Self Esteem and Insecurities

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And this does not mean you need to fib or be dishonest by any means.

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This is one that drives me crazy. I see parents fib to their kids all the time. They lie about where or why they're taking the kid someplace. You want a recipe for an insecure kid, give him reason not to trust you. How is he supposed to trust anything or anyone if he can't trust his own parents.

The other one I see parents is sneaking away from their kids. They don't want the kid to cause a scene when they're leaving him, whether it's at home with another parent or at school or with a babysitter or whatever, so they sneak off when he's not looking for a second. Imagine being a three or four year old and constantly worrying that your mom or dad is going to disappear or leave you. It's another sure way to make a kid insecure.

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This happened to me a bunch of times when my mom left me with friends for short periods when I was really young. She would lie right to my face about it even when I knew she was lying and basically told her so. What upset me by far the most was that she would lie, and keep lying right to my face. Not the going away. That wasn't the greatest thing, but the people she left me with were very nice and I liked them a lot. They even had a cool little boy of their own I liked playing with. So, it wasn't so bad. But the lying to me really hurt my feelings and made me wonder what was wrong with my mother. That is the part that felt like I was unloved and untrusted. Even a 5 year old kid knows perfectly well when his mother is repeatedly lying to him.

My mom did this sort of lying to handle problems in other ways during my childhood, and it definitely made me very leery of trusting her. In many ways I felt I couldn't place any confidence in what she said or what she would do. Her lies were, for lack of a better word, isolating to me.

By the way, Colt, I've seen this "disappearing act" recommended to mothers dropping their kids off at school or kindergarten countless times. The supposed insight that professionals have is often highly questionable to say the least. But we seem to love the idea that as long as someone is a professional or has a degree, they for some reason have the last word on a matter. We loves us some credentials. I guess it relieves us from the burden of doing our own thinking and the guilt that can come with possibly making a bad choice.

[entertainme]

I wrote this for my Mom's birthday a few years ago.

There was a time in my life my Mom and I had a hard time seeing eye to eye. You know how it goes, adolesence, I Knew It All.....and She Just Didn't Get It!

It's testimony to her virtual sainthood that I was allowed to live until I got a little older and a little wiser, seeing as I was the personification of The Child Determined To Make Your Life A Living Hell. Not only that, I was good at it. Very skilled. Knew all the buttons. Pushed them and pushed them and pushed them. Pushed them to the point where she could have convinced a jury any action against me short of premeditated murder was justifiable self defense.

Don't get me wrong. I never got arrested or hurt anyone. I didn't pursue a life of crime. I was lucky, (and prayed for.) Some people can make one bad choice and by happenstance, it's the one mistake that changes their path for the worst, leading to a downward spiral that's hard to escape until you hit the bottom. Some never escape. I on the other hand made a lot of bad choices, and emerged relatively unscathed, (to later be held up as an example to other discouraged parents with Problem Children of their own as a ray of hope that This Too Will Pass.)

The most amazing gift my parents ever gave me, besides the gift of life itself, was they never stopped loving me no matter what and never stopped believing in me. They told me I could do and be anything. They believed in me before I toddled, after I crawled, when I walked, ran, rode a bike, and when I seized the engine on my first car due to lack of oil three months before the six month loan was paid off.

Their love and confidence was so pervasive it was sewn into the fabric of who I was. I could no more change how it shaped who I am than I could change the way my toenails grow. I see them with my kids and they're still better at it now than I have ever learned to be. This ability to see the best in people and to encourage those seeds to grow into something wonderful spilled over into relationships with cousins, friends, and acquaintances. There's a reason every time someone got into trouble they came to stay at our house until some of the rough edges of their life were a little less jagged.

My Dad once told me that he always knew I'd turn out OK in the end.

How could you know that, I asked?

He said he knew how they raised me, knew who I was, and knew that I would eventually return to that foundation they had laid.

I'm not saying they were perfect, or that we were a perfect family. We had plenty of rough spots just like every other family does. But, it wasn't until I got older and looked around at a lot of my friends, and their parents, that I was able to really appreciate just how lucky I was to be born to these two incredible people.

Especially shocking was how I came to understand my Mom after I got married. Amazing! That's all it took for her to suddenly be a whole lot smarter than I ever gave her credit for. It's a wonderful thing when a mother and a daughter get past all the land mines and find each other again.

She's played the roles of wife, mother, homemaker, full time employee, night student, disciplinarian, confidante, hostess; all the while with a cleaner house than I will ever aspire too. (She also makes the best birthday cake ever.)

Her role today is Birthday Girl.

Happy Birthday Mom!

Thank you for everything.

I'm proud to be your daughter.

I love you.

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That's pretty cool, entertainme. You are lucky to be in a position to write that letter, and it's cool that you took the opportunity to do so.

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Even this simple faceless post leaves me wanting to "select all" and delete for the simple fact of being apprehensive about never posting on this site and not "knowing" anyone here.

Cliffs: My name is Michael, I'm insecure. I love poker

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Hi Michael,

Welcome to the Lounge. You're among friends and we welcome new posters! Just jump in whereever you have an opinion.

The Poker Mom

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thank you, ill be popping in an out of here frequently, might even add my .02 more than its welcomed [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

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Even this simple faceless post leaves me wanting to "select all" and delete for the simple fact of being apprehensive about never posting on this site and not "knowing" anyone here.

Cliffs: My name is Michael, I'm insecure. I love poker

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Hi Michael,

Welcome to the Lounge. You're among friends and we welcome new posters! Just jump in whereever you have an opinion.

The Poker Mom

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thank you, ill be popping in an out of here frequently, might even add my .02 more than its welcomed [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

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Heh, don't cut your confidence off at the pass like that!

It often surprises me that some folks are tentative about posting. I mean, what's the worst that can happen? Some snotty stranger makes a jerky response? Much less uncomfortable over the net than face to face. Kinda par for the course on the internet, even. Don't take it too hard if you bump into some jerks once in a while. It's only the internet. Better that the jerks blow off their steam here instead of kicking the dog or slapping the wife and kids around.

[fyodor]

I once made what I thought was a humorous post in a formum (not at 2+2) that maybe 14 people were reading at the time. It concerned something that actually happended to me the night before. I exagerrated for extra humour. Most of the 14 readers actually knew me personally. They were aware of my tendency to stretch the truth.

Someone peripheral to the story found the post by googling and friendships were ruined. I apologized profusely and removed the post. That it made no diffenence maybe says something about the value (or lack thereof) of said friendships but what I thought was an innocent and annonymous online post caused big trouble.

At one point cross border phone calls were being made to a friend of mine to find out what the hell I was up to.

Since then I am more carefull about what I post.

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Ah. That's why I don't tell people I know from real life my internet nicknames or usually even where I post. There are plenty of stories out there about employers looking up people's myspace pages and things like that, and either not hiring them or firing them.

[entertainme]

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op,
Link to an article in New York magazine on praise and insecurity.
I thought it was fascinating.

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Thank you for this article. I had The Boy read it. He has always fallen into the "you're so smart" category. It prompted some good discussion between us.

He even had me send him the link to share with a friend and with a teacher. (Side story. He has no respect for teachers that can't control their classrooms. One of them is a first year science teacher. He also accuses her of teaching a curriculim they learned in junior high or grade school. He has gained some sympathy for her over time and is currently trying to engage her in a global warming debate in which he is the skeptic as to man made causes and she's the true believer. She is one of the people he planned to share this with.)

He totally agrees that kids can spot false praise at an early age.

Overall we both got a lot out of it. I worry about him because I know he needs to be challenged.

Also, I wanted to point out to OP that kids are born with personalities and you have to work within what they were born with.

With my kids The Girl is naturally social, likes to reinvent herself, plans a profession in health care because she's a people person through and through.

The Boy is an engineering type, won the one spelling contest we got him to participate in but refused to do it again, likes routine and has threatened to rebel if we were to move him to a different school etc.

I think it's very difficult to steer them in a direction different that what they born with, though you can challenge them to expand their horizons. (Pick your battles.)

However, you do have to expose them to different social situations as they're growing up. Normal things like going out to restaurants, going on vacation together, etc.

I've seen kids who didn't have this growing up and it's difficult for them to have confidence in themselves.

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This is a huge downside to home schooling that should be taken much more seriously.