Finding the Just-Right Level of Self-Esteem for a Child

The Wall Street Journal:

A wave of recent research has pointed to the risks of overpraising a child. But for parents, drawing the line between too little praise and too much has become a high-pressure balancing act.

Cara Greene, a mother of three children ages 1 to 8, is wary of deliberately pumping up her kids’ egos, for fear of instilling the sense of entitlement she sees in young adults “who have been told they’re wonderful and they can do anything.” But she also wants them to have healthy self-esteem.

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Self-esteem serves as a gauge—a kind of inner psychological meter—of how much children feel valued and accepted by others, including family, friends and peers, based on research by Mark Leary, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University, and others.

Read the whole story: The Wall Street Journal