Instilling Self-Esteem in Our Children - Part I

Instilling self esteem in our children is a learning process for us. To give something you must first possess it. In the statement above, you'll notice I used the term our. These are our children. The more the world operates on a global level and is our village the more apparent it is that it is going to take the whole lot of us to work this thing out. Admittedly that is probably a Pollyannaish take on the situation but I say it to say that with divorced and extended families raising children in numbers here to fore never seen, we are going to have to work together. In so many of these situations, there is a power struggle at play. The grandparents are resentful of the parents for not being able to raise their own children. In divorced families this same thing plays out but with mothers trashing fathers or vice versa. However it is the children that lose in these scenarios. Our role as raisers of children is to raise them and prepare them to live and be useful in the world. We are preparing them for important duties. These are the children; our children will be making the laws and setting standards moving into the future. Are we preparing them adequately?

This isn't a race issue, in the coming years; the color of their skin will be secondary to the content of their character. Yes racism and many other isms, still exist but the barriers are breaking down. Let me stop there and qualify that. Racism is a learned behavior, Black kids learn it from their family and friends, just as White kids learn it from their family and friends. Kids learn by example. They listen to a modicum of what we say but they are far more likely to follow in our footsteps. Therefore the key is to walk the talk. To raise better and different kids, we have to be better and different examples. I don't just dash this off the cuff. It is not easy to give someone something that you do not have.

I'm sure we have all heard of the self fulfilling prophecy. This is a situation when we or someone speaks something good or bad into our lives and it comes to pass. The example that comes to mind is Oprah. When Oprah was young, I believe just starting out in her career, having weathered the many storms she had weathered in her life, she met a spiritualist of some sort who told her that she was going to affect millions of people. On the surface, Oprah could not see how this was possible, but deep within this truth resonated and Oprah's life has never been the same and by virtue of that fact our lives have been enhanced.

We don't have to wait for a stranger to speak positive into our lives; we can each do it ourselves. We possess the power within ourselves to become walking and talking examples of the positive we are trying to develop and build in our children. The bible says to call those things that are not as though they are. This is the tenant of faith; believing in the unseen. This carries over to believing in our unseen potential. Once we begin to believe in ourselves, then everything about us changes, our posture, our conversation and our focus. Our children become spectators to our transformation and then are able to believe in the possibilities for their lives.