k3d307
- pressure to do well academically
- drugs, alcohol and smoking
- family breakdown
- formation of new family units
- growing up in a deprived area
- media pressure
- self-esteem
k3d309
As children develop they begin to interact with others. How children relate to other people depends on their emotional well-being and resilience. It is essential that early years workers help children to feel positive about themselves. High self-esteem helps children overcome set backs and cope with difficult situations such as disappointment and hurt feelings and sets the way a child will act and respond to others. Children who can relate well to other children will emotionally feel better and will be more confident in group situations. They will be able to work out differences more easily. Children who feel good about themselves relate to others in a more positive way. If a child is happy, has high self-esteem this makes the process of relating to others easier. Low self-esteem may mean that a children will start compare themselves with other children in the group and this can affect their emotional well-being if they think that they aren’t doing so well. Children’s communication will depend a lot on their confidence. There are things that can inhibit this, such as personality, especially with shy children, children’s life experience and whether they have opportunities to socialize with others. In order to build their confidence these children will need a lot of positive feedback, praise and encouragement.
k3d316
Judging a child always affects their resilience and self-esteem. Judging the child negatively, using comments such as ‘well that’s all I would expect from you’ would make them less resilient and damage their self-esteem making them unlikely to want to join in for fear of such comments. It would make them feel different from their peers and unvalued.
Judging a child as clever or bright would have the same effect. If you put too much pressure on the child to achieve, making them feel different from their peers causes lack of resilience and damages self-esteem
If you target the child rather than behaviour the child only learns that he/she is bad and this will lower their self-esteem. If you tell the child that the thing he/she did was wrong and explain why, the child learn right from wrong and develop understanding. Commenting on behaviour helps confidence, commenting on the child lowers self-esteem. When you show disapproval for the behaviour not the child you show children that they are still accepted, liked and valued.
k3d317
- provide eye contact and smile
- make comments that sum up what the child might have been feeling e.g. ‘That must have been fun for you’
- be a good listener
- provide individual time with the child
k3d318
- I try to acknowledge my negative feelings rather than act upon them
- if I have a bad day I let manager/other staff know so I might be better to do for example some observations, non-contact time
- I reflect on my practice and see how I cope with my feelings and see if I can do things differently so that in the future I could improve my practice and in turn avoid feeling inadequate
- I talk to colleagues about my practice and find out their views on the way I work
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