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American Children Are Drowning in Self-Esteem

1843magazine.com

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Re: American Children Are Drowning in Self-Esteem

#91

Post by roel_v »

rimantas wrote: post #77
gluggymug wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't teach kids I assume. I do. I am a judo coach of kids. I think the point is : It is not really up to the parents to be so critical of their kids. They should be supportive and positive. It is really up to the coach to provide the technical feedback and it is more beneficial to assess performance at the next practice when the kids are back in a learning mode. At that point they are mentally ready to practice…

Yeah, it's really not up to the parents to raise their kids. It's scarry how we get to this point where people write this kind of shit with a straight face.

Raising the children is supporting them, and helping them get over the fear of performing publicly (or whatever). It's not their job to be the technical coach of whatever they want to learn.

Re: American Children Are Drowning in Self-Esteem

#92

Post by kasey_junk »

rimantas wrote: post #77
gluggymug wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't teach kids I assume. I do. I am a judo coach of kids. I think the point is : It is not really up to the parents to be so critical of their kids. They should be supportive and positive. It is really up to the coach to provide the technical feedback and it is more beneficial to assess performance at the next practice when the kids are back in a learning mode. At that point they are mentally ready to practice…

Yeah, it's really not up to the parents to raise their kids. It's scarry how we get to this point where people write this kind of shit with a straight face.

I've coached kids martial arts before as well, and while I wouldn't go so far as to say parents shouldn't criticize their kids, I will say that I much prefer the parents that are "supportive in public, critical in private".

It is quite literally my job as a coach to point out a kids mistakes. They handle it really well nearly universally. But the overly critical parents (you can see them coming a long way off) cause so much negative reactions it makes my job harder.

And quite simply, anyone who has coached anything knows that being critical at the time of the event is almost universally detrimental (and not just for kids). Your mind/body is just not ready for coaching at the end of an adrenal dump event.

You need distance to evaluate performance, and the emotional burden of parent/kid relationships makes that more true not less.

Re: American Children Are Drowning in Self-Esteem

#93

Post by pessimizer »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #29
NTDF9 wrote: post #22

What I've noticed common among a lot of Americans is a fear/inhibition of speaking the truth, mostly to not have a confrontation. I witnessed an example of this in a music performance of a teen rock band. In this performance, the band sucked overall. The guitarist didn't know what he was doing. But everybody (guardians, parents, teachers, friends) just keep saying, "Great performance brah, awesome shit, good going gu…

> "Hey, your timing on the G-C chord switch sucked" That doesn't sound like very constructive criticism.

It sounds like extremely constructive criticism to me. More specific than anyone has a right to expect; it's exactly what sounded bad, and exactly what needs to be practiced to sound better.

Re: American Children Are Drowning in Self-Esteem

#94

Post by roel_v »

charlesdm wrote: post #59
mgalka wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What country are you from? In my experience Americas fall somewhere in the middle in terms of directness, compared to European countries. I lived in the UK for a few years and found Brits very hard to read / resistant to confrontation. On the other hand, I'm married to a Spaniard, and when I'm over there, it's sometimes a bit uncomfortable how direct and open people are.

Belgium. It's not necessarily the directness that I mind, it's the fact that often people are (excuse my language) full of shit. They say A, but actually mean B. Which is a trait, for example, the British have as well, but one I seem to understand a lot better than when I'm dealing with Americans.

I'm Belgian but I haven't lived there for many years. I'm not sure if you still live there, but I do not support your position at all. Belgians are just as ambiguous in communication as anyone else. In a different way, maybe, but they're certainly (overall) not direct.

Re: American Children Are Drowning in Self-Esteem

#95

Post by fizzbatter »

Tenhundfeld wrote: post #47
NTDF9 wrote: post #22

What I've noticed common among a lot of Americans is a fear/inhibition of speaking the truth, mostly to not have a confrontation. I witnessed an example of this in a music performance of a teen rock band. In this performance, the band sucked overall. The guitarist didn't know what he was doing. But everybody (guardians, parents, teachers, friends) just keep saying, "Great performance brah, awesome shit, good going gu…

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…

It's weird, i don't think i had a ton of praise growing up (in the 90s), but regardless i ended up a basket case when it comes to praise. I loathe it.

At some early point in my life i saw how meaningless praise was. Parents (mine and others) praised without warrant.. and it was obvious to me. Worse yet, i couldn't figure out where the line was - what was legitimate praise? I became distrusting of all praise, and rarely felt pride from anyone but myself. Which, honestly sucks.

Whether it's parents praising their children, or gifts at Christmas that people often don't want but smile and act like they do.. everyone is just lying to each other so constantly that everything of value feels so fake.

It's honestly quite upsetting to me. I wonder if it's like this everywhere? Is it mostly an American situation?

Re: American Children Are Drowning in Self-Esteem

#96

Post by vacri »

gluggymug wrote: post #60
NTDF9 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> It's likely that greeting them with criticism of their playing as they walk off the stage won't do much to encourage them to try it again. There's a way to frame it. At the end of a band performance, the audience (even if it is just 3-4 people) is encouraged to clap, even if the performance sucked. Usually, they do clap. This is enough of a positive reinforcement. When the whole thing is over, before packing up, h…

You don't teach kids I assume. I do. I am a judo coach of kids. I think the point is : It is not really up to the parents to be so critical of their kids. They should be supportive and positive. It is really up to the coach to provide the technical feedback and it is more beneficial to assess performance at the next practice when the kids are back in a learning mode. At that point they are mentally ready to practice…

Raising your kids properly means loving them, yes, but not to the point that you outsource teaching them how to be resilient.

Re: American Children Are Drowning in Self-Esteem

#97

Post by adrr »

sp332 wrote: post #4

If self-esteem is so high, why is suicide so common? Giving someone self-esteem doesn't mean letting them whine all the time. Your swimming instructors saying “C’mon dude, stop complaining, let’s get on with it!” IS giving the kid self-esteem! Teaching many ways to add is important because not all kids are going to be able to learn the same way at that age. Different methods are going to "click" for different student…

I thought suicide was a measure of how well off a country is and also linked to alcohol and drug abuse rates.

Re: American Children Are Drowning in Self-Esteem

#98

Post by seanmcdirmid »

skywhopper wrote: post #39
NTDF9 wrote: post #22

What I've noticed common among a lot of Americans is a fear/inhibition of speaking the truth, mostly to not have a confrontation. I witnessed an example of this in a music performance of a teen rock band. In this performance, the band sucked overall. The guitarist didn't know what he was doing. But everybody (guardians, parents, teachers, friends) just keep saying, "Great performance brah, awesome shit, good going gu…

There's a time and a place for critique, and immediately after a performance is neither. Only a jerk with truly low self-esteem would think that it was appropriate to offer unsolicited criticicism of the performance skills of a teenager in a rock band to their face at the performance. If it's their music instructor, maybe. But again, that's not really the place. Next lesson would be the right time and place to get th…

Fine. Don't offer criticism, but don't offer fake praise either.

Re: American Children Are Drowning in Self-Esteem

#99

Post by bumblebeard »

dwaltrip wrote: post #88
gaur wrote: post #78

> SORRY, YOU NEED TO ENABLE JAVASCRIPT TO VISIT THIS WEBSITE. I need Javascript to read a magazine article? Nope. Bye.

If the underlying issue is that you don't like ads or tracking, you could try installing uBlock origin instead of disabling javascript. There are some other useful extensions in this area but uBlock origin is the only one I have experience with. It's been great for me. Usage of javascript as a tool for building web properties is only going to keep increasing, and grumbling about it doesn't solve anything.

This annoyed me too.

I think it's fair to expect to be able to see something without JavaScript, even if it's not formatted correctly or missing fonts or whatever. I disable JS by default for performance reasons, not just because of tracking.

Re: American Children Are Drowning in Self-Esteem

#100

Post by germinalphrase »

rimantas wrote: post #77
gluggymug wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't teach kids I assume. I do. I am a judo coach of kids. I think the point is : It is not really up to the parents to be so critical of their kids. They should be supportive and positive. It is really up to the coach to provide the technical feedback and it is more beneficial to assess performance at the next practice when the kids are back in a learning mode. At that point they are mentally ready to practice…

Yeah, it's really not up to the parents to raise their kids. It's scarry how we get to this point where people write this kind of shit with a straight face.

It's less an issue of parents raising/not raising their kids, than it is knowing what is productive and unproductive pressure.

Mike Matheny - the manager of the St. Louis Cardinals - wrote a letter to parents while he was coaching his son's little league team that touches on this idea. The whole thing is worth reading, but this is primarily his thesis:

"I believe that the biggest role of the parent is to be a silent source of encouragement. I think if you ask most boys what they would want their parents to do during the game; they would say "NOTHING". Once again, this is ALL about the boys. I believe that a little league parent feels that they must participate with loud cheering and "Come on, let's go, you can do it", which just adds more pressure to the kids. I will be putting plenty of pressure on these boys to play the game the right way with class, and respect, and they will put too much pressure on themselves and each other already. You as parents need to be the silent, constant, source of support."

Link to full letter: www.mac-n-seitz.com/teams/mike-matheny-letter.html

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