2. We can't give our children high self-esteem.
After promoting self-esteem for two decades, we are seeing more depression and anxiety in young people, not higher levels of self-confidence. It turns out that telling kids they are great all the time doesn't help them that much; instead, it makes them suspicious of adults because they can see that they're not as good at doing some things as other kids are. Self-esteem comes from building skills and mastering challenging tasks on their own. Your child's greatest sense of achievement may come from succeeding in a situation where he had tasted defeat, had been really upset, and then had come back to triumph.