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Building self-esteem in children ⭐ What actually works ✓ How to praise ✓ Age-by-age exercises ✓ Read the full guide!
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There is one sentence that reliably tightens a parent's chest. It usually comes quietly, usually in passing, often in the middle of play: “I can't do it.” Sometimes “I'm stupid” follows. And it is almost always about something the child was attempting with great enthusiasm only three weeks ago.
The first reaction is understandable: contradict it. “Of course you can! You're so clever!” It is well meant. And it is – as the research shows fairly plainly – one of the few responses that reliably does not help.
Building self-esteem in children works differently from the way most of us were taught. It does not come from reassurance but from experience. Not from praise, but from the right kind of praise. And it takes shape in a window that opens earlier, and echoes longer, than was assumed for many years.
This guide takes you through both sides: what genuinely builds self-esteem, and what undermines it – often with the best of intentions. In doing so we draw on the self-esteem research of the University of Bern, on the Swiss Orientation Framework for Early Childhood Education and Care, and on international developmental psychology. And on a number of observations from twenty-five years of daily life with children between six months and six years old.
Self-esteem is the underlying judgement a child carries about themselves: “I am all right as I am.” It is independent of any particular ability and describes whether a child experiences themselves as valuable and as belonging.
In everyday use the term gets muddled with three others, and that is more than linguistic imprecision. If you do not distinguish them, you end up nurturing the wrong thing. A child can be an excellent footballer and still believe that they are not enough as a person. And a child who is not yet particularly good at anything can feel entirely secure.
Term | Answers the question | How it sounds in a child | What builds it |
|---|---|---|---|
Self-esteem | Am I of value? | “I belong here, even when I make a mistake.” | Unconditional belonging, being seen |
Self-confidence | Do I think I can? | “I'm going to try the big slide.” | Challenges mastered at one's own pace |
Self-efficacy | Can I make something happen? | “If I build the tower differently, it won't fall over.” | Experiencing that one's own actions have consequences |
Self-concept | Who am I? | “I'm someone who likes being outdoors.” | Feedback from key adults over years |
The four are connected, but they are not the same thing. The practical difference: self-confidence can be built through success. Self-esteem cannot. A child whose worth depends on achievement does not have high self-esteem – they have conditional self-esteem. And conditional self-esteem collapses at precisely the moment it is needed most.
Definition
What does “conditional self-esteem” mean? Conditional self-esteem is present when a child ties their own worth to conditions: to good results, to being liked, to succeeding at a task.
You can recognise it in sentences like “If I can't do this, I'm stupid”. Its counterpart is unconditional self-esteem: I am all right even when something goes wrong.
Measurable self-esteem can be demonstrated in children as young as five. Researchers at the University of Washington used a purpose-built test to show that preschoolers carry a stable positive or negative underlying sense of themselves.
For a long time the assumption was that preschool children were simply too young for this. The reason was methodological: conventional self-esteem tests require someone to be able to talk about the abstract concept of “myself”. A five-year-old can reliably say that they run well. They cannot reliably answer whether they are a good person.
Dario Cvencek, Andrew Meltzoff and Anthony Greenwald therefore developed the Preschool Implicit Association Test and used it with more than 200 five-year-olds. The result: at this age self-esteem is not only present but already pronounced enough to be measured – and it is systematically connected to other basic features of a child's personality. Meltzoff put the implication precisely: children bring this view of themselves to school; they do not first develop it there.
A meta-analysis from the University of Bern fits the same timeline. Ulrich Orth and his team analysed 331 individual studies covering more than 160,000 people aged 4 to 94. The typical trajectory: self-esteem already rises in childhood, does not – contrary to popular belief – collapse in adolescence, climbs markedly in young adulthood and peaks between 60 and 70.
331 studies, 160,000 people, 90 years of life. The Bern meta-analysis is the most comprehensive investigation to date of how self-esteem develops across the lifespan. It shows that the upward trend begins as early as age four.
What it does not show is equally striking: the cohorts born in the 1980s and 1990s – often labelled the “me generation” – do not differ in their trajectory from earlier ones.
Source: Orth, Erol & Luciano (2018), Psychological Bulletin / University of Bern
The first six years of life establish the basic pattern by which a child judges themselves. What matters is not individual events but the repeated experience of how the adults closest to them respond to the child and to their behaviour.
The mechanism is unspectacular, and that is exactly why it works. A small child has no independent yardstick for themselves. They learn who they are by watching how others react to them. The Swiss Orientation Framework for Early Childhood Education and Care puts this with remarkable clarity in its fourth guiding principle: the responses a child receives to their person and to their behaviour shape the picture they form of themselves.
Which means, conversely: self-esteem does not arise in conversations about self-esteem. It arises at the changing mat, at the coat pegs, while doing up shoes, at the fourth tower that would not stay up.
Drawing on a nationally representative long-term US study, Ulrich Orth examined which early factors best predict later self-esteem. The finding was unambiguous: the quality of parenting was the strongest predictor. The early family environment showed a long-term effect that grew smaller over the course of development but remained detectable into adulthood.
The qualification Orth himself stresses matters: this influence is not deterministic. Positive development is possible under unfavourable family circumstances too. Self-esteem is in part inherited – but environmental factors play the somewhat larger role.
For parents this means two things. First: what you do genuinely has an effect, and the effect lasts. Second: no single bad day decides anything. It is the pattern, not the moment.
In Short
Why “pattern” is the decisive word
A child who is snapped at on a stressful Tuesday morning draws no conclusion from it about their worth. A child who experiences over months that their contributions are passed over does.
Self-esteem is a statistical quantity in a child's mind. You do not have to deliver a run of perfect responses – you only have to make sure the good ones clearly outweigh the rest, and that ruptures get repaired.
A look at the data makes clear why early prevention has become more relevant. In 2022, 85 per cent of 11- to 15-year-olds in Switzerland said they were doing well or very well. Twenty years earlier the figure was 91 per cent. According to the Federal Office of Public Health, the remaining 15 per cent were considered at risk of developing health and social problems – around two thirds more than in 2002.
The 2025 National Health Report of the Swiss Health Observatory notes that young people continue to be affected by psychological strain at above-average rates. Stable self-esteem is no shield against everything. But it is among the best-evidenced protective factors that can be influenced early and without professional support.
Important
Self-esteem is not a miracle cure – and that is good news. The major 2003 review by Baumeister and colleagues dispensed with a widespread assumption: high self-esteem does not automatically produce better school results, and programmes that simply “raise” self-esteem do not improve performance.
What works is the reverse route: children experience genuine competence, and self-esteem grows out of that. Trying to manufacture the outcome directly, without the road that leads there, produces at best a feeling with no foundation.
Stable self-esteem draws on four sources: belonging, experiencing competence, autonomy and mattering. If one of them is missing over a long period, an imbalance develops that praise alone cannot make good.
These four sources are not a model from any single book but the common ground that attachment research, self-determination theory and self-efficacy research all describe as load-bearing. They are useful in daily life because they are diagnostic: when something is not running smoothly, it is usually exactly one of them that is missing.
Source | The inner message | How a shortfall shows | What actually helps |
|---|---|---|---|
Belonging | “I am wanted.” | Clinginess, withdrawal, constantly seeking reassurance | Dependable rituals, undivided attention, making up after conflict |
Competence | “I can make something happen.” | Giving up quickly, “you do it” | Tasks just beyond current ability, help only when asked |
Autonomy | “I get to decide.” | Fierce power struggles, or conspicuous compliance | Real choices within clear limits |
Mattering | “What I think counts.” | Falling silent in the group, withdrawing from decisions | Asking, waiting for the answer, actually acting on suggestions |
It is worth noting that three of these four sources are fed at least as strongly outside the family as within it. Competence, autonomy and mattering unfold above all where a child is part of a group of peers – and where adults have the patience not to step in.
Eight behaviours work most powerfully: praising the process, letting children do things themselves, taking the drama out of mistakes, naming feelings, giving genuine attention, handing over responsibility, setting clear limits and avoiding comparisons.
The order is not a ranking. It follows the shape of the day: from the morning at the coat pegs to the evening meal.
This is the best-evidenced single measure in this entire article, and it costs nothing but attention. In six experiments with 412 fifth-graders, Claudia Mueller and Carol Dweck examined what happens when children are praised for their intelligence rather than for their effort.
The children praised for their intelligence then chose the easier task. They gave up sooner when things got difficult, showed less persistence and took less pleasure in the activity. The children praised for their effort sought out the challenge, stuck with it after setbacks and tried more ways of solving the problem.
The mechanism behind it is logical: anyone praised for a fixed quality has only one explanation available when they fail – the quality is evidently absent. Anyone praised for the route has a second: the route was not the right one yet.
A study by Elizabeth Gunderson and colleagues in Child Development shows how early this takes hold: process praise given by parents to one- to three-year-olds predicted a growth-oriented mindset and a willingness to take on challenges five years later.
Instead of (person praise) | Better (process praise) | Why |
|---|---|---|
“You're so clever!” | “You kept working at that until it held.” | Makes effort visible rather than talent |
“You're a wonderful painter.” | “You used three different blues.” | Describes instead of judging |
“Well done!” | “You tried it this way first and then another way.” | Names the strategy, not the result |
“You're a good helper.” | “Thank you for clearing the table.” | Avoids a label that can be lost |
“Good girl.” | “You waited until Emil had finished.” | Refers to behaviour, not to the person |
Common Mistake
Inflated praise for insecure children. Eddie Brummelman and his team demonstrated across three studies that adults give children with low self-esteem inflated praise twice as often as they give it to children with high self-esteem – out of the well-meant reflex to compensate.
The effect was the opposite of what was hoped for. Children with low self-esteem who received inflated praise (“You're incredibly good at this”) subsequently chose the easier task. Brummelman's explanation: anyone told they were incredibly good believes they will have to be incredibly good every time – and would rather avoid any risk at all.
The difference often comes down to a single word. “You're good at this” is ordinary praise. “You're incredibly good at this” is inflated.
Nothing builds self-efficacy as reliably as the experience of having managed something alone. And nothing is prevented as systematically in daily life as exactly that – usually for lack of time, sometimes out of care.
Maria Montessori's formula “help me to do it myself” is therefore not sentimental pedagogy but a precise instruction: help, yes, but only once the child signals it, and only as much as is needed. Putting on a coat takes a three-year-old four minutes. It takes you twenty seconds. Those four minutes are the actual lesson.
In practice that means building in the buffer instead of taking over the task. Getting up ten minutes earlier is an investment in your child's self-esteem – and, if we are honest, in your own nerves as well.
Practical Tip
The five-second rule for helping: when your child is stuck on something, count silently to five before you step in. Very often the situation resolves itself within those five seconds.
And if it does not: ask “Would you like me to help?” rather than simply helping. The child keeps control – and therefore keeps the success when it works.
A child who experiences mistakes as catastrophes will avoid challenges. A child who experiences mistakes as a normal part of learning will seek them out. The difference is created almost entirely in one very short moment: in the first second after the mishap, before anyone has said anything.
In that second children read the adult's face. They are not checking how bad the knocked-over cup is – they are checking how bad it is evidently meant to be. An audible intake of breath, a wince, an “Oh no!” is enough for a three-year-old to file the incident as significant. Anyone who has watched a toddler start crying only after seeing the startled adults knows the mechanism.
Three responses help reliably. First: name what happened without evaluating it. “The cup has tipped over” rather than “Must you always wriggle about?”. Second: move straight into the solution and involve the child in it. “Where's the cloth?” turns a mishap into a task – and tasks can be managed. Third, and this is the most effective part: make your own mistakes visible.
The third point is the one most often underestimated. Children draw their conclusions about mistakes not from what we tell them about mistakes, but from how we handle our own. A loud “Oops, I've put in salt instead of sugar – let's do that again” is a complete lesson in how to treat mistakes, and it takes under thirty seconds. The same goes for apologies: a child who sees an adult come back and say “I shouted too loudly earlier, I'm sorry” learns two things – that mistakes happen, and that relationships can withstand them.
What matters here is getting the dose right in the other direction too. Playing down a mishap that genuinely upset the child has an effect much like dramatising it, only inverted. If your child is honestly sad about something they have broken, that sadness deserves acknowledgement before the cloth appears.
“It's not that bad” is well meant and lands with the child as a contradiction: I am feeling something very distinctly, and the person I trust most is telling me that this feeling is not warranted. Repeated over years, it produces something that self-esteem research regards as a root of low self-worth – a fundamental mistrust of one's own perception.
The alternative takes five seconds longer and has two steps: mirror first, then act. “You're disappointed that the tower fell over. I understand that. Shall we build it again?” In that single exchange the child experiences three things: my feeling is real, it is allowed, and it passes.
There is more behind this than politeness. Young children do not yet have the neurological maturity to regulate strong feelings alone – they need an adult who stays calm and carries the feeling with them. Professionals call this co-regulation. Naming the feeling also hands the child the tool to name it themselves later. And a child who can say “I'm angry” no longer has to throw things to say it.
One widespread misunderstanding belongs here. Acknowledging a feeling does not mean giving in to the demand. The two can be cleanly separated, and it is precisely in that separation that the educational value lies. “You're angry that we're leaving now. You're allowed to be. We're going all the same.” The child receives recognition for what they are experiencing and, at the same time, the dependability of a limit. Mirror the feeling and then cave in, and you convey something quite different – namely that strong feelings are a bargaining tool.
And finally: not every feeling needs a conversation. Sometimes a hand on the back and silence is enough. Children whose emotions are constantly put into words and analysed eventually experience that as another demand being made of them.
Children distinguish very precisely between presence and attention. Ten minutes of undivided attention with no phone within reach does more than two hours half-alongside on the sofa. What counts is regularity, not duration – a fixed daily slot beats the extended Sunday afternoon.
The most effective format is surprisingly undemanding and nonetheless hard for many adults: the child decides what is played, and you follow. No suggestions, no improvements, no learning agenda, no questions in an examining tone. If your child decides that the giraffe sits in the fire engine, the giraffe sits in the fire engine.
One technique helps here that is standard in play therapy and works just as well in the living room: describe rather than comment. “You're putting the blue brick right at the top” instead of “Oh, how lovely!”. It sounds wooden at first but has a precise effect – the child notices that you really are looking, and is not being judged. In those ten minutes they experience all four sources of self-esteem at once: belonging, autonomy, mattering, and the experience of being interesting enough to hold someone's attention.
Two practical notes. Announce the beginning and the end – “I've got ten minutes just for you” and “Two more minutes” – because that makes the time countable and dependable for the child. And do not make it conditional on good behaviour. Attention that has to be earned is exactly the kind of attention out of which conditional self-esteem grows.
It is worth looking honestly at which child actually gets this time day to day. Usually it is the easy one. The demanding child takes up more time, but predominantly in conflict – and therefore receives a disproportionate amount of negative attention and very little of the warm kind.
Nothing tells a child “I think you're capable” as plainly as a real job. The word “real” matters: if a task is only pretending, the child spots it at once. The table has to be genuinely laid, the carrot genuinely prepared, the letter genuinely posted. An invented make-work task produces no sense of competence, only the feeling of not being taken seriously.
For a task to carry weight it needs three qualities. It has to be visible – someone must notice if it has not been done. It should recur, because competence grows out of repetition rather than one-off events. And it has to sit just beyond current ability: easy enough to succeed, hard enough to feel different afterwards.
Age | Suitable responsibility | What the child takes from it |
|---|---|---|
1–2 years | Putting the nappy in the bin, fetching shoes | “I'm part of what happens here.” |
2–3 years | Helping lay the table, sorting laundry, watering plants | “I can contribute something.” |
3–4 years | Packing their own Znüni, washing the salad | “People rely on me.” |
4–5 years | Dictating the shopping list, looking after a younger child | “I am needed.” |
5–6 years | Packing their own bag, preparing a simple meal | “I can manage on my own.” |
The hardest part comes after the task. A table laid by a four-year-old looks different from a table laid by an adult, and the temptation to make a quick adjustment is considerable.
Common Mistake
Quietly putting it right. Straightening the forks, refolding the laundry or “just quickly” correcting the drawing turns a moment of success into a criticism – without a word being said. Children notice it reliably, and the message reads: the way you do it is not good enough.
If the result genuinely will not do, say so openly and matter-of-factly and put it right together. Anything else undermines precisely what the task was meant to build.
The reverse also applies: responsibility is not a one-way escalator. A child who permanently takes on tasks beyond them – continuous care of a sibling, for instance – experiences not competence but pressure. The line runs where the child can no longer ensure success themselves.
It sounds paradoxical at first: limits strengthen self-esteem. The connection becomes clear if you change perspective. A child without dependable limits has to keep testing their environment to find out what applies. That costs energy and creates uncertainty. A child with clear limits knows where they stand and can put that same energy into exploring – that is, into exactly the experiences from which self-efficacy grows.
The combination is what matters. In her research on parenting styles, Diane Baumrind distinguished two dimensions that vary independently of each other: warmth and demandingness. Their combination yields four patterns – and only one of them reliably supports self-esteem.
Style | Warmth | Clear expectations | Effect on self-esteem |
|---|---|---|---|
Authoritative | high | high | Favourable: security plus confidence |
Authoritarian | low | high | Outward compliance, inward insecurity |
Permissive | high | low | Lack of orientation, low frustration tolerance |
Neglectful | low | low | The least favourable starting point for self-esteem |
Neither warmth nor clarity carries on its own. Only together do they produce what children need: someone who likes them and still does not allow everything.
Three rules follow for everyday life. First: few limits, but dependable ones. Ten rules that half apply are more unsettling than three that always apply. Second: the limit applies to the behaviour, never to the person. “I won't let you hit” is a limit; “You're a bad child” is a verdict on the child's worth – and that is exactly the distinction this whole article turns on. Third: announce it, then follow through. A limit that falls after the third protest has taught the child that three protests are enough.
In Short
Why limits are not punishments. A limit describes in advance what applies and is predictable: “If you play with the ball in the living room, I'll put it away.”
A punishment comes afterwards, often depends on the adult's mood and bears no logical relation to the behaviour. Limits give security. Unpredictable consequences produce the opposite.
Comparison is the quiet killer of self-esteem in family life, especially between siblings. “Look, your sister manages it” creates no motivation but a ranking – and every ranking has losers. The remark also cuts both ways: it weakens the child it is aimed at and burdens the praised one, who now has to defend the top spot.
Comparisons that harden into roles are particularly consequential. In many families unspoken labels build up over the years: the sensible one, the wild one, the sporty one, the sensitive one. Such labels are convenient because they organise daily life. For the child they become a description of their nature – and therefore something they can neither leave behind nor develop beyond. Anyone known as “the messy one” has little reason to tidy up.
Comparisons also often happen unintentionally. A child who overhears a sibling's progress being described on the phone draws their own conclusions. The waiting-room comparison too – “he's already swimming at four” – lands reliably with the child.
The alternative is comparison with the child's own earlier ability. “Last month you still needed help with that” refers to the same yardstick the child feels anyway, creates no competition and makes development visible. Photographs and collected work do a remarkable amount of this job – last year's scribble next to today's drawing is a more convincing argument than any amount of encouragement.
And when the child compares themselves? From about the age of four they do it anyway, regardless of what adults say. “Ben can already ride a bike” then needs no contradiction but a frame: “Yes, Ben can do that already. You can already swim. Everyone learns different things first.” That does not qualify the feeling but the conclusion – and the conclusion is what counts.
Effective exercises for building self-esteem are short, close to everyday life and repeatable. Fixed rituals do more than one-off activities: a daily look back, a weekly job and regular undivided playtime.
Ritual | How it works | Time needed | Builds |
|---|---|---|---|
Today's achievement | In the evening: “What did you do today that was still difficult yesterday?” | 2 minutes | Sense of competence |
The courage story | Tell them about a situation of your own where you pushed through your own hesitation | 3 minutes | Attitude to mistakes, role modelling |
Child-led playtime | 10 minutes in which the child decides everything and you comment only descriptively | 10 minutes | Mattering, autonomy |
The family job | One fixed task per week that is genuinely needed | minimal | Belonging, responsibility |
Looking back at photos | Going through old pictures: “Back then you couldn't walk yet” | 5 minutes | Awareness of their own development |
The daily choice | Leave at least one genuine choice to the child every day (carrot or cucumber?) | 0 minutes | Autonomy |
Making amends | After a conflict, actively come back and put into words what happened | 3 minutes | Unconditional belonging |
How to Go About It
Four steps to a ritual that lasts
Every stage has its own route to self-esteem: basic trust forms in the first year, autonomy in the second and third, a sense of competence from three, and social comparison with peers from five.
Age | What is developing | What the child needs | Typical pitfall |
|---|---|---|---|
0–12 months | Basic trust, first experience of having an effect | Prompt, attuned responses to their signals | Worrying about “spoiling” the baby |
1–2 years | Self-recognition in the mirror, sense of self | A secure base for first excursions | Stepping in too quickly while they practise |
2–3 years | Need for autonomy, “me do it!” | Real choices, patience, time to spare | Power struggles over trivia |
3–4 years | First self-assessment, role play | Tasks just beyond current ability | Overload from too many activities on offer |
4–5 years | Social comparison begins, friendships | A stable peer group, support through conflict | Comparisons made by adults |
5–6 years | Achievement-based self-image, school readiness | An environment tolerant of mistakes, process praise | Pressure to perform before starting school |
The most critical phase is often the one between two and three – the one popularly called the “terrible twos” and more aptly named the autonomy phase in developmental psychology. What looks like resistance here is the child's first serious attempt to assert a self of their own. Break that attempt systematically and you save time in the short run and pay in self-confidence in the long run.
In Short
Can you spoil a baby with too much attention? No. In the first twelve months that mechanism does not exist.
From a prompt response to their crying, an infant learns exactly what self-efficacy consists of: I send a signal, and the world answers. That experience is the foundation of everything that follows – and it cannot be overdosed.
Signs of low self-esteem include giving up quickly, avoiding new tasks, harsh self-criticism, excessive compliance, constantly seeking reassurance and marked sensitivity to criticism.
One thing first: individual instances of these behaviours are entirely normal at certain stages. A four-year-old who gives up on a jigsaw does not have a self-esteem problem – they have a jigsaw that is too hard. The picture only becomes meaningful through frequency and duration.
Area | Possible sign | How it shows day to day |
|---|---|---|
Achievement | Avoidance | Starts nothing new, consistently picks the easier option |
Language | Global self-devaluation | “I'm stupid” instead of “That was difficult” |
Social | Excessive compliance | Never has an opinion of their own, never says no |
Social | Withdrawal | Only watches, does not join groups |
Emotional | Sensitivity to criticism | The smallest correction leads to tears or anger |
Behaviour | Perfectionism | Tears up their own drawings, will not show anything |
Behaviour | Constant seeking of reassurance | “Is that nice? Is that good? Is that right?” |
One common misunderstanding concerns shy children. Reticence is a temperament trait, not a self-esteem problem. An introverted child who prefers to watch before joining in can have excellent self-esteem. The difference: a shy child with good self-esteem goes in eventually. A child with low self-esteem stays outside, even when they would like to go in.
Important
When professional support makes sense. If self-critical remarks persist for weeks, if your child withdraws increasingly, if sleep, appetite or pleasure in long-standing interests noticeably decline – then raise it.
The first ports of call in Switzerland are your paediatrician, the parent and infant advisory service (Mütter- und Väterberatung) and, from Kindergarten onwards, your municipality's school psychology service. This is not a big step and not a diagnosis, but a conversation. This article is no substitute for individual professional advice.
The most common mistakes in building self-esteem are: blanket praise, helping too soon, comforting by talking feelings away, comparisons with other children, and confusing self-esteem with achievement.
Works | Does not work, or backfires |
|---|---|
Describing concretely what the child has done | “Brilliant!”, “Great!”, “Wonderful!” as a running commentary |
Pausing five seconds, then asking whether help is wanted | Taking over at once because it is quicker |
Naming the feeling, then acting together | “It's really not that bad” |
Relating progress to the child's own earlier ability | Comparison with siblings or other children |
Showing affection independently of results | Tying approval to achievement |
Making your own mistakes visible and correcting them | Wanting to appear faultless in front of the child |
Criticising the behaviour | Criticising the person (“You're always so …”) |
Offering tasks just beyond current ability | Only offering tasks that are certain to succeed |
The last point deserves a remark. Many parents protect their child from failure by offering only what is sure to work. It is well meant – but the message the child receives is that they are no longer thought capable. Growth happens in the narrow band that Lev Vygotsky described as the zone of proximal development: just beyond current ability, but reachable with support.
The following examples are composite observations from professional practice. They are here because they show something guidebook lists rarely convey: how slowly this goes – and how reliably.
A composite example from everyday nursery life.
Lina likes to draw, but for some weeks now she has screwed up every picture as soon as a line goes wrong. To the adults' encouragement – “But it's turned out lovely!” – she responds with still more frustration.
The team changes nothing about Lina's access to materials. It changes the language. Instead of judging pictures, they describe: “You've made very fine lines here and thick ones there.” Instead of contradicting her frustration: “You don't like that line. Do you want to leave it, or take a new sheet?” And the practitioner draws alongside her – visibly imperfectly, with a loud “Oops, I meant that to be different.”
In the second week Lina still screws up her drawings. In the fourth she sets one aside instead of tearing it up. After about two months she says, for the first time, a sentence that changes everything: “That's not finished yet.”
What worked was not the encouragement. What worked was that nobody disputed her judgement of her own picture – and that she saw how an adult deals with a mistake of their own.
A composite example from everyday nursery life.
Elias wants to put his coat on himself and cannot manage it. At home this ends in an argument every morning, because the train is waiting. At nursery the problem does not arise – for a banal reason: twice as long is allowed for getting ready.
The team adds only one small thing: the hood trick. Coat on the floor, hood towards the child, step in, arms up, swing it over. Elias needs eleven days to get it. On the twelfth he puts his coat on, turns round and shows it to every child at the coat pegs.
His parents adopt the trick and start getting up ten minutes earlier. Three weeks later they report that the mornings have changed – and not only where the coat is concerned.
What worked here was not a pedagogical measure. It was time. Self-efficacy cannot be accelerated; you can only give it the room in which it forms.
A composite example from everyday nursery life.
Sofia comes from a Spanish-speaking family into a German-English group. Within a few weeks she understands almost everything, but for months she does not speak a word. In the group she keeps to the edge. Her parents fear she is out of her depth.
The team deliberately works through competence rather than through language. Sofia is given a job that requires no speaking and that everyone can see: she is in charge of the Znüni bell. On top of that, her first-language knowledge is made visible – the group learns the Spanish word for “thank you” from her.
In the seventh week Sofia speaks in the group for the first time. Six months later she switches between three languages in play.
The point is not the bilingualism. The point is the order. Sofia first needed a role in which she was competent – only then did the language come. That is exactly why, in multilingual settings, it is decisive that every child has a consistent key person and a care approach that treats their first language as a resource rather than a deficit. Where language support is tied to self-esteem rather than to performance expectations, the silent phase is not an alarm signal but a normal intermediate step.
Childcare settings influence self-esteem considerably, because it is there that children encounter peers, conflict and experiences of competence outside the family. What matters are consistent key persons, small groups, participation and an attitude that tolerates mistakes.
If your child is in childcare several days a week, they spend a substantial part of their waking time there. During that time they encounter exactly the three things that are naturally harder to produce at home: a group of peers, real conflicts with negotiated outcomes, and adults who are not emotionally invested when the tower falls over.
The Swiss Orientation Framework names “belonging and participation” and “strengthening and empowerment” as two of its six guiding principles. These are not decorative phrases but criteria you can check. You can ask about them very directly when you visit.
Checklist for Your Visit
Ten questions that reveal how a setting handles self-esteem
On questions 4 and 5 it pays to persist. If a team can name concrete wordings off the cuff, the attitude is embedded in daily practice. If all you get is general statements like “we praise a lot”, there is usually no considered approach behind it.
On question 8 a simple rule applies: a setting that systematically observes and documents every child's development can support them individually. One that does not, cannot – however good its intentions. At Little Star Day School, for instance, every child keeps a personal development portfolio from day one, collecting observations, progress and pieces of work, and it forms the basis of the parent reviews. Instruments like this are not an end in themselves: they make visible where a child is strong – and it is precisely that visibility from which self-esteem grows.
In Short
Why group size has more to do with self-esteem than you might think. In a large group a child has to compete for attention. Whoever is loud gets it. Whoever is reticent goes unnoticed – and learns that their contribution evidently counts for less.
In small groups a practitioner can also notice the quiet child, pick up on their interests and give them a role. So always ask about the actual staff-to-child ratio in the specific group, not the average across the whole setting.
Praise the route rather than the person, let your child do things themselves, name feelings instead of talking them away, and hand over real tasks. Regularity does more than individual measures.
Measurable self-esteem can be demonstrated from about the age of five, but its foundations are laid considerably earlier. Already in the first year of life, dependable responses to a child's signals lay the groundwork for self-efficacy.
Self-esteem describes whether a child experiences themselves as valuable as a person. Self-confidence describes whether they believe they can manage particular tasks. Self-confidence grows through success, self-esteem through unconditional belonging.
Describe concretely what your child has done rather than judging it. “You practised for a long time” does more than “You're so clever”. Avoid intensifiers such as “incredibly” or “perfect”.
Yes. Inflated praise has been shown to lead children with low self-esteem to choose easier tasks and avoid challenges. They fear they will no longer live up to the high expectations that have been raised.
Do not contradict them. Take up what they have said and make the task smaller: “The whole tower is difficult. Shall we do the first two bricks together?” Experiences of success work; reassurance on its own does not.
Typical signs are giving up quickly, avoiding new tasks, global self-devaluation such as “I'm stupid”, marked sensitivity to criticism and constantly seeking reassurance. What is meaningful is the accumulation over several weeks.
Not necessarily. Reticence is a temperament trait, not a self-esteem problem. What matters is whether your child joins the group of their own accord after a period of watching, or stays outside for good.
Both together. Children need dependable limits for orientation and real choices within those limits for autonomy. What works is the combination of plenty of warmth and clear expectations.
Comparisons create a ranking rather than motivation and weaken the self-esteem of both children. More effective is comparison with the child's own earlier ability: “Last month you still needed help with that.”
Yes, considerably. In the group your child encounters peers, conflict and experiences of competence outside the family. What matters are consistent key persons, small groups, a say in decisions and a tolerant approach to mistakes.
No. In the first year of life that mechanism does not exist. A prompt response to a child's signals conveys the fundamental experience of self-efficacy: I send a signal, and the world answers it.
Building self-esteem in children is less a project than a stance. It does not arise in conversations about self-esteem but at the coat pegs, at the craft table and in the row over the green spade.
What you may let go of is the idea that you could give your child a good feeling about themselves. You cannot give it. You can only create the conditions in which it forms: enough time for things to succeed on their own. Enough security for mistakes not to feel threatening. Enough attention for your child to experience being interesting. And enough restraint for the success to be genuinely theirs.
The rest is repetition. A child who experiences over years that they are seen, that they can make things happen and that they still belong after a day that went wrong builds from it what the Bern research was able to trace across ninety years of life: an underlying security that grows with them.
And one more thing: you are not doing this alone. If your child spends part of the week being cared for outside the family, that time helps shape their picture of themselves. Ask the same searching questions there as you do at home – about key persons, about group sizes, about the way praise is given. A setting that sees every child individually and trusts them to manage things themselves takes a good deal of the work off your hands.
Self-Confidence at Little Star
Self-confidence is one of our four core values – alongside respect, motivation and care. For us that means children may try new things, are encouraged, and experience their successes being noticed and celebrated. Not loudly, but quietly and with inner strength.
At our four sites in Wollishofen, Sihlcity, Kilchberg and Zug, small groups with consistent key persons accompany children from six months to six years – bilingually, with a personal development portfolio and plenty of room to manage things themselves.
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