Build your child's self esteem

We went to a seminar of the above title at a local Chinese church. Thanks to Lei for taking care of Peter the whole night, I was able to sit through the entire talk. The speaker is a retired pediatrician who originally came from Taiwan. I was greatly impressed by his talk and have to admit that i haven't thought of the way to treat kids for a long time. Like he said, Chinese parents incline to expect too much out of a kid, and tend to say more"no"s(criticism) than"yes"(encouragement). The long term effect of these is to force the kids to become over-cautious and look down upon themself even. It is our culture and the way we grew up that let us naturally put way too much emphasis on the academic development while ignoring other interests of the kids.

I used to read a lot about this kind of theories when Yaya was younger and kept reminding myself of giving her more space, opportunities and encougement to explore and experience, always using my normal and plain voice in our lives even when she was fussy, treating her as a kid, not a little adult, as she was and understanding her every development stage characteristics instead of criticizing her for not being a good listener, but with her age growing, expecially when she and her peers began to read, write etc and became more independent, I found myself more concerned about the result, not the process she is learning. I am not as patient anymore. Seldom did we give her the chance to talk or sit down to listen to her like we used to do.

As for Peter, maybe because he is the second, maybe because now life is busier than anytime before, i haven't really follow his emotional development very well. No more tracking of his physical, spirital and social needs, his growth milestones or even his growth curves.

Are we trying? Yes, we are trying hard. That is why we are so tired all the time. In some respect, Lei even thinks that we might have cared too much. But one thing i think we need is to keep looking back to check our parenting style, to see whether we forget something important, like whether we begin to yell at the kids for their curiousity.. That way even if we lost track of how much percentage weight they are in the growth chart, we would not feel so guilty about hurting their feelings. I hope my kids will be more self confident about themselves when the grow up than us, their parents.