The Power to Learn: Helping Your Child Build Self-Esteem

For many individuals, both with and without learning disabilities (LD), self-esteem is a powerful predictor of success. Not all students with LD have problems with social competence and self-esteem, but many do, and struggling daily with the challenges posed by a learning disability can erode the enthusiasm and confidence that make learning, at all ages, fun. Knowing one's assets and liabilities, and feeling good about one's self can be an invaluable tool for negotiating the sometimes tumultuous path to achievement in school, success in the workplace, and acceptance at home and in the community at large.

Positive self-esteem is a powerful thing

It has been said that positive self-esteem is as important to success in school and on the job as the mastery of individual skills. And there's no question that doing something well helps a person feel better about themselves, their accomplishments and their potential to succeed in the future. Learning disabilities, however, often pose formidable hurdles to positive self-esteem, and these in turn contribute to a hard-to-break cycle of self-doubt, frustration and failure.

Self-esteem can be described as how we think of ourselves and view ourselves in the context of our surroundings. Students in school have self-esteem shaped by how well they get along with peers and teachers. They are constantly making judgments about how "good" they are in comparison to their peers. Self-esteem is also shaped by how well children negotiate relationships with parents and siblings, and how successful they are in understanding and responding to many ever- changing interpersonal demands across many different settings. It is precisely in these areas that students with LD have the greatest difficulty, thus contributing to feelings of inadequacy and low self-esteem.

The importance of social competence

Building social competence is a key to becoming a self-reliant and confident person. Individuals who demonstrate this quality seem to know how to move from person to person or group to group, seemingly relaxed and at ease regardless of whether they are talking or listening. They also seem to demonstrate traits such as:

• knowing how to initiate and maintain positive relationships with peers and others
• knowing how to interpret social situations and judge how to interact without drawing negative attention to themselves
• engaging in interactions without being disruptive or drawing negative attention to themselves, sustaining attention and contributing to conversations, and controlling their impulses and delaying the need to draw attention to themselves, even in well-intended ways

Once again, it is these traits that often pose the greatest challenges to individuals with LD.

Threats to self-esteem in students with LD

While there is no menu of characteristics that captures the threats to self-esteem in individuals with LD, there are a number of traits, frequently observed in people with LD, that contribute to feelings of low self-worth. One interesting research finding is that by itself, having the special education classification of specific LD has not been shown to have a negative impact on self-esteem. Rather, there are a number of other factors that seem to impact self-esteem in individuals with LD in negative ways.