Nothing sustains mankind in the face of disappointment, depression, and displeasure than one’s self worth. Your self worth is a total sum of your self esteem. It is the overall subjective emotional evaluation of your worth.
The concept of self worth underscores the fact that what defines you is who you are and not what people think or comprehend of you. Your real you is further strengthened by your inner strength. This is what keeps you going whether the environment you operate in is favorable or not. Your locus of control is from within. There is never identical you in real sense with regards to who you are; your place of purpose, vision, dream, and mission.
self worth like any other values knows no color, race, age, or social status. It is gender neutral. The benefits of self worth to one’s life are evidently seen; your inner strength is intact, sincere compliments of sense of feeling good radiates in all fronts. With self worth great opportunities gravitate towards you. You are in charge of your life. As impressing as the benefits of possessing self worth are so also the result of its deficiency is weighty as could be seen in both old and young; rich and poor; famous and unpopular.
That a sixteen year old boy committed suicide a week ago in one of the highbrow schools in Lagos, Nigeria, is no longer news but the indelible hole the unfortunate incidence has left in our hearts and more so how to put our thoughts together in functional capacities to be able to anticipate, predict, and foretell the possible causes , also by taking a holistic approach to forestall further future occurrences is our major disquiet
Tongues have been waging on what could have led to the possibility of a teen having the audacity to take his own life. I have read comments of many blaming the school internal organization of failing in assessing and further handling of the boy’s psycho level. “ where was the school counselor, tutor, and the class teacher, they queried” I listened to a radio report where a legal giant described the whole saga unacceptable and pressed for prosecution of the school. I have read and heard lots from parents casting aspersions on the person of the victim’s parents for haven failed in their duty of care. Every aspect of the vituperations was either the parents have been insensitive, thoughtless , and uncaring……or they’ve been ignorant of what real and intentional parenting is all about.
Many submitted the parents were not close enough to the boy to understand his feelings and what he was going through. That too may be true but getting closer isn’t enough but having the right content to dispense. It will rather be a case of a Volkswagen outrunning a Ferrari if the right button isn’t pressed on a Ferrari. If a child isn’t equipped with necessary life skills when the effects of the environment pushes the child is likely to cave in.
In all of these comments the only one apart from the above is that Parenting is a hard job-one silly mistake can spell doom and makes the rub of your skills. I think I’d agree with this submission to a limited extent though. But the truth remains what we don’t have solution to is always difficult and what becomes familiar to us our minds make a decision to ignore.
Synopsis of all these is familiarity. Bags of us caregivers are too conversant with our parenting obligations in all ramification, hence we tend to discount the need to know our children better than we do presently. What we need is to continually submit ourselves to parenting education. Don’t disdain the place of knowledge. Continuity is contagious. This is the beauty of it. It is the name of the game. Once you have started there’s no stopping you until the kids are fully grown and gone. Kindly think with me below as I give few nuggets on how to help our children develop sense of self worth.
- Taken charge of pre-adolescence. Kids stages in maturity is key. This is where psychological and somatic development occur. Every child needs skill to move to the next stage. Example given in anger. A child that has difficulty in curtailing his/her anger with no or little training in emotional intelligence may find it difficult to share his/her feelings with others even parents. Because no one listens or pays attention during the moment of rage and the likelihood he/she will keep to him/herself is high. He/she feels neglected and unheard. Their mental health status is critical at this stage.
- Sensitive/Emotional life. No matter how ‘stupid or foolish’ a child’s request or question is, we should never shut them out. Eveybody desires to be heard and appreciated. I am most possibly going to lock myself indoor as a child if I don’t feel connected to the adult around me. This is where we need to be careful about being ‘strict’ (I dislike hearing this word because of its abuse) a child sure will subdue to this and to parents he/she’s submissive. What next? The child waits till he/she leaves the house and get set to get even at the parents. We must be sensitive to their emotion. Especially at teen level. Ask questions about what borders or gladdenes their heart.
- Life skills. Values and virtues are strategic in raising kids. But we ignorantly think our duty only is to raise successful adults, No. we are to raise successful adults laced with life skills for the benefit of humanity. Kids are to be fed with right values from day one of their life. Then from age 11+ they are attracted and challenged by anything that requires initiative and creativity. At this level, we are to watch and get involved for mentoring sake. What movies, games, music do they watch or listen to that gets them creative? What challenges or spurs them to do more in life? Who is their best friend? And why the choice? What do they think about in their lonely and silent periods? Question then is how do we solve this? I have few suggestions! Encourage them to write whatever they see, think, and comprehend of themselves down in a diary , then engage them in processing such into positive perspectives.
- self love. Teaching kids to develop the attitude of self love is making them to be conscious of who they are according to the design of God. The drift is to consistently helping them to seek within themselves personal happiness, personal respect, contentment, pleasure, and ultimately being realistic of oneself along the lines of one’s strengths and weaknesses. They should know they have no input of their total configuration from inception; their height, structure, facial, size, are basically of divine nature.
Truth is our children must be taught through our daily engaging that in life relatively 10% is related to what is going on around us. The rest has to do with who we are and what we do. I believe strongly our children need to be nurtured in this line. Enough is enough of wanting to raise success out of today’s kids. Life skills are superior to success.