Helping Young Children Develop a Positive Sense of Self

Editor’s note: This text-based course is an edited transcript of the webinar, Helping Young Children Develop a Positive Sense of Self, presented by Amber Tankersley, PhD.

Learning Outcomes

After this course, participants will be able to:

• Describe the importance of social competence.
• Identify concepts related to a positive sense of self in young children.
• List strategies to support and foster a positive sense of self in young children.

Introduction

The title of this session is something that I think those of us in early childhood do on a daily basis. Even if you don't realize it, basically every interaction that you have with children, you're helping them develop a positive sense of self. That's something that we really need children to have so that they can have a great outlook on life and a positive start to their schooling. This is definitely something that I live and breathe. Just a little bit more about me. I have and still do work with three to five-year-old children. I am currently working as the director of the preschool lab here on our campus. What is really awesome is I get to help people who want to work with young children and I get the fun of working with little kids so it's a great opportunity. I've worked with so many different preschool-aged kids over the years and have lots of stories to tell, but it all revolves back to those great interactions that you have that develop kids into having a great, positive sense of self.

Social Competence

What is Social Competence?

Social competence is helping children understand themselves so that they can better work with the people around them and better understand the world around them. Kids with social competence really have it put together. They get along great with others, have friends, and appreciate new experiences. These are kids that are socially put together. However, it doesn't just happen. This is something that we work for. As people who work with young children, we help them develop social competence through social experiences and our interactions with them. We need kids to have skilled adults in their world to help them develop social competence. It is probably clear to just about anybody who has worked with young children for any length of time, we can't guarantee that children are always getting this type of experience within their homes. It's hopeful that children have good quality early childhood experiences so that they can develop this social competence.

Elements of Social Competence

These are the skills and characteristics that we hope that children develop. Figure 1 shows some broad categories and specific skills or values that we see within those different areas of social competence. These are areas in which we are helping children develop. It's not just going to happen. We need to make sure that kids have great experiences so that they can become socially competent.

Figure 1. Elements of social competence.

We want children to have social values. We appreciate honesty in our culture. We appreciate children being flexible in their thinking and being caring. Those are skills that we have to let children practice through different interactions and situations. These may be situations that we set up for them to experience. We want children to develop a positive self-identity. Kids have to become aware of who they are. We'll talk more about self-awareness, self-worth, and self-esteem in a bit. We want kids to have a good positive view of who they are so that they can be successful in their future relationships and their academic careers.

We also want kids to have great interpersonal skills. We want them to be able to get along with other people. A great indicator of a child who is socially competent is when other children name them as a friend. Other children see that they have social skills that allow them to develop friendships. You want to cultivate and help children develop these skills as you work with them. Conflict resolution includes helping children learn how to solve their own issues with one another. It's okay if kids are squabbling because that's how they're going to learn how to negotiate and come to a solution that works for both people. To develop those interpersonal skills, you have to have a good social environment.

We also want kids to be self-regulated, being able to regulate their own emotions and resist temptations. Right now, there is some snow on the ground where I live and it's very tempting for young children to step in the snow and kick it. Sometimes parents don't want their children to be in the snow because it makes their shoes wet. It is difficult for children to be able to resist stepping in the snow when they've been told, "Don't step in the snow in those shoes." It's hard for kids to wait for something and delay gratification. If you've ever been with a toddler at a restaurant you know how hard it is for them to wait for their meal to come. You usually have some sort of distraction to help children as they wait for their meal or sometimes restaurants are great and bring the children's meals out first so that they don't have to wait. Those are some practices that we have to work with young children so that they can learn to wait. Children aren't programmed to wait. They have to learn how to wait and that helps them function within their social world.

Other skills we want children to have are pro-social skills. We want them to be able to do things that are kind to other people without the expectation of something in return. We also value children making plans and making decisions. Give children the option to make choices and let them experience the consequences of those choices. Give kids opportunities to solve problems. An adult's role in children's lives isn't to make everything easy, it's to help them learn so that they can be successful on their own, not so that they have to wait for an adult or always rely on an adult for assistance. Allow kids to choose what center they want to play in, what game they want to play, and how they want to play the game. Those things really do help children develop social competence.

Lastly, we want children to be emotionally intelligent. We want them to be able to recognize emotions within themselves and be able to label them. We want them to be able to recognize when their friend looks sad because they know what people look like when they're sad and they want to help them. We want them to know what to do because they've had people help them when they're sad.

Having said all that, again, we have to make sure that kids have lots of opportunities to experience the social world and experience situations that they're going to have to make a decision or make a plan to solve. That's a huge job as early childhood professionals to provide opportunities and experiences so that children can function without us, which is the ultimate goal.

Sense of Self

As children are learning to work in the world around them, they're also learning about themselves. There are some different aspects to the sense of self that we influence as we are working with young children.

Self-Awareness

Young kids become aware that they're separate from other people. Think about toddlers, who eventually realize that the child in the mirror is them. That's when they realize, "Okay, that's me and I'm separate from my mom, who's holding me." Kids start to understand that they can do things on their own. They recognize themselves in pictures and refer to themselves by name. Again in the toddler years, they are testing that independence that is coming along. They want to do things on their own. As kids become aware of who they are, we provide information to them to help them learn more about themselves. We tell them stories about who they are. We support them by praising them and by offering encouragement. You have to have support from caring adults in order to understand who you are. The adult's role in children figuring out who they are is huge. You have to have adults that are aware of what children see in themselves.

Some kids in our center were tracing their body outlines. They were actually creating giants, but after tracing their outlines, they started realizing different things about themselves. As they looked at the outlines they had done, they saw some people had a dress on, some had a ponytail, some were much taller than others, or their feet were bigger. They were noticing the similarities and differences, which helps them appreciate and understand themselves as individuals even more.

Self-Concept

The idea of self-concept comes after self-awareness when children are now understanding who they are and what they bring to the table. They understand characteristics about themselves. They understand their capabilities and what they like to do. Little kids start with very concrete observations about themselves, like "I'm two. I have yellow hair. My name's Amber." They understand things that are very concrete and then as they get older, those understandings about who they are become more abstract. They may think about things like, "I'm a good friend. I'm kind. I'm smart." It's not always those observable characteristics.

We have to give children a chance to hear about who they are so that they further understand what they look like to other people. You can have your own vision of who you are and your vision of what other people think about you and those meld together. It's going to change as children mature and experience different things. As you realize that you're really good at a particular sport or you could read at an early age or people rely on you for something, those help shape what you think about yourself. For example, you might think, "Okay, people need me. They like for me to help them with this." Those are some things that happen as children age and experience things that help shape what they think about themselves and who they think they are.

There are some differences culturally, one being the difference between what is often expected of girls versus what's expected of boys. While there shouldn't be a difference, sometimes there is because sometimes people view what children do differently. That helps shape self-concept because if a little boy is told that he shouldn't cry and then cries, he might be viewed differently or he may think differently about himself. Those differences from your social and cultural background certainly shape who you think you are. It's the same with your expectations culturally and socially, regarding whether you are more focused on yourself as an individual or if you are more focused on yourself as part of a group or family. That's the individualistic versus collectivist idea.

Some families would prefer that their children not brag or boast about things that they do, whereas other families may be really thrilled that their child has a first-place ribbon in something. They may want to share that with everyone. There are different views on that and that does help shape what children think about themselves. This is that piece where children are thinking, "Who am I? What do I do? What are some things that I do?"

One of my favorite things to share with young children is a book by Jamie Lee Curtis called When I Was Little. It's a child's memoir of her youth and is about a four-year-old girl that reflects back on things that she used to do and what she can do now. That's part of that maturation process where children think about what they used to be able to do compared to what they can do now. We hope that children view themselves as getting stronger and getting better at the different activities that they engage in. It's so fun to watch kids come to see themselves as individuals and really understand who they are.

Working with preschoolers, I'm used to children being very blunt about who they are and talking about how good they can draw a picture or how high they can kick the ball. I'm used to kids being very positive about that, which is great. Young children often have a more positive view of themselves than older children or adults. As early childhood professionals and parents, we have to provide children with support. A lot of the support that we provide children is through our encouragement, our interactions with children, and making sure that we're providing appropriate praise. We'll talk about praise in a minute, but we need to provide that appropriate support so that children know that we're on their side and we think these awesome things about them too.

There's a great poem called "Children Learn What They Live" by Dorothy Law Nolte. It's all about if children experience this at home or where they live, this is what's going to happen. For example, if children experience support in feeling good about themselves, they're going to feel good about themselves when they're not around us, not in the home, or not with these adults. We need to make sure that we set the stage as adults in these children's lives, and provide good support so that eventually when we're not around, these kids still feel really good about themselves.

Self-Efficacy

When I think about the idea of self-efficacy, I always think of The Little Engine That Could, and the phrase, "I think I can, I think I can." This is your belief that you can do something and you're going to be successful doing it. This is where you see determination. Several children were stacking and building large cup towers with inexpensive plastic cups from the store. One child was very determined to make it taller, which was evidenced by the way he was holding his lip as he stood trying to stack the rims of the cups together. For kids to feel like they can do something, they have to have been allowed a chance to do it.

We have to follow children's budding independence and their desire to do things on their own. We have to let them try to do things. We want them to be confident. We want them to attempt things, sometimes even when they can't do it successfully. We want them to have the belief that they're capable of doing it. They might need some assistance, but it's really fun to step back and allow kids a chance to carry out some tasks. Could an adult help them stack these cups? Yes. Does that teach those children very much? No. You have to give kids a chance to do things on their own, fail, try again, or be successful and be proud of what they've done and keep trying and helping others and doing things in a different way.

The idea of self-efficacy with young kids is so fun to watch when they are so very determined. If you work with toddlers, you get a lot of, "Me do it!" because they want to do it their way. They don't want your help. They want to be successful in doing things on their own. Sometimes it's hard as an adult working with young kids to step back and let them try things. Sometimes we see what's going to happen and we know it's not going to be successful, but letting them try it and giving them the support that they need to carry on and do it a little bit differently is certainly very helpful in shaping what children feel and think about themselves. Again, allow that independence and allow kids to carry out those tasks so they become very confident in their ability to be successful.

Self-Esteem

We have all these words that all begin with self. Self-esteem is your evaluation of yourself. This is not just who you are, but what you think about yourself, how worthy you feel, and how competent you are. The three different areas of self-esteem include your worth, competence, and control.

Your worth is your value and how much you like yourself. Adults can help a child feel worthy by being warm and caring, greeting a child, praising a child, calling a child by their name, recognizing when a child feels left out, recognizing when a child looks sad, and allowing a child to contribute to a conversation. We want kids to feel worthy. We want them to feel like they're liked, loved, and important.

The idea of the competence part of self-esteem is that you feel like you can accomplish things. With appropriate activities and opportunities, children will feel competent. That's why we want to make sure that the materials that we have for young children fit their age and developmental level so that they can be successful and feel like they're competent. There are many things as an adult that I go into thinking I can accomplish and it should be pretty simple, but I fail because I've not been supported and I don't feel very competent. You may think, I have a college degree and all this experience, but then I'm shocked sometimes when I can't do something and I don't feel competent. We don't want kids to feel like that. As an adult, we feel like that every now and then and sometimes think, "Oh, I feel silly because I can't do that." For little kids, it can be devastating when they feel like they can't do something. Allow them that feeling of, "I can accomplish this."

Control when thinking about self-esteem is the idea of how much influence I have over the outcomes of situations in my life. If I do this, this will happen next and it happens because of me. Children come to understand that they're in control of the actions in their world by adults who call attention to it. For example, the adults make a comment of, "Wow, you really got those blocks to balance because you were really patient and you lined them up just right. You could see that they were tipping and you straightened the blocks. That's why your tower stood up." We should be specific in our praise with children and the comments we make with children. Help them realize that they're in control of the outcomes of their actions, rather than saying, "Oh, aren't you lucky that your tower stayed up?" Or, "What a great job," which isn't very clear praise. Kids don't realize that it is the way it is because of me. We want kids to realize that they have an impact on the things that happened in their life. We want them to realize that they have that control.

A lot of children's self-esteem, especially early on, comes from great positive interactions with adults. We want adults who are kind to children. We want adults who are supportive of children, who allow them to express themselves, who accept them for who they are, who provide positive praise, who allow them a chance to be successful, and call out the reasons why they're successful. We want children to have those good interactions with adults.

Earlier I mentioned that, in the early childhood years, children tend to have an overall positive self-esteem. They feel worthy and feel like they can do things. Hopefully, they feel like they're in control of some things in their life, especially as they mature and don't have adult support. Many children entering elementary school, middle school, and beyond may not always have that great support. Think back to middle school and junior high. A lot of times your self-esteem was not as great as it was when you were in kindergarten or preschool, because you had a more positive sense of who you were when you were younger and because you had more adult support.

I certainly have picked the right age group to work with because I don't think I would want to deal with the up and down rollercoaster of feelings that middle school and junior high kids tend to face, especially when it comes to self-esteem and trying to figure out who they are at that point. If you haven't had great experiences up to that point, it's even more difficult. In the early childhood years, we certainly want to make sure that kids feel like they can accomplish many things. 

Impact of Self-Esteem

We know that self-esteem is important for children, but here are some of the reasons why it's so important.

Figure 2. Impact of self-esteem, both positive and low.

If children develop positive self-esteem, they usually have a better outlook on life and specific situations. They tend not to be negative, like somebody who has low self-esteem would be. I know that we've all worked with people who have a more positive outlook. They're easier to work with. Sometimes when you're around them, you feel better about yourself. That's what we want for kids. We want them to have that positive outlook. We don't want them to always think about the worst-case scenario, because that tends to drag everyone down. If a child always feels like something is not working for them, sometimes they create problems and things don't work well for them.

Children with positive self-esteem are more confident to try new things. We want kids to be confident to try new experiences and new friend groups because that's going to serve them well in life. A four-year-old child who's been allowed to pick their outfit and go to the grocery store with their parents wearing mismatch shoes, a cape, a tiara, and maybe some crazy leggings, is usually pretty confident about it. As an adult, we would feel really self-conscious about that, but a four-year-old usually feels really good about those choices. We need to help kids build that confidence and help them feel good about the choices that they're making. Sometimes it's hard to go to the grocery store with a child that's dressed like that because you're going to get a lot of attention, but hopefully, you'll get some glances of, "Yeah, I'm glad you're letting your child do that because your child's confident in what they have on."

Positive self-esteem tends to help children be curious. Curiosity is a great characteristic to have and will help them with future learning. We want kids to take pride in their own work. I've seen children that have painted at an easel and painted so much that the paper just starts deteriorating. Those of you that have been around children painting at an easel know that they will layer it on and layer it on and are so proud of what they've created. Sometimes that paper will rip and they will work that rip into the scheme of their artwork because they're proud of what they've done. Some children with lower self-esteem may just give up. They may not continue trying because maybe they don't have the right support.

We want kids to be proud of what they do. We want them to be persistent and we want them to have goals. If you have positive self-esteem, you're more likely to set goals for yourself and more likely to reach those goals. Children with positive self-esteem tend to deal with frustrations better. Rather than becoming aggressive, giving up, or withdrawing, they tend to go with the flow. They may find another way to handle the situation. They may turn something that was a mistake into something that was really great.

Kids with positive self-esteem tend to be more outgoing so they're going to engage in more social interactions. They're more likely to have a group of supportive peers that would help them buffer stress. We want to promote children to have higher self-esteem because of all the great outcomes that will impact them positively throughout their life, social situations, and academic success. We want kids to put that self-esteem to good work.

If kids are coming to you and they already have some lower self-esteem characteristics, it's not all lost. It is possible for you to provide opportunities for kids to learn how to interact with others in a positive way and for them to become more confident. This can be done simply through the opportunities that you provide for them to build self-esteem. There's not a magic age that if you don't have it by this age, it's impossible to get. We want kids to develop it at whatever age they're ready to develop it and when they're in the company of positive adults who are there to help them. Be aware of when you see a child that looks like they are socially put together and has higher self-esteem and pair them up with a child that may not have as high self-esteem. This provides a peer modeling opportunity. We want kids to be successful and we have to watch for it, and we have to give them those opportunities to be successful. 

Strategies for Promoting a Positive Sense of Self

How are we going to do this? Let's look at some strategies for promoting a positive sense of self. The first and most basic thing that we can do is to make sure that we are functioning in a developmentally appropriate world for children. Our interactions and guidance should fit what this age of child needs.

Developmentally Appropriate Practices

There are three core considerations for developmentally appropriate practices: commonality, individuality, and context. Commonality is what you know about how children grow and develop. For example, if I'm working with three to five-year-old children I need to understand how preschoolers grow and develop. I need to know what's typical and what are they capable of doing so that I can provide experiences that are appropriate for that age or that developmental level. When providing materials, I need to make sure that I'm providing materials that are appropriate for preschool-age children, not for toddlers or third graders. In order for those preschoolers to be successful, they need to be curious about the material and have a little bit of understanding of the material. It needs to be slightly challenging, but not so challenging that they give up. Make sure that you use that commonality or that age and developmental appropriateness to pick your materials, to set up the environment, and to determine the type of guidance you use. It needs to work for that age of the child. You would guide a toddler differently than you would guide a 12-year-old child. You are going to probably talk differently to that child. You have to take age and developmental level into consideration to make sure that you are helping that child be successful by gearing things to what fits their needs.

The next consideration is individuality. This is where you make sure you understand the needs, interests, and special characteristics of the kids that you work with. It means being aware of a lot of little people's preferences and what motivates them. That's going to help you plan what to put in the environment and what you're going to talk to that child about. For example, if you know a child loves dinosaurs, you can talk about different dinosaurs that you know about.

I once met a young child who was getting ready to enroll in our preschool program and he was really excited. As his mom was filling out paperwork, he was talking to me. His mom was asking me questions and the child was trying to talk to me and I was trying to talk to both people. The child was telling me about dinosaurs. He said, "My favorite dinosaur is a mosasaur." I had to stop and think for a minute then I said, "That's the one that swims, right?" He agreed that, yes, that was the one that swims and then I had to think a little bit more. My building is right next to a science building on campus and I looked at the mom and I said, "When you're finished, do you guys have a little bit of time to go on a little trip with me?" She said, "Oh yeah, sure." I said, "I think your son would really enjoy something that's in the neighboring building."

When we had finished filling out the paperwork we walked next door. In the lobby on one of the floors, there is a huge fossil of a mosasaur on the wall and I took him over to see it. I have never had such rockstar status with a child in my life, but that child was so thrilled that I was interested in something that he was interested in. Knowing that he was interested in something, I gave him an experience that some other kids wouldn't have appreciated, but that helped him feel good about his interest in dinosaurs. I am so glad that I remembered that his favorite dinosaur was next door. You have to listen and really take note of what children's preferences are so that you can provide experiences that are appropriate and exciting and help them see that they're important. He felt so important that we had gone next door and his mother was very excited too. I didn't know any other dinosaur that I could have talked to him about, but I did know that one.

The last aspect of developmentally appropriate practices that you have to be aware of is the contextual element. That is being aware of the social and cultural backgrounds in which children are coming to you from because that's going to help you make decisions about how you interact with them. Maybe their family consoles them in a different way. Maybe they still pick up their six-year-old and pat them and rock them to help calm them down. You have to be aware of what they're used to in their background because that's going to help them make sense of a new situation. If they're with you for an early childhood program, it's going to give them something familiar. It's going to allow you to honor what their backgrounds are instead of saying, "Well, we don't do it like that here." We're honoring what that child is used to. Make sure that that helps guide your decisions as well.

Also, the context of your program helps you guide your environment and your planning, as well as really understand where those kids are coming from. It takes some time to build those relationships and to better understand families and what their backgrounds are. Not all families are very open to telling you everything about themselves. Sometimes intake sheets or "all about me" sheets can help you learn more about the families that you're working with. Make note of things that children say that give you an idea of what their background is like so that you can apply that to help that child be successful in your program.

Relationships and Guidance

Developmentally appropriate practices help guide relationships and guidance with young children. In order for kids to feel good about themselves, they have to have close relationships with families and caregivers. We want to encourage attachments. We want to make sure that children feel welcome and comfortable with the people that are caring for them or who are teaching them. Allow those attachments to happen. Allow that child who really seems to be taken with you to be attached to your hip every now and then, because obviously they feel comfortable with you and they need that closeness. We don't always know how closely attached children are to their primary caregivers. We don't often know what those relationships look like behind closed doors. As early childhood professionals, we need to be sure that we do what we can to help children form those good close attachments.

One of the ways that we do that is through warm, caring relationships. We can be kind to children, be welcoming, call them by name, get on their level when we talk to them, and listen to them attentively. We want to make sure that we put out an invitation for children to develop those relationships with us and that we help maintain those. Take an interest in children and be excited to see them in a genuine way. It's not enough to greet every preschooler with, "I love your shoes today" because that's very generic. It's not very genuine, but if you talk to a child and say something like, "I'm glad you're here today. We missed you yesterday when you were out sick." Make sure that children feel important in the program and important in your life.

Some of the ways that we interact with children through appropriate strategies will help children develop those socially competent skills. Model pro-social skills, such as holding a door open for someone because they're carrying too many books. If somebody's shoe needs to be tied and you know another child knows how to tie a shoe, coach them to go help the other child by tying their shoe. These strategies help us promote great skills that are going to lead children to be socially competent, which will help them feel good about themselves.

Redirect children. Don't simply tell them, "No, don't do this. Stop doing that." Redirect them to the activities that are appropriate. It's such a simple technique. I think many of us do it without even thinking that we're redirecting. Sometimes we redirect our family members at home that are adults because we're used to doing that with children. Those are the strategies that we want to employ so that children build those relationships with us and feel comfortable with us. We want them to feel like we are guiding them in a positive manner so that they do want to do the things that we're suggesting. We want them to want to be successful because they know that we are supporting them and that we're going to encourage and praise them when they are successful.

Modeling, coaching, and redirection are all great guidance techniques and help teach children skills. They're great techniques for guiding children, but authoritative guidance, or authoritative parenting styles, is the best approach for helping develop socially competent children who have a good self-concept. With authoritative guidance, you have adults who have high expectations that are appropriate expectations for a child. They're high expectations and challenging enough, but you expect the child to be successful. You expect them to do age-appropriate things. There's a good level of nurturance so there are warm, caring relationships where children feel loved, welcome, and supported.

There's shared control with an authoritative guidance style and there may be some strategies where you are modeling and coaching a child so that they then understand how to carry themselves in a new situation. Maybe you've had to coach them through a situation that they're not familiar with or they're not being successful with. You can coach them to do something that is more acceptable or more in line with what needs to happen in that situation. You're not just telling the child, "You have to do it this way." You have shared control where you're helping guide them and they're practicing it. You're supporting them and praising them. The communication piece goes with all the others. You communicate with the child so that they know you care about them. You communicate with that child so that you can help them be successful. You let them know what the expectations are. Authoritative guidance is key in making sure that children are socially competent and also have a higher sense of self.

Positive Interactions

Positive interactions can take two different approaches, nonverbal communication, and positive verbal interactions. Your nonverbal communication says a lot about how children are going to react to you. For example, if you get down on the floor and you're interested in what the child is doing, they're going to feel more comfortable with you. They're probably going to talk to you more than if you sat in a chair and moved back and seemed uninterested in what the child was doing. Your non-verbals say a lot to children, whether it's eye contact, how close you're sitting to them, or the appropriate use of touch. Patting a child on the head or giving a fist bump are just two different signals that we send without saying a word. Nonverbal communication speaks to children in their role in that relationship. Make sure that you have great positive non-verbal communication and are very aware of the messages that you send non-verbally.

Through your positive verbal interactions, you want to make sure that you use strategies and techniques that help build those relationships, that highlight what kids can do, and that help keep them moving toward new skills. One type of positive verbal interaction is behavior reflections, where you reflect on what you see a child doing. It's not a judgment, it's simply showing your interest in a child and having great conversations with kids.

I tell my college students, "If you don't know what to do when you're in the preschool with our kids, sit down and just talk to them. If you don't know what to talk about, think about things that everybody does, like eat." I always start conversations revolving around food because everybody eats. So you might ask, "What did you have for breakfast this morning?" or "What do you think you're going to have for lunch? What are we having for snack?" Have some of those in mind so that you can have great conversations with kids using appropriate questioning, asking kids questions that you really truly want to know the answer to, and not overwhelming them. Those are great conversation starters, but it also helps a child see that you're interested in them.

Paraphrase reflections are simply restatements of something that a child has said to you that lets a child know that you're listening to them and that you're trying to understand what they want or trying to understand what they need. Effective praise goes way beyond, "Good job" or "Way to go." Effective praise typically calls the child by name, praises what they did, and explains why the praise is warranted. When kids understand that they're in control of the things that are happening in their life through the praise that you're giving them, they're more likely to try again or do it again because they were successful this time and you pinpointed why they were successful. Use praise as a way to help support children's efforts toward being socially competent and having that good sense of self.

Using Children's Books

Using children's books is another way that is really easy to share experiences with kids through other characters that may be similar to them, This allows them to think about their own life and how they fit within the world around them. There is a handout that has a lot of great children's books, but I have a few of my favorites here, and I just want to share a few. Toddlers and preschoolers love Mercer Mayer's All By Myself because it's familiar. The character is trying to do things children that age try to do and sometimes they don't do it really well, but they're trying. It's a great conversation piece about perseverance and getting help and how to do something a little bit differently next time.

Little kids also are always concerned that they're just little kids. Another book I like is There's Lots That I Can Do by Kathleen Harte. It's about a young toddler or preschool-age child that wants to explore all the different things that they're capable of doing. It's a great way to get kids to talk about what they can do. Can you do some of the same things that this character can do? One of my all-time favorites is I Like Me by Nancy Carlson. I also read this book to my college students. It is about a pig who's very proud of everything about herself, including her round little tummy and her curly little tail. It's a great way to get kids to talk about what they feel about themselves in a positive manner because we want them to feel good about who they are and what they're capable of doing.

There are a lot of great books you can read with children or look at with children to help them make some comparisons between themselves and the characters in the book. I love using books to explore different characters and to look at "How's that character like you? Do you do some of those same things? Is that a good idea? What's going to happen if that character keeps doing that?" There are a lot of great talking points to be had with children's books and there are so many fabulous books out there. You can look at the handout provided or search online for books about self-concept.

Self-Exploration Activities

There are other self-exploration activities that really help build that idea of a sense of self and self-esteem in early childhood. Many of us are familiar with doing all about me activities for kids or exploring who they are. I like doing all about me activities because kids need to learn about themselves before they can learn about other people because they're egocentric. It is all about me so I like to make sure that kids understand themselves before we start talking about family or community helpers. They have to understand who they are and what they're capable of.

In an all about me unit, I love for kids to explore the things that they can do. There are some great craft ideas where you can use a jar or a can and children can add things that they're capable of doing in those jars. Then when they feel stumped or like they're not capable of things, we can refer back to all the things that they can do. Maybe it's a word wall for each child of all the great things that they're capable of doing.

Then as they are figuring out more about themselves, we can look at some discovery activities where you start learning about other people. You look at similarities and differences. I love doing a "this or that" activity with kids as well as adults. You may ask, "Do you like markers or do you like crayons? Do you like going outside or do you like staying inside? Do you like checkers or do you like Tic Tac Toe?" There are so many different ways to explore similarities and differences. I do a popcorn-type activity with my college-age students but it can also be done with children. It works a little bit better with children older than preschool age. You'll say, if you've been to the beach, stand up or if you prefer dogs to cats, stand up. It lets everybody learn a little bit of information about other people. There are usually a couple of items where only one person is standing up which can give you some talking points.

As you're learning about those similarities and differences, move into some cooperative activities where kids are working together on a cooperative building activity. I used to do a rainy day block game in the block area. It was almost like playing Jenga in reverse where every child got to add a piece to our block structure. It was going to be different every time. We needed everybody's participation for this to be successful. We always made sure that nobody felt left out and that everybody felt part of the process. If it got knocked down, we all helped pick it right back up. We didn't say the person who knocked it down was a loser and they didn't have to clean it all up themselves. We all grabbed however many blocks we had added and we picked them up and started over. Having some cooperative-type activities helps kids understand how to function with other people. Having that communication piece and opportunities for kids to work together helps too. With current situations, we've been trying to keep kids distanced so sometimes our closer cooperative-type activities are not always possible, but we don't want to lose that communication piece.

The final activity that you can do that really helps with self-exploration is using daily discussions. These are great ways to end the day. Have kids talk about what they were successful with today. "What's something that you did that was nice for somebody today?" or have another child say something positive about somebody else that's in the group. I do some activities like this with my college students to help them think about what are they doing that's positive? Sometimes we think we're not doing a lot that's positive. With little kids, we can encourage them to talk about the things that they did, and then we can talk about why those are good things. Talk about why it's great that you helped somebody pick up something that they spilled on the floor. Why is that a good thing for us to do? I love helping children see the positives in the things that they do. Kids and adults both are faced with a lot of negatives. Children need us to point out those positives. I don't think you can have too many positives in your day. I truly don't believe that you can spoil someone that way because kids do need a lot of positives every day. We don't know what negatives they may be facing in other aspects of their life.

I have a couple of favorite resources. A great website that is devoted to social-emotional learning, which really has a lot to do with self-esteem and self-concept, is https://casel.org. You'll notice one of my resources is quite old. 100 Ways to Enhance Self-Concept in the Classroom: A Handbook for Teachers and Parents by Canfield and Wells is from 1976. My next-door neighbor used to be a first-grade teacher and she retired. When she found out that I was going through college to become a teacher, she gave me a laundry basket full of books. I weeded through the books and found this one. It is a book I have referred to so much in the past 25 years. While it's geared more to elementary-aged children, the activities are timeless. There are great cooperative-type activities and discovery activities that you can modify to fit different age groups. You can make it work for preschoolers up to adults. It's a great book. I did look online a while back to see if the book was still available. You might be able to find the book really cheap with minimal shipping and handling. It's such a classic book that I have used so much throughout the years, that if you can get ahold of it, it's a gem. We want to make sure that we're providing great environments for children so that they feel good about themselves and develop that positive sense of self and social competence that they need to be successful in life, school, and all their future relationships. I encourage you to do a little searching, do a little research, and read some books related to helping children develop a positive sense of self.

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