In all of my years working with parents I’ve never met a parent who doesn’t want their child to be happy and have good self-esteem. What I find curious about this is how parents go about making it happen. I believe most people have many misconceptions about what happiness is and isn’t and how to achieve it. Needless to say self-esteem is an even bigger mystery.

Self-esteem is defined as the regard a person has for themselves. It’s an overall feeling of one’s self-worth. Self-efficacy is defined as a person’s belief in their ability to accomplish a task, in their ability to get things done. Needless to say we don’t expect people to believe they are self-efficacious across all domains. However, the more domains in which a person feels self-efficacious, the more positive an outcome. The theory of self-efficacy was originally proposed by psychologist Albert Bandura in the 1970’s. Self-efficacy predicts self-esteem. I believe if you want your child to have good self-esteem one way to do this is by fostering self-efficacy.

How does self-efficacy relate to self-esteem? Well think about it, if you know or feel pretty confident that you can get things done, I would say it’s pretty safe to say you are going to have high regard for yourself. When you don’t question your ability, when you are open to trying even if you could fail, you most likely will experience high self-esteem.

How do you instill a sense of self-efficacy in your children? If self-efficacy is defined as a person’s belief in their ability to achieve a task then it would seem to make sense that the best way to instill a sense of self-efficacy would be to put a child in as many situations of mastery as possible. And… when a child fails, to send the message that failure is no excuse for giving up. When a child fails it’s an opportunity to say, “Great, what did you learn and what will you do differently next time?” Modeling self-efficacy is also a good way to instill self-efficacy. When a child observes their primary caregivers successfully completing tasks the child tends to learn to believe they too can master the challenges they face.