Teaching Self Esteem Activities

Self-esteem is your child's belief about his worth and importance in the world. Building healthy self-esteem is key to helping your child become a successful adult. Parents and teachers can teach a child how to develop strong character and esteem through role-modeling, support and various activities.

Who Am I?

• This activity shows kids we all "wear different hats" in our lifetime.

  This activity helps teach children about the important roles they have in their family, school and community. Talk with children about the idea of "roles" and the fact everyone plays many roles in life. It may help to describe this concept to younger children as "wearing different hats" and provide a variety of hats for demonstration.

  Discuss the role of student, sister or brother, daughter or son, friend, helper and so on. Let each student write down as many roles as she can think of. You can label the hats with different roles and have each student come up and select a hat to wear, then walk around and trade hats with other students.

  This activity is designed to show a child that she plays many important roles in life and has things in common with the people around her.

Letter to Myself

• Writing a letter can remind a child how special he is.

  This activity allows a child to express his feelings, thoughts and dreams to himself in a letter. Encourage him to write down several goals he wants to accomplish by the end of the school year. Save the letters and give them to him before summer break; review with him how much he was able to accomplish in just one year.

  The idea of this activity is to have a child work toward a goal and realize he's a capable human being. It might be helpful to review the letters prior to the end of the school year, especially for a child struggling with self-esteem issues.

Interview Your Classmate

• Getting to know things about others help focus on important qualities.

  Break your students (or adults) into groups of two. Set a timer for five to 10 minutes and have each student "interview" the other person, asking questions and getting to know her. You could develop a specific set of questions, but this usually works better if a child (or adult) is given the opportunity to create the dialogue (but have the questions as icebreakers, just in case.) Pair up two opposite personalities or children who may have previously struggled to get along. Have each student present to the class a few things they learned about their classmate when time is up.

  The concept of this activity is to show a child he has things in common with another person. It also helps develop and strengthen empathy and communication skills, as the child needs to listen to the other person to present information to the class.