10 Warning Signs of Low Self-Esteem in Children and Teens: A Guide to Mental Health

What is self-esteem anyway? It's a term that's thrown around, used interchangeably with self-confidence, self-efficacy, self-love, and self-worth.

Self-esteem just might be the most important resiliency factor when it comes to child and youth mental health.

Self-esteem develops in the early years of life from ages 0-7. During this time, our primary focus is on safety:

• To be safe on a biological level, human beings require two things, 1) protection and 2) nourishment.

• To be safe on a psychological level, human beings require two things, 1) connection 2) responsivity.

• To be safe on a social and emotional level, human beings require two things, 1) rest and 2) play.

It's from this place of having our bio-psych-social-emotional needs met or unmet that we develop our perceptions and beliefs about ourselves and our ability to navigate the world around us. The belief in one's self is their self-esteem.

Another word that's often thrown around is resiliency. So, we could look at resiliency as not having some of those needs met at certain times but learning problem solving skills to cope and adapt in healthy and positive ways, facilitated by caregiver interaction and relationship repair. Resiliency is about how the child learns via parent-child interactions and attachment to repair the relationship with honesty, communication, and transparency, and support. This builds trust and problem solving skills and still fosters a sense of safety which boosts self-esteem.

But what happens when the disconnect occurs again? Without repair? When it's chronic? Inescapable? This is stress and trauma. Human beings are wired to navigate acute stressors, but long-term stress can have a significant impact on the ways in which people learn to navigate the world.

Did you know that low self-esteem can be a symptom of attachment wounding, stress, and trauma? This happens those 6 core needs for bio-psych-social-emotional safety are repeatedly unmet? Keep reading to learn how low self-esteem might present for your child.

Low self-esteem means to not trust ourselves to be good enough, lovable enough, smart enough, funny enough, brilliant enough, valuable enough, to have even our most basic of needs met. The brain believes that it must be hypervigilant in it's quest for attachment in order to have the core 6 needs met for safety and survival. A protective coping mechanism that the brain has is to shutdown emotionally to avoid pain.

When what we had to do to survive and have our needs met from ages 0-7 becomes a lifelong pattern of relating and communicating, we actually lose ourselves. We self-abandon in order to not be abandoned by others. We disconnect from our bodies, don't know what our feelings are, what our values are, what are likes and dislikes are, what our boundaries are, and what our standards and expectations are. We have no gauge for what we will or will not accept, tolerate, and engage in.

Everything we do is driven by the primal need for attachment. The need to be important enough to have our needs met. The need to be good enough.

Having high self-esteem, then, would mean that someone has a deep rooted belief and knowing that they are inherently enough, no matter what; that they are worthy and deserving of respect, love, and abundance.

10 Warning Signs of Low Self-Esteem in Children and Teens:

1. Denial, blaming, and/or lying

2. Anger and/or irritability

3. Self-harm and/or suicidal ideation

4. Not liking their appearance - clothes, hair, body image, etc.

5. Class clown behaviour/always the jokester

6. Isolating and withdrawing

7. Resentment/holding grudges

8. Lack of integrity - seeing one version of child at home and another social settings

9. Bragging, gossiping, or bullying

10. Anxiety, frequent and persistent worries, constantly seeking reassurance

So, how do we rewire the brain for safety and build up self-esteem?

In utero, babies start receiving information about what it's like in the outside world. Supplied by their mother's blood, babies receive the concoction of stress hormones that mom's experiencing, or happy hormones and neurotransmitters if all is well.

The brain and body begin to prepare accordingly. Fast forward from infancy to early childhood, the brain has connections available for growth, learning, and development. "If you don't use it, you lose it", synapses that are not used get pruned away.

Luckily, plasticity in the brain allows for change in later years of life, it's just a little bit more challenging to shift from the already carved out neuropathways; take for example, learning new languages at age 2 versus learning a new language at age 10 or age 45. It's not impossible, it just takes a bit more practice and dedication. Emotional regulation, planning, organization, problem solving, resiliency, building self-esteem - this is all possible, it just takes a little bit of practice and dedication which is a huge benefit of seeking support from a therapist who can help support you toward building strategies for creating emotional, cognitive, and behavioural change.

Here are some suggestions to get you started:

Biological - Protection & Nourishment

• Support your kiddo to develop a rewarding wellness routine. Eating, sleeping, hydrating, and exercising are essential components to wellness. Be creative in allowing for fun in these fundamental activities of daily living and know that there is more than one way to be successful.

• Support your kiddo to setting healthy boundaries, at home, at school and with other commitments. They need to become familiar with their "no", if a friend is not treating them with kindness, if they don't want to try out for that sport, if they don't want to go to the birthday party - where can you allow them to say no? When is a good time to encourage them to face their fears in order to help them grow? Allowing for choice is a great way to help kids learn how to stay in connection with their intuition and helps them to protect themselves by learning to make decisions.

Psychological - Connection & Responsivity

• Support your kiddo to build connections at home outside of the world of technology - extra-curriculars are great for this - whether it's a free or low-cost group in the community, a club at school or a weekly sport that they're involved in, building peer connections outside of school is a great way to support the development of offline connections and healthy relationships. There's also importance in connection with family, pets, and nature, as well as with self including hobbies and interests.

• Support your kiddo by modelling self-care and taking the initiative to care for your own mental health and wellbeing so that you can be responsive to their needs rather than reactive. Kids and teens will engage in the behaviours that are modelled to them, period.

Social-Emotional - Rest & Play

• Napping, snacking, reading, screen time, crafting, are all wonderful forms of rest. Rest is unconditional. Every human deserves access to rest; time when they do not have to put on a "façade" or a mask, or engage with anyone, or be productive. Just time to rest and do nothing is OK.

• Play is essential. All mammals have the brain circuitry to be wired for play. Children and teens especially, process information via play as they do not yet always have the language skills and communication strategies to process life's events. Gaming and online play does not count for this one, sorry! It has to be fully embodied play that engages the mind and the body. Reason for this is to help support the prefrontal regions of the brain to get up and running - which is key for emotional regulation, communication, planning, organization, and other executive functioning skills. Play can be as simple as your teen going for a walk with friends or your kids making up a recipe in the kitchen; it ought to be a mindful, creative, experience among self and others.

Key Takeaways

• There is always room to build new neuropathways, thanks to brain plasticity

• We can always work toward building self-esteem by fostering biological-psychological-social-emotional needs

• Resiliency is learned through repair attempts from calm and responsive caregivers as well as individuals beliefs about their abilities to cope with stress

• Resiliency is closely linked to self-esteem as being able to bounce back from challenges encourages the belief "I am good enough"