In recent years, our parenting culture began to send the message that competence was important for building self-esteem. However, that same parenting culture made a big mistake by telling parents that the way to instill competence in their children was to tell them how competent they were. But here's the problem. Children can't be convinced that they are competent.

    When parents try to convince their children of how competent they are, they often have the exact opposite effect. There is this little thing called reality that children have to confront on a daily basis. When children are faced with the conflict between what their parents had told them about how good they are and what reality is telling them, the result is the bursting of the “You are the best” bubble that their parents blew up for them.

    You can, however, do several things to encourage them to develop their own competence. First, you can give them opportunities in their daily lives to gain a sense of competence, for example, dressing, eating, drawing, cooking, and interacting with others. These daily experiences allow your children to develop specific competencies that will be helpful to them as they progress through childhood and into adulthood.

    Second, you can be sure that they gain the most value from their experiences. You can direct their focus to the competencies that enabled those successes (e.g., “You were really focused and worked hard on that project.”) rather than some generic praise of the accomplishment itself (e.g., “Good job!). And you can praise their accomplishments (e.g., “You must feel so good about your project.”).

    But you shouldn't just focus on the successes because, as every parent knows, as your children develop, they will experience far more failures than successes as they begin to gain competence. How you react often dictates how they will respond to those failures, if you are positive and supportive, your children will get the message that failure is okay and just a part of life.