Teaching positive self-esteem can be very difficult for the parent or educator who struggles to maintain their own. First it is necessary to understand some important terms and strategies and understand how they relate to you and the child or children in your care. It then becomes possible to guide children toward positive self-esteem, which in turn affects the child's interpersonal relationships, creating a positive psychosocial cycle that will be useful throughout the course of his or her life.

Self esteem is the computation of the other parts of the self- the idea that someone is his or her own person (self awareness), that there are identifying features based upon that separateness (self concept), and that the person can control what he or she does (self control). Based upon that information, each person determines their own value and that becomes known as the person's "self esteem."

Negative self-esteem can affect all of the functioning parts of a person as they mature. Since it comes from having a strong moral identity, weakness of such can affect how a person relates and reacts, whether to people and situations. It can be displayed in many ways, such as Ted's example, when he strives to exert control over people and situations in his daily life. It can affect work performance, potential for success and interpersonal relationships.

Competence is a person's understanding that they are capable of achieving the goals set before them. An example is a child's idea that he is "good" at reading. Whether or not the child is fluent at reading is irrelevant; the idea of competence comes from a child's understanding that they must work at attaining the goal before they have a chance of achieving it. What motivates a child to succeed can be very different from one person to the next. For instance, I've observed among fraternal twins a drive in one to be the best, while the other is thrilled simply to be a part. The second brother never views activities as competitions. It's about learning and having fun.

The idea of control refers to how much power a child feels he or she has over themselves and their surroundings. There's a child in my class who struggles with this issue. Usually, this struggle displays itself as feeling "the victim" and results in copious amounts of tattling and whining that often demands my attention. Last week, I suggested that before he told me anything, he should give thought to how he might solve the problem without

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