent children who have a good self-concept. With authoritative guidance, you have adults who have high expectations that are appropriate expectations for a child. They're high expectations and challenging enough, but you expect the child to be successful. You expect them to do age-appropriate things. There's a good level of nurturance so there are warm, caring relationships where children feel loved, welcome, and supported.

There's shared control with an authoritative guidance style and there may be some strategies where you are modeling and coaching a child so that they then understand how to carry themselves in a new situation. Maybe you've had to coach them through a situation that they're not familiar with or they're not being successful with. You can coach them to do something that is more acceptable or more in line with what needs to happen in that situation. You're not just telling the child, "You have to do it this way." You have shared control where you're helping guide them and they're practicing it. You're supporting them and praising them. The communication piece goes with all the others. You communicate with the child so that they know you care about them. You communicate with that child so that you can help them be successful. You let them know what the expectations are. Authoritative guidance is key in making sure that children are socially competent and also have a higher sense of self.

Positive Interactions

Positive interactions can take two different approaches, nonverbal communication, and positive verbal interactions. Your nonverbal communication says a lot about how children are going to react to you. For example, if you get down on the floor and you're interested in what the child is doing, they're going to feel more comfortable with you. They're probably going to talk to you more than if you sat in a chair and moved back and seemed uninterested in what the child was doing. Your non-verbals say a lot to children, whether it's eye contact, how close you're sitting to them, or the appropriate use of touch. Patting a child on the head or giving a fist bump are just two different signals that we send without saying a word. Nonverbal communication speaks to children in their role in that relationship. Make sure that you have great positive non-verbal communication and are very aware of the messages that you send non-verbally.

Through your positive verbal interactions, you want to make sure that you use strategies and techniques that help build those relationships, that highlight what kids can do, and that help keep them moving toward new skills. One type of positive verbal interaction is behavior reflections, where you reflect on what you see a child doing. It's not a judgment, it's simply showing your interest in a child and having great conversations with kids.

I tell my college students, "If you don't know what to do when you're in the preschool with our kids, sit down and just talk to them. If you don't know what to talk about, think about things that everybody does, like eat." I always start conversations revolving around food because everybody eats. So you might ask, "What did you have for breakfast this morning?" or "What do you think you're going to have for lunch? What are we having for snack?" Have some of those in mind so that you can have great conversations with kids using appropriate questioning, asking kids questions that you really truly want to know the answer to, and not overwhelming them. Those are great conversation starters, but it also helps a child see that you're interested in them.

Paraphrase reflections are simply restatements of something that a child has said to you that lets a child know that you're listening to them and that you're trying to understand what they want or trying to understand what they need. Effective praise goes way beyond, "Good job" or "Way to go." Effective praise typically calls the child by name, praises what they did, and explains why the praise is warranted. When kids understand that they're in control of the things that are happening in their life through the praise that you're giving them, they're more likely to try again or do it again because they were successful this time and you pinpointed why they were successful. Use praise as a way to help support children's efforts toward being socially competent and having that good sense of self.

Using Children's Books

Using children's books is another way that is really easy to share experiences with kids through other characters that may be similar to them, This allows them to think about their own life and how they fit within the world around them. There is a handout that has a lot of great children's books, but I have a few of my favorites here, and I just want to share a few. Toddlers and preschoolers love Mercer Mayer's All By Myself because it's familiar. The character is trying to do things children that age try to do and sometimes they don't do it really well, but they're trying. It's a great conversation piece about perseverance and getting help and how to do something a little bit differently next time.

Little kids also are always concerned that they're just little kids. Another book I like is There's Lots That I Can Do by Kathleen Harte. It's about a young toddler or preschool-age child that wants to explore all the different things that they're capable of doing. It's a great way to get kids to talk about what they can do. Can you do some of the same things that this character can do? One of my all-time favorites is I Like Me by Nancy Carlson. I also read this book to my college students. It is about a pig who's very proud of everything about herself, including her round little tummy and her curly little tail. It's a great way to get kids to talk about what they feel about themselves in a positive manner because we want them to feel good about who they are and what they're capable of doing.

There are a lot of great books you can read with children or look at with children to help them make some comparisons between themselves and the characters in the book. I love using books to explore different characters and to look at "How's that character like you? Do you do some of those same things? Is that a good idea? What's going to happen if that character keeps doing that?" There are a lot of great talking points to be had with children's books and there are so many fabulous books out there. You can look at the handout provided or search online for books about self-concept.

Self-Exploration Activities

There are other self-exploration activities that really help build that idea of a sense of self and self-esteem in early childhood. Many of us are familiar with doing all about me activities for kids or exploring who they are. I like doing all about me activities because kids need to learn about themselves before they can learn about other people because they're egocentric. It is all about me so I like to make sure that kids understand themselves before we start talking about family or community helpers. They have to understand who they are and what they're capable of.

In an all about me unit, I love for kids to explore the things that they can do. There are some great craft ideas where you can use a jar or a can and children can add things that they're capable of doing in those jars. Then when they feel stumped or like they're not capable of things, we can refer back to all the things that they can do. Maybe it's a word wall for each child of all the great things that they're capable of doing.

Then as they are figuring out more about themselves, we can look at some discovery activities where you start learning about other people. You look at similarities and differences. I love doing a "this or that" activity with kids as well as adults. You may ask, "Do you like markers or do you like crayons? Do you like going outside or do you like staying inside? Do you like checkers or do you like Tic Tac Toe?" There are so many different ways to explore similarities and differences. I do a popcorn-type activity with my college-age students but it can also be done with children. It works a little bit better with children older than preschool age. You'll say, if you've been to the beach, stand up or if you prefer dogs to cats, stand up. It lets everybody learn a little bit of information about other people. There are usually a couple of items where only one person is standing up which can give you some talking points.

As you're learning about those similarities and differences, move into some cooperative activities where kids are working together on a cooperative building activity. I used to do a rainy day block game in the block area. It was almost like playing Jenga in reverse where every child got to add a piece to our block structure. It was going to be different every time. We needed everybody's participation for this to be successful. We always made sure that nobody felt left out and that everybody felt part of the process. If it got knocked down, we all helped pick it right back up. We didn't say the person who knocked it down was a loser and they didn't have to clean it all up themselves. We all grabbed however many blocks we had added and we picked them up and started over. Having some cooperative-type activities helps kids understand how to function with other people. Having that communication piece and opportunities for kids to work together helps too. With current situations, we've been trying to keep kids distanced so sometimes our closer cooperative-type activities are not always possible, but we don't want to lose that communication piece.

The final activity that you can do that really helps with self-exploration is using daily discussions. These are great ways to end the day. Have kids talk about what they were successful with today. "What's something that you did that was nice for somebody today?" or have another child say something positive about somebody else that's in the group. I do some activities like this with my college students to help them think about what are they doing that's positive? Sometimes we think we're not doing a lot that's positive. With little kids, we can encourage them to talk about the things that they did, and then we can talk about why those are good things. Talk about why it's great that you helped somebody pick up something that they spilled on the floor. Why is that a good thing for us to do? I love helping children see the positives in the things that they do. Kids and adults both are faced with a lot of negatives. Children need us to point out those positives. I don't think you can have too many positives in your day. I truly don't believe that you can spoil someone that way because kids do need a lot of positives every day. We don't know what negatives they may be facing in other aspects of their life.

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.