Having a healthy self esteem is one of the fundamental emotional needs for all children.
Below are some pathways for improving self esteem:-
1) Provide emotional support
- reduce negative statements and critical comments
- correct child mistake by focusing on the effort rather than the result
- empathize with your child's feeling, be an active listener, acknowledge and validate his feeling
- talk to teacher to understand how he is doing in class
- let your child know that it is OK to make mistake, may also show him purposely without his notice that you as parents/adults can mistake too, but it is OK, we can learn together to correct it.
2) Increase social competency
- watch favourite TV or video program with your child and talk about character feelings & behaviors
- work on a task together, whether prepare sandwich/tidy bed or keep toys and talk about sharing the task and co-operation
- take time to talk to child on his journal of the day at school from social perspective
- provide increase opportunities for child to interact with his peers and observe how he fits in as part of the group
3) Provide Opportunities for Developing Skills in Mastering Tasks
- increase the child's ability to master the tasks to improve his self-confidence
- know when to allow the child the opportunity to stumble and learn how to success on future attempts
- asking child to perform appropriate chores whether in class or at home can help to develop the child's sense of responsibility & independence in completing tasks
- break task into small steps to ensure & managed success for the child and then build on successes
4) Provide Opportunities for Developing Skills In Emotional Regulation
- help you child to step back and cool down when fustrated
- teach child to recognize and label the emotional like angry, fustration that can lead to lack of self-control
- create an atmosphere of structure, predictability and natural consequences of mis-behavior
- explore his strength in choice making for his consequence of misbehaving from a range of possibilities you provide with him.
5) Celebrate Success
- post your child's work in a prominent place(wall/white board/refrigerator etc)
- reward the child's positive accomplishment with a treat/reward/happiness certificate
- draw attention to at least 1 positive thing about the child and share his success stories
- catch the child being good, make a big deal of his accomplishment, make him feel proud and empower to do more to promote success.
It has been really a great week for me, having attended & observed 2 EIP sessions with my little STAR & ended with a caregiver forum sharing on The Different Perspectives On The Successful Employment of Adult in the Spectrum. There are great work in progress but must also recognize that it will not be as fast as we parents want them to be, need patience, faith & hope.
I am also please to see & appreciate the beautiful work put up by the EIP teachers, the immeasurable joy of seeing my little STAR working in group, staying together, working on tasks and activities as part of the group and follow teacher. Though at times, he may still saps into his fixation/repetitive interest or distracted by external envrionment, but the critical support from teachers have been great to manage success, I am just grateful to the heroines at work not only in EIP but also to other external professional from various therapy group as well.
Most importantly, at the end of any learning process, it must be what my little STAR enjoys and be motivated to learn that leads to his next outcome. We can only be hopeful that best opportunities we provided for or expended, things are in the right direction thus far.
I am looking forward to next week End of Term Mini Sport day in school and strong finish to Term 3.
Winner's Statement:-
When we take the road less travelled, sometimes it is a lonely journey. But remember that your sense of joy is heightened, simple things mean so much more and ray of sunshine can reach your heart. Then the road isn't so bad and we are in together for this joy of living for as long as it takes.
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