RECOVERY: Fostering Positive Self-Esteem In Children

Positive Self-Esteem is essential to a happy, healthy life. It gives us the ability to adapt, grow, cope, and survive. It allows us to successfully navigate the frustrations, difficulties, and problems that we will inevitably be faced with along the way. 

Parents are crucial to a child’s positive sense of self.  A parent’s role is to provide stability, security, and love so children will flourish and grow to be self-confident, responsible, and capable. It is of great importance that parents are role models who display a positive view of self so the child will learn by example.

Self-esteem isn’t arrogant, self absorbed, or narcissistic. It’s a healthy understanding of who you are. It is liking yourself for who you are.

When a child (or adult) has a positive self-concept they are empowered, and protected.  Understanding yourself, your beliefs, strengths, and even weaknesses, strengthens a child’s ability to understand, withstand, cope, and handle difficult situations and decisions.

 

Self–Esteem = our self-perceptions

       How we define ourselves - which influences:

·      Motivation

·      Attitude

·      Behavior

·      Emotional adjustment

·      Fluctuates as kids grow

What affects a child’s self-esteem?
 

·      How much they feel loved, wanted, appreciated.

·      The child’s view of himself

·      His/Her sense of achievement

·      How he/she relates to others

A child with good self-esteem learns flexibility, communication, resilience, and problem solving.

These skills help the child adapt and better handle:

·      Stressful situations

·      Negative pressures

·      Conflicts with peers

·      Peer pressure

 A child with low self-esteem will experience: 

·      Difficulty finding solutions to problems

·      Passiveness

·      Withdrawal

·      Depression

·      Fearful of challenges

Patterns of Self-Esteem start early in life.

·      Reaching milestones gives a sense of accomplishment

·      Continued attempts to accomplish after failed attempts teaches “can do” attitude (try, fail, try, fail, try again, succeed. This helps develop positive ideas about their capabilities)

·      Success follows persistence

Parental Involvement = accurate, healthy self-perceptions

·      Feel loved.  

·      Feel capable

·      Feel appreciated (by parents and others)

·      Feel confident in decision making

·      Feel independent

·      Feel that they heard

·      Feel their opinions count

·      Feel encouragement

·      Develop mutual respect

·      Feel successful

Warning signs of Unhealthy Self-Esteem

·      Hesitant to try new things

·      Frequently speaks negatively about self

·      Easily frustrated

·      Gives up self power easily

·      Looks for someone else to take over/lead

·      View temporary situations and set backs as permanent

·      Pessimistic

·      Behavioral problems

Signs of Healthy Self-Esteem

·      Easily interacts with others

·      Enjoy others. Is comfortable in social situations

·      Can separate self from disappointments

·      Can ask for help and admit they don’t understand something

·      Knows and accept their strengths and weaknesses.

·      Optimistic

·      Sense of identity

·      Independence

·      Motivation

·      Persistance

What Parents Can Do

·      Love, unconditionally

·      Start from the time they are born to make them feel safe, secure, loved, and valued.

·      Mind your words. Kids are sensitive to what parents say.

·      Praise your child for both efforts and for jobs well done.

·      Praise frequently

·      Be honest

·      Positively acknowledge their efforts and completion of tasks despite the outcome.

·      Be a role model. Nurture your own self-esteem. Watch what you say in relation to yourself. They’re listening and affected by it.

·      Help develop a healthy self-concept by helping them set more accurate standards for themselves.

·      Be affectionate. Your love will boost their self-esteem.

·      Give positive, accurate feedback.

·      Acknowledge their feelings

·      Reward positive choices (will foster right choices in the future)

·      Give them a safe, loving home environment

·      Be aware of signs of trouble outside of the home

·      Help kids get involved. (Mentoring, volunteering, helping a    younger sibling will boost self-esteem)

·      Encourage them to express themselves (both the good and the bad)

·      Teach them to respect the opinions of others and not let others disrespect them

·      Teach strategies to help them say no to things that go against their values and beliefs.

·      Make them feel special

·      Let them make mistakes

·      Encourage them

Be careful of your thoughts, for your thoughts become your words. Be careful of your words, for your words become your actions. Be careful of your actions, for your actions become your habits. Be careful of your habits, for your habits become your character. Be careful of your character, for your character becomes your destiny. 

Ryan Caffro

See also:   

Body Image and Self-Esteem links

Self-Worth: The Unconditional Love Of Self 

Self Worth Quotes

©Weighing The Facts

Pic source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pinkpoppyimages/5894557456/sizes/l/in/photostream/

Sources: http://www.more-selfesteem.com/child_self_esteem.htm
http://extension.missouri.edu/bsf/selfesteem/index.htm

Inspirational Recovery Quotes: Choices

 Life's not about expecting, hoping and wishing, it's about doing, being and becoming. It's about the choices you've just made, and the ones you're about to make, it's about the things you choose to say - today. It's about what you're gonna do after you finish reading this.

Mike Dooley

This bright, new day... complete with 24 hours of opportunities, choices, and attitudes… a perfectly matched set of 1440 minutes. This unique gift, this one day, cannot be exchanged, replaced or refunded. Handle with care. Make the most of it. There is only one to a customer.

Unknown

We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand.

Randy Pausch

The doors we open and close each day decide the lives we live. 

Flora Whittemore

It is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.

Joanne Kathleen Rowling

Once you have started seeing the beauty of life, ugliness starts disappearing. If you start looking at life with joy, sadness starts disappearing. You cannot have heaven and hell together, you can have only one. It is your choice.

Osho

Every passing minute is another chance to turn it all around.

Cameron Crowe

Every morning when I get up, the first thing I decide is: What do I want? Misery? Blissfulness? What am I going to choose today? And it happens that I always choose blissfulness. It is my choice, it is my life.

Abdullah

Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

You are a product of your environment. So choose the environment that will best develop you toward your objective. Analyze your life in terms of its environment. Are the things around you helping you toward success - or are they holding you back?

W. Clement Stone

You have many choices. You can choose forgiveness over revenge, joy over despair. You can choose action over apathy.

Stephanie Marston

We can try to avoid making choices by doing nothing, but even that is a decision.

Gary Collins

In a minute there is time for decisions and revisions, which a minute will reverse.  

 T.S. Eliot

It's choice--not chance--that determines your destiny.

Jean Nidetch

Destiny is not a matter of chance. It is a matter of choice: it is not to be waited for; it is a thing to be achieved.

W.J. Bryant

You have a choice. Live or die. Every breath is a choice. Every minute is a choice. To be, or not to be.

Chuck Palahniuk

I discovered I always have choices and sometimes it's only a choice of attitude.

Judith M. Knowlton

The truth of the matter is that you always know the right thing to do. The hard part is doing it.

H. Norman Schwarzkopf

While we are free to choose our actions, we are not free to choose the consequences of our actions.

Stephen R. Covey

Every thought is a seed. If you plant crab apples, don't count on harvesting Golden Delicious.

Bill Meyer

We must make the choices that enable us to fulfill the deepest capacities of our real selves.

Thomas Merton

There are always two choices. Two paths to take. One is easy. And its only reward is that it's easy.

Unknown

Decisions become easier when your will to please God outweighs your will to please the world. 

Anso Coetzer

What we call the secret of happiness is no more a secret than our willingness to choose life.

 Leo F. Buscaglia

Remember, there are no mistakes, only lessons. Love yourself, trust your choices, and everything is possible.

Cherie Carter-Scott

 The artist is the only one who knows that the world is a subjective creation, that there is a choice to be made, a selection of elements

Anais Nin

Until a person can say deeply and honestly, "I am what I am today because of the choices I made yesterday," that person cannot say, "I choose otherwise.”

Stephen R. Covey

In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing. The worst thing you can do is nothing.

Theodore Roosevelt

When you have to make a choice and don't make it, that is in itself a choice.

 William James

Every human has four endowments- self-awareness, conscience, independent will and creative imagination. These give us the ultimate human freedom... the power to choose, to respond, to change.

Stephen R. Covey

Good decisions come from experience, and experience comes from bad decisions. 

Unknown

When one bases his life on principle, 99 percent of his decisions are already made. 

Unknown

A true hero is not someone who thinks about doing what is right, but one that simply does what is right without thinking!

Kevin Heath

We can let the circumstances of our lives harden us so that we become increasingly resentful and afraid, or we can let them soften us, and make us kinder. We always have the choice.

Dalai Lama

There is no value in life except what you choose to place upon it and no happiness in any place except what you bring to it yourself.

Henry David Thoreau

Choices are the hinges of destiny. 

Attributed to both Pythagoras and Edwin Markham

If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is compromise.

Robert Fritz

Indecision becomes decision with time. 

Unknown

To live is to choose. But to choose well, you must know who you are and what you stand for, where you want to go and why you want to get there.

Kofi Annan

Life is change. Growth is optional. Choose wisely.

Karen Kaiser

You may believe that you are responsible for what you do, but not for what you think. The truth is that you are responsible for what you think, because it is only at this level that you can exercise choice. What you do comes from what you think.

A Course In Miracles

Do not plant your dreams in the field of indecision, where nothing ever grows but the weeds of "what-if."

Dodinsky

Right actions in the future are the best apologies for bad actions in the past.

Tyron Edwards

There are two primary choices in life; to accept conditions as they exist,

or accept the responsibility for changing them.

Denis Waitley

When it snows, you have two choices: shovel or make snow angels.

Unknown

In the long run, we shape our lives, and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility.

Eleanor Roosevelt

Using the power of decision gives you the capacity to get past any excuse to change any and every part of your life in an instant. 

Anthony Robbins

We must all suffer from one of two pains: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret. The difference is discipline weighs ounces while regret weighs tons.

Jim Rohn

There comes a time in the spiritual journey when you start making choices from a very different place. And if a choice lines up so that it supports truth, health, happiness, wisdom and love, it’s the right choice.

Angeles Arrien

... everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms … to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.

Viktor Frankl

pic source:http://www.flickr.com/photos/safetylast/3406861702/sizes/l/in/photostream/

Happy Memorial Day 2011

Always in our prayers
Never forgotten
Forever grateful
Mrs M

Recovery Quote Of The Week: May 10, 2011

The important thing is this: to be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become.
Charles Du Bos



pic source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/aussiegall/4112231176/

Happy Mother's Day!

The sweetest sounds 

to mortals given
Are heard in Mother, 

Home, and Heaven

William Goldsmith Brown

 Happy Mother's Day! 

pics source:http://www.flickr.com/photos/kryten/125710155/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/30282864@N02/3484041512/

It's International No Diet Day 2011!

International No Diet Day is today!

Created in 1992 by Mary Evans Young, a recovered anorexic, International No Diet Day's intent is to raise awareness of eating disorders and to combat the diet industry.

"I started INDD in the spring of '92 following two things. The first was seeing a television programme where women were having their stomachs stapled. One woman had split the staples and was in for her third op[eration]," she explains. The second thing that inspired INDD was, " a young girl of 15 committed suicide because 'she couldn't cope being fat.' She was size 14 (12 in US)."

Mary Evans Young knew someone had to stop the "bloody madness" and decided it would be her. "Desperate to keep the anti-diet/size acceptance concept in the public eye," she sent out a press release entitled, "Fat Woman Bites Back," and the media paid attention.

Are you putting your life on hold until you lose weight?

International No Diet Day was established to challenge the cultural attitudes and values that contribute to chronic dieting, weight preoccupation, eating disorders, and size discrimination. Participants will wear light blue ribbons symbolizing the day's goals. These include:

1. increasing public awareness of the dangers and futility of dieting, weight loss surgery, and obsession with thinness;

2. affirming that beauty, health and fitness come in ALL sizes, and everybody's right to eat normally, enjoy physical activity and emotional well-being;

3. helping change the way people of size are perceived and treated by society.

"When you love your body, you are most able to share its pleasures with  those who light your heart."      

Huitaco      

click for: The TOP 10 Reasons NOT To Diet

Did you know that dieting is a 50 billion dollar industry? 

Statistics show that those who diet are five times more likely to develop an eating disorder than those who don't. 

The act of restricting food intake, and viewing certain foods as "bad,"make food the enemy.

More often than not the weight lost from dieting is often gained back, bringing with it several additional pounds. 

The sense of failure from this has also been known to lead to eating disorders. 

Cycling weight loss and weight gain compromises health, too; blood pressure increase, decreased stores of necessary good fats, and increased risk of developing several diseases and other health issues.

Dieting forces your body into starvation mode. In order to conserve energy your body slows it's normal functions.This means your natural metabolism actually slows down.
Dieters often lack important nutrients such as calcium which is needed for strong bones and to combat osteoporosis.

Dieting often leads to unhealthy and dangerous attitudes towards food. Restriction, being the nature of dieting, places negative values on certain foods such as too many calories, too much fat, etc. The tension and stress of struggling over our food choices puts food in the position of enemy. A child/teen exposed to these attitudes in a dieting parent, sibling, or friend has an increased risk of developing an eating disorder. Anorexia and Orthorexia are two eating disorders to commonly result from dieting.

I finally realized that being grateful 

to my body was key to giving 

more love to myself.
Oprah Winfrey

Take The INDD PLEDGE!  

(printout available)

check out  INDD's Goals

Some Interesting Stats:

Women and Men:

• The average American woman is 5’4" tall and weighs 140 pounds.
The average American model is 5’11" tall and weighs 117 pounds.
• 91% of college aged women have dieted in an attempt to control their weight
• 25% of American men are on a diet on any given day
• 40-50%% of American women are on a diet on any given day

Children:

• 42% of 1st-3rd grade girls want to be thinner
• 81% of 10 year olds are afraid of being fat Over 50% of 10 year old girls wish they were thinner
• 51% of 9 -10 year-old girls feel better about themselves if they are on a diet
• 46% of 9-11 year-olds (and 82% of their families) are sometimes/very often on diets
• 90% of female high school juniors & seniors women diet regularly though 10%-15% are over the weight recommended by the standard height-weight charts

Overall:

• 95% of all dieters will regain the weight they lost in 1-5 years
• 35% of dieters will progress to pathological dieting.
• 20%-25% pathological dieters will progress to partial or full-syndrome eating disorders
• Those who diet moderately are 5 times more likely to develop eating disorders than non-dieters
• Those who diet severely are 18 times more likely to develop and eating disorder
• 1% of teenage girls & 5% of college-age women become anorexic or bulimic
• Between 90% and 99% of reducing diets fail to produce permanent weight loss
• 15 percent of young women in the US who are not diagnosed with an eating disorder exhibit substantially disordered eating behavior and attitude
• 8 million people in the US suffer from an eating disorder
• In your lifetime 50,000 people will die as a direct result of their Eating Disorder
• The current media ideal of thinness is achieved by less than 5% of the female population
• Americans spend more than $40 billion dollars a year on dieting and diet-related products (That’s roughly equivalent to the amount the U.S. Federal Government spends on education each year)
• Quick-weight-loss schemes are among the most common consumer frauds
• Diet programs have the highest customer dissatisfaction of any service industry
• Girls develop eating and self-image problems before drug or alcohol problems
• Drug and alcohol programs are in almost every school, but no eating disorder programs
• A recent survey: only 30% out of 250 randomly chosen women 21-35 years of age had normal bone mass. It was concluded that women are so afraid of gaining weight from eating dairy products                          

For more information check out:  
Diet Myths and Eating Disorders


Need HELP?
 

**Eating Disorders Help: Hotlines, Organizations, and Websites

 **Males With Eating Disorders Help: Hotlines, Organizations, and Websites

Share Your Eating Disorders & Body Image Poetry & Writings

Would you like to feature your eating disorder and/or body image poetry or writings on Weighing The Facts? 

Writing is a very powerful tool for many with Eating Disorders and an excellent way for others to relate and be inspired. Do you have a poem(s) and/or writing(s) about your struggles, experiences, or recovery with your Eating Disorder and/or Body Image that you'd like to share with others? Weighing The Facts would like to feature your writing here so that others can relate, find support, and encouragement towards recovery.

Participation may be anonymous or credited, whichever you feel comfortable with. Poems/writings must be your own work. If you're interested in participating please contact me at Mrsmenopausal@yahoo.com.

Thank you.
Mrs. M
 

*Check out the wonderful poetry and writings of those who have shared on Weighing The Facts. They can be found in the sidebar drop down menu "submissions."

pic source:http://www.flickr.com/photos/jetheriot/5345090302/

Recovery Quote Of The Week: May 2, 2011

At any moment, you have a choice, that either leads you closer to your spirit or further away from it.  
Thich Nhat Hanh


pic source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/simplyshutterbug/4775278765/

The Healing: So Much To Gain

Lyrics, music, production by Hurricane (Dorothy Hodge)

Lyrics: 
The Healing

I'll drive to the beach to draw symbols in the sand
the waves come crashing in, fulfilling dreams at my command
dark colored auras are turning purple and pink
and my restless thoughts are calming down as I start to think

I am healing my self from the pain
I am healing for myself, I have so much to gain
I am healing my self from the pain

I'm writing letters for the things I cannot say
memories left lingering are the ones I'd hope would fade away
now the years are passing by, and I'm starting to grey
avoidance all these years have left me where I am today

I am healing my self from the pain
I am healing for myself, I have so much to gain
I am healing my self from the pain

if the phone is off the hook, or I'm not answering the door
if I dont seem like the person you once knew before,
I'm resolving things inside myself so I wont have to face them anymore

I am healing my self from the pain
I am healing for myself, I have so much to gain
I am healing my self from the pain

 

In The News: Eating Disorders April 2011

 

Award-winning video was a result of teen's battle with anorexia

The black-and-white video scenes fade in and out slowly, teen girls at school and home, the words reflecting their thoughts: "Would they like me if I was thinner?" "Why can't I stop?" "Can this really kill me?"
Savannah Dickson knows those thoughts all too well.
Two years ago, when she weighed 82 pounds and was suffering from anorexia, doctors gave the Lexington teen three weeks to live.
After two months of in- patient treatment and continuing long-term counseling, the Tates Creek senior is healthy and hoping her award-winning video will help others find their way to recovery.

Read in full: Award Winning Video

An 18in waist and size three feet: Former anorexic's life-sized Barbie reveals bizarre - and dangerous - proportions of famous doll

She's been a favourite with young girls for decades. But a life-sized Barbie is being used to demonstrate just how unhealthy the doll's proportions would be on a real woman.
The mannequin, which stands 5ft 9in tall, has a 39in bust, a tiny 18in waist and 33in hips. Even her feet would be disproportionate, at a tiny U.S. size 3.
Galia Slayen, who made the model, revealed that a real woman with the same dimensions would weigh just 110lb, giving her a BMI of 16.24 - a figure associated with eating disorders.

Read in full: Former Anorexic's Life-Sized Barbie

Demi Lovato Blames Bullies For Eating Disorder

Demi Lovato is convinced childhood bullying is to blame for her battle with an eating disorder, because she endured years of taunts about her weight.

The 18-year-old singer/actress was admitted to rehab last year to deal with a number of issues, including anorexia and bulimia, self-harming and bipolar disorder. 

Lovato has been candid about the emotional and physical stresses she has faced and she has now revealed her problems began when she was targeted by bullies as a child.  

Read in full: Demi Lovato

Mystery around South Korean model Kim Yuri's death

On 19th April 2011, the media reported that supermodel Kim Yuri committed suicide by ingesting poison. Recent autopsy reports, however, have proved that it was neither a suicide or a homicide.

On April 20th, the Kangnam Police reported, “There were no signs of damage or wounds internally and externally, nor were there signs of poisoning. The media reports of her death being a suicide are completely false.” 

Read in full: Mystery Kim Yuri death

 Claims plus-sized models 'encourage obesity'

First models were criticized for being too thin, now it seems they're too fat.


An Italian researcher says the fashion industry shouldn't promote plus size models because it will encourage women to gain weight.

Luca Savorelli claims thin models are good because they encourage women to be thinner and allowing plus size models to become the norm could encourage obesity.

"Obesity and being overweight is the problem of western society," Mr Savorelli says. "So what's going to happen here if we don't balance well?"

 

Read in full: Claims