American Children Are Drowning in Self-Esteem

I think kid celebrities live in their own bubble and not representative of the larger population of children.

Are you an American? I'm European, and maybe this is just personal experience / a personal anecdote, but whenever I've had conversations with an American I found that they tend to always be really excited and then casually ignore any further communication. It's much harder to figure out for me what an American _actually_ means vs say a Belgian or a British person. No point in being an open person if you're only touting positive things.

I agree with your statement in principle, but at the same time, people need to be willing to give some meaningful comments. If I'm trying to break through in a rock band, I want criticism so I can figure out how to improve. Being told "Good performance brah", if you know you sucked, sucks.

I might agree with you, but I would need more context.

For example, my daughter did a rock-camp last summer. It was some neighborhood kids that got together with a teacher for 5 afternoons to learn six songs and after the camp was over, they put on a show to play the songs they had been practicing.

The kids' talent levels ranged from truly amazing to early beginner. Nobody played flawlessly but everybody had a lot of fun. The feedback the kids received was overwhelmingly positive and I think it had the effect of making the kids want to do it again next summer. People were congratulating them on their hard work and learning to play so many songs in very little time.

The kids that played at a high level would probably appreciate some criticism. The kids that were struggling may have been embarrassed and less likely to continue. I could be wrong about that, but it's my gut feeling.

You touch on something I think about often as a father. Many years ago, I had a psychology professor who basically went off on a rant for an entire class meeting about this, and it struck a chord in me.

It was basically this:

1) Parents don't understand a child's emotional needs. Children need a foundation of love, which at an early age basically means attention from and interaction with caregivers.

2) Modern parents, especially pronounced starting with baby boomers, often feel they didn't get enough love and support from their parents. So they lavish their children with praise – frequently instead of focused attention – and think they're doing a good job.

3) This creates children who commingle love with achievement. That is, their parents love them because of their supposed achievements, and thus, if they're not achieving things, they aren't worthy of love. So children simultaneously have inflated egos but also very insecure egos. (This also ties into the whole idea that you should praise a child's effort, not their intelligence.)

That's all very abstract though. He gave a bunch of examples, but only one has stuck with me. Let's say your three year old comes to you with a drawing. Unless she's a prodigy, that drawing is going to be objectively bad, mostly squiggles with maybe a shape or two.

How most modern parents respond:

Parent: Good job! This is such a pretty drawing. I like how you used different colors. That's a great circle. You're a good drawer. Can you go draw me a square now?

Parent then goes back to watching TV, which would be a smartphone in an updated example.

How a parent should respond:

Parent: Thank you for showing me your drawing. I like how you used different colors and only drew on the paper. (legitimate praise is fine). What's this? (points to circle blob)

Kid: A horse.

Parent: Oh, a horse. Cool. Does she have a name? (or Is the horse happy today? Can he run fast? whatever. The point is to engage in open ended questions that show you care and let the kid drive the conversation, somewhat.)

Kid: His name is cow.

Parent: A horse named cow, how silly.

And so on.

Anyway, I'm sure people would have problems with my sample good response too, and I'm probably misremembering the details. I'm also not sure the baby boomer stuff is totally accurate. But the overall idea is to give attention and focused interaction, not undue praise, and that makes a ton of sense to me.

Edited for typos and formatting.

This isn't self-esteem. It's the foundation of narcissistic personality disorder.

Self-esteem is simply the belief that one can be loved and respected for who they are.

Needing to "achieve" (or believe that achievements are worthwhile) in order to feel good about ones self is the opposite to self-esteem.