Two Bottles of Self-Esteem, Please.

Kelly Corrigan's column, GRAIN OF SALT, is reprinted with permission from The Hills Newspapers in Northern California, and was originally published on January 13, 2006.

If you met my brother, you’d be immediately struck by his confidence. He’s long on social skills. But if you got chatting with him about his self-esteem, he’d rate it pretty low. After many hours of reflection, he’s come to believe that because he was a good lacrosse player and a whiz at calculus, most of the praise he had growing up was around accomplishments, like a cool trick he worked out on the lacrosse field where he’d switch hands at the last second and pump a shot into the upper left hand corner of the goal, thrilling the crowd [and, understandably, my parents].

As he got older, he found more crowds to thrill. He taught himself guitar and formed a band. For ten years, people jammed in small bars to applaud him.

But all that feedback around accomplishments had the net effect of confusing him on the key distinction between what one does and who one is. The praise he’d become accustomed to left him wondering if he was only as good as his last goal or his last song. He’d lived so long from one performance to the next that he had a hard time enjoying a day alone, even if he had his guitar or a lacrosse stick in arm’s reach.

As a woman in charge of two preschoolers, this alarmed me.

For one, I think I play a central role in how my girls feel about themselves. I know I do, since my mom recently referred to me as ‘competent’ and I felt like someone handed me an Oscar. Really. I relive it all the time, the day when my mom looked over in the car and said casually, “Well, you’re nothing if not competent.” And I’m 38.

For another, I was pretty sure building self-esteem was as simple as acknowledging little successes, like using a spoon, knowing the alphabet, reading a sentence, kicking a soccer ball. I mean, the theory resonates. I always get a little high when I do something well and a little bit higher when someone notices. That’s why this essay is in a newspaper instead of a private journal.

And lastly, I’m convinced that an unshakable sense of self worth is the only ticket to real happiness. Without self-esteem, you’re looking at a lifetime of sugar highs.

So it’s a topic worth worrying about. Here’s where I’ve come out on it.

The praise you heap on them for their cool drawings, their A+, their homerun, has to be less than the praise they hear for being who they are – easy-going, kind, silly, helpful. Because at some point, the world’s gonna get pretty noisy and crowded and people just won’t have the capacity to ooh and aaah over their every word/idea/achievement. That’s when their soft-spoken, indispensable friend, self-esteem, has to have a pulse.

So now, I watch my four year-old draw her pictures or write her name and I check my exuberance [“Georgia! That’s amazing! You’re incredible!”]. I tone it down in the name of her self-esteem. As I wean her from achievement-based praise, I look for a hundred other ways to build her up. Like today, I stopped her on the stairs and told her that I love her company. [I realized it was a poor choice of words when she replied, “What company? Daddy’s company? Where Daddy works?”]

And beyond that, I am trying to model self-esteem.

What?

You heard me. I baked some cookies last weekend and every time I ate one, I said to myself, most sincerely, “Man, I love these cookies I made!” instead of “Do you like my cookies?” I was stretching later in the weekend and made a point of saying, “Exercise always puts me in a good mood” (versus “If I keep running, I’m gonna kill ‘em at Daddy’s office party”). I am trying to show them that I take my own word for it, that I respect my own opinions, that self-satisfaction is the best satisfaction.

Lastly, ultimately, I consciously treat my girls like they are interesting, important people, hoping they will deduce from my behavior that they are indeed interesting, important people. If I constantly shoo them away while I return emails and phone calls or stick them in front of the TV while I clean and cook, they might come to think that I find emails, phone calls, cooking and cleaning more compelling than I find them. So a couple times a day, I choose them over all else. I smile at them for no reason. I let them stutter through long run on sentences until I actually know what they’re talking about. I remind them of something funny they said last week. I ask them to play cards or slow dance.

And after about thirty minutes of unsolicited attention, I tell them it’s time to play by themselves and I retreat to my office to read my email.