Children are often unhappy because they feel less than worthwhile, usually because they are comparing themselves to others. Learn how to help them love being themselves in this Video Answer.
(Link to the Written Answer referred to is The Screams of Silence.)Timestamps:
00:00 Listen to and watch your child for clues that they are unhappy.
01:06 Low self-esteem comes from not feeling Unconditionally loved and from comparing themselves to other people.
01:15 All the places and ways a child is tempted to compare their lives.
05:00 What to say when you hear your child compare themselves to others.
10:47 The power of knowing that you can be yourself.
Transcript:
Unhappiness Caused by Comparing Themselves to Others
As we listen closely to our children, and as we observe their behavior, they give us lots of clues that they’re unhappy. If you want to learn a lot more about how to listen, and how to help your children speak, read The Screams of Silence.
If we ask the right questions, and engage them in conversation, often we discover that they’re unhappy because they feel less than worthwhile—also called low self-esteem, or feeling “bad about themselves.” In great part this happens because they are comparing themselves to other people.
The opportunities for comparison are EVERYWHERE:
- Celebrities are depicted electronically, in film, and in print—intentionally and unintentionally—as models of what people “should” look like and behave like. This is soul-destroying to children and teens who can look at their average day and look in the mirror to see the vast chasm between themselves and these “perfect” people.
- Kids need only look at the number of followers they have to quantify their popularity and immediately compare it to the numbers of others.
- At the Wal-Mart checkout counter, magazine and newspaper covers scream at our children what is cool and desirable, and our kids can’t help but compare themselves to what they see.
- Children and teens spend untold hours on Facebook, where they can compare themselves to the enhanced photos of other kids and to the hyped-up activities that others are engaged in. Facebook was born from a previous website where the pictures of college girls were placed side by side and judged by their “hotness.” This continues today, just in a slightly less obvious way.
- Makeover shows are everywhere, comparing the appearances of people before cosmetic work is done, surgical and not—which is universally considered the less acceptable version of that person—to their appearance after alteration of their clothing, hair, cosmetics, and more. Of course the viewers also compare themselves both to the before and after images.
- At school, every day kids compare themselves to each other, silently and aloud, often mimicking what they’ve seen in the other comparison carnivals described above.
Discussing How They are Comparing Themselves to Others
You might feel inadequate in addressing the subjects of comparison and self-worth, so allow me to suggest SOME of the things you MIGHT say in such discussions. These are just concepts, not intended to be the exact words you use.
- “You do NOT know these people you’re seeing in the media. Nearly every day some celebrity is exposed as an alcoholic, addict, or in other ways proving their unhappiness despite their ‘beautiful’ outward appearance.”
- “You do NOT know the people at school and elsewhere whom you envy. When you believe that someone has a better life than you do, remember that you just do not know them well enough.”
- “Many of these people you might admire DO have lives that appear to be entertaining, exciting, and enviable, but you don’t know anything about the qualities in them that make us happy for a lifetime.” This would be an opportunity for you to tell them about people YOU have envied in the past, whom you later discovered were not at all like you had thought. Billionaire, “Loneliest man on the face of the earth.”
- “Being happy is entirely within your ability to choose. That state of being—the greatest condition of life—is accomplished by feeling loved, being loving, and being responsible. Your happiness has NOTHING to do with how you look, the money you have, the clothes you wear, and the number of people who follow you on Facebook.” Again, you might know people you could describe to illustrate this truth.
- “Being happy is a condition that only you can determine. It has nothing to do with other people. The goal of being happier than others is a seductive lie. It will NOT make you feel better about yourself, but worrying about how your happiness compares to that of other people WILL make you feel worse about yourself.”
- “You are comparing who you are overall—including your worst days—with what people only APPEAR to be on their very best day, including modifications of their photos and carefully crafted messages about their activities. The comparison is laughably unfair.”
- On the Internet a beauty consultant wrote this: “A step by step guide on how to become extremely beautiful: 1. Stop comparing yourself to anyone else.” Comparing yourself to others creates a virus of uncertainty that WILL detract from how beautiful you FEEL, and that will affect how confident you are, which is known to affect strongly how beautiful people see you. Fear is not beautiful.
- “We're not here to be like other people. The only thing you can be great at is being YOU. You will do a terrible job of trying to be someone else, someone you are not.”
Celebrate Being Different without Comparing Themselves
Let’s spend a moment on just that last item, being ourselves. When each of us understands that the goal is to be ourselves—however different from the “norm” that might be—then comparison becomes really stupid looking.
If I really understand that I can only be myself, then I accept that I WILL be different from everyone else. I don’t WANT to be like anyone else, and then suddenly my goal and responsibility is only to be true to myself and to improve upon it as I can.
Comparison brings all that uniqueness to a stop. Being different, being unique, is an enormous asset, a great gift, and a glorious opportunity to develop.
Following are just a few quotes and ideas on this subject that might help you as you explain this to your children:
“The world is a great chorus of voices, consisting of the talents and personalities of all the people in it. We need YOUR voice to enhance the beauty of the sound. If you try to be like other people, we lose your invaluable contribution to that beauty.”
“We are not here to fit in, be well balanced, or provide examples for others. We are here to be eccentric, different, perhaps strange, perhaps merely to add our small piece, our little clunky, chunky selves, to the great mosaic of being. As the gods intended, we are here to become more and more ourselves." (James Hollis)
"Sometimes the thing that's weird about you is the thing that's cool about you." (Maureen Dowd)
“If you compare yourself to others, you won’t be able to stop what follows. First, you’ll feel bad about yourself, which will really get in the way of you being yourself all the way. Second, you’ll try to be more like other people, and we don’t need another Michael or Adrianna. We need YOU.”
“IF you want to contribute something better to the world, unavoidably you must offer something different, which usually attracts the criticism of others, who are attached to the old way of doing things. If you try to be like others, you might avoid their criticism, but YOUR contribution to the world will be lost.”
Most important for you as a parent, however, far more important than what you teach with these or other words, is how you LOVE your child.
If you celebrate their unique qualities, and help them see how their being different contributes to their happiness—while you MINIMIZE the occasions you try to change them—they’ll believe what you say about the spectacular benefits of being different.
