Your Parenting Mojo - Respectful, Research-based Parenting Ideas To Help Kids Thrive

  Self-Esteem When I first started researching this episode I thought it would be a bit of a slam-dunk.  Self-esteem is a good thing, right? I was really surprised to find that there’s little evidence that self-esteem helps children to do better in school, or even be happier, so there’s a good deal of disagreement among psychologists about whether encouraging self-esteem is necessarily a good thing. This episode digs into these issues to understand (as much as scientists currently can) the benefits of self-esteem – and what qualities parents might want to encourage in their children in place of self-esteem to enable better outcomes.  It also touches on our self-esteem as parents – because don’t we all want to think that our child is just a little bit special, so we know we’re good parents?   References Bachman, J.G. & O’Malley, P.M. (1986). Self-concepts, self-esteem, and educational experiences: The frog pond revisited (again). Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 50, 35-46. Ba