Self-esteem

The only way I know how to build what is called self-esteem is by organizing a set of accomplishments. There are no words, no compliments, no counselling that can build up - only truth. When the child sees him/herself as worthy - as having accomplished the worthwhile - “self-esteem” grows. Remember, small shoots of growth can be trampled by evil.

Never, Never lie or exagerrate in the hopes of building self-esteem - you only become a liar and remove yourself from possible effectiveness.

God Bless. Pray for the child. Ken

I doubt it’s all from the home. Some of it has to come from within the child himself. Why otherwise would he cling to this belief even in the face of his success in school?

Exactly how much success is he experiencing? I’d point that out to him. I’d also point out to him that he’s not being fair to himself when he deprecates himself. His success is proof of that.

That kind of counsel can make a difference.

Do you have regular contact with the mother? Deal with her by sitting and talking with her. Tell her of your concern in regard to her son’s self esteem issues and point out to her what success he is having. What do you see as his future in school? Discuss the bright future you see for him ahead.

She needs to be helped to have a different image of her son. In fairness to her, having a son diagnosed with ‘autistic tendencies’ is quite a blow. Autistic children have a great challenge and often don’t go on to live independent lives. If you feel strongly that her son can go on to do that, tell her that.

It might come as very welcome news.

You hit the nail on the head. Teachers need to read over and over again what you said.

Emily,

GEEZ, Why don’t you work with my son? It is exactly the opposite situation. I have come across teachers who spend absolutely no time focusing on his areas of strength. I think it is great that you are focusing on his strengths. That is the way to develop self esteem. I think low self image can be more damaging than LD. I think that low self esteem develops not from the LD itself but from exactly what you said, people who can not see the strengths behind the disability. I have found this to be something people either get or don’t get. It seems to have nothing to do with training.

Tell that parent to read Mel Levine’s, “All Kinds Of Minds.”

And thanks for spreading the word about the importance of this approach.

Yes, but you can find and identify the areas of strengths and achievement in this child who has some serious gifts.

If you focus only on what they can’t do so will they.

I agree that false praise is useless. There usually is something genuine to praise in every human being.

First, I totally 100% agree with Ken.

Second, yes, the home influence can be very very damaging. The home can undo almost everything you do in the school.

This is hard, and I mayself am not at all good at it, but I’ve seen people succeed: find some way to work on the mother that is phrased positively, not negatively. Don’t tell her she’s hurting her son; that just gets her even more defensive, even more me against the whole world. Remember that she has to deal with this kid every day, all his life; she raised him to school age and dealt with all his problems the best way she could figure out with the limited knowledge she had and with all the contradictory and harmful advice given out for difficult children. She probably fought tooth and nail to get him services. Now if you want to take those services away and tell her she’s doing the wrong thing, sure she gets mad. So you try to look at it from a different angle. See if you can get books or articles about managing children by a positive rewards system. True, many of these articles make me gag, but it would be an improvement for him. Explain to her that this is the latest development in research on treating autism (and that is close enough to the truth of the majority of systems) and that she should try to find ways to improve his behaviour by ignoring the negative if it’s not dangerous, and focusing on rewarding him and praising him when he does things right. You won’t change her entirely, but even a little bit would help.
As I said, I’m not at all good at this myself, but I’ve seen good people make it work.

I never tell my son he can’t do anything. I do tell him when he is feeling down (dumb) what all his strengths are and that we will help him.

I don’t think kids want sympathy, they want help.

Good luck.

I do feel very sympathetic towards his mum. She also has an older son who is severely autistic and is in a residential special school. She had to fight for years even to get a diagnosis for him. To find your other son has similar problems, although not to nearly the same degree, must be absolutely devastating. I feel that she is in battle mode and is unable to see that for this child, things are beginning to come together.

We are not trying to take services away from him - the opposite in fact, we’re getting outside help for him re: his self-esteem etc. Unfortunately we don’t have a lot of direct contact with his mum. The last meeting we had with her was a review - she sat and listened to positive reports coming form all directions - speech and languauge therapist, child psychologist, myself and other aides, teachers, the special needs co-ordinator - but it all seemed to go in one ear and out the other. She left the meeting saying that unless we provided support for her child in everything, we would be hearing from lawyers. What can we do? Usually, the only contact we have is terribly negative letters about how he is at home and how bad he feels all the time (and all the things we are doing wrong).

At present the child has a dictaphone, which he uses to record important dates and information, as well as homework. He was having trouble remembering what he had to do at home when it was written down. The system seems to be working well, and I also use it to leave positive messages about acheivements during the day, and to recap lessons briefly so he can remember what he has done. These are as much for his mum as him, but we have yet to hear anything from her regarding them.

It does seem that he is a different child at home. At school he is a joy (my favorite, although I didn’t say that!). He is well-behaved, enthusiastic, tries incrediby hard, and is very willing. At home he sounds like he is almost depressed the whole time. He says he has no friends - I think that’s more to do with his perception of himself, as I often see him playing soccer at lunch time, joining in with the same group who are always pleased to have him. He does reading withdrawal with another LD child (dyslexic), and they get on really well - I also regularly see them together having ‘normal’ conversations outside lessons.
Could it be that his behaviour at is becoming less of an inbuilt thing and more of a learned response to please his mum? Just a thought, feel free to SHOUT at me if it’s rubbish!

I personally don’t agree with the autistic tendencies diagnosis from what I have seen of him, although I’m certainly not a professional. It’s not actually mentioned on any of his paper work, it’s something his mum raised shortly after he started with us. If they are there then I think they must be pretty mild - seems more like general shyness and lack of confidence to me.

If anyone has dealt with a similar case to this, or has any ideas/hints/tips on how to help us deal with his mum (and I do want to help - just don’t know how at the moment) then PLEASE tell me!

Thanks for your comments.

Seems pretty fundamental to me - if you don’t think you can do something, you won’t do it. QED. I don’t understand why this is so difficult for some people. Evryone is good at something, usually more than one thing. Once you can find it (and sometimes convince the person that yes, this IS something they are good at, despite their problems with other things), lots of other things often fall into place. No intervention program of any kind for LDs is going to work unless the kid wants to succeed. The best way to want to succeed is to have experienced success in something before - you then have a goal (I want to feel like that again) and working with a goal is far more rewarding!

Another example from our school - disruptive girl, abusive, recalcitrant - huge difficulties with literacy (probably dyslexic) and school in general. No-one wants to teach her, she’s a nightmare in class. Often suspended. Discovers she’s actually really good at maths. Gets moved up into top group (with literacy support). BINGO! She now wants to try in every lesson, her behaviour and attitude have completely flipped. She still struggles enormously with anything to do with reading/writing, but now she’s actually making progress as she wants to succeed at something else. Isn’t it obvious?

Hi Emily,

I’ve been reading this thread with great interest. Sometimes I wonder if you aren’t in our school system talking about me! :-) I know you’re not.

As for the different behavior at home - often kids will work really, really hard to be good at school (especially ones with autism spectrum disorders). Then they fall apart when they get home to release the pent up frustration from holding it together all day at school. My son does this sometimes - and during the summers he is the nicest, most considerate, kind, caring involved child you would ever want to meet. The school system doesn’t agree with the autistic tendencies for my son either (diagnosed NLD) but they don’t see him in a dynamic environment - which is where he will be for the rest of his life once his school career is finished. I’m trying now to prepare him for that - and while I am not asking the school to do everything, I am asking them to help me - so we can maintain consistency at school and at home. There are some things I am able to teach him, and some things I am not able to teach him.

My battles with the school system have been to try to get him appropriate REMEDIATION, rather than accommodations - so that he CAN be independent. I spend a lot of time at home going through his work with him to make sure he understands it, correcting homework, reteaching concepts from school. This is one of the reasons he IS so successful in school - and one of the reasons the school continually tells me he is doesn’t need services. He is the youngest of 4 children, and I know the difference.

How long was the mother involved in special ed before you met her? If she had so much trouble with her older son, she might have reached some limit of tolerance for the school system. One of my pet peeves is that the schools look at test scores and determines services - without even meeting the child. I know my son better than anyone else in the world, including his father. I am also well-educated and have been through all the most current research for his various diagnoses - because I choose to take the time to do it. I know the school system personnel don’t have the luxury of time for my child that I do, and I don’t expect them to - but I would like them to respect my input rather than constantly ignoring me and being denigrating.

If you want to work with this mother, rather than against her - listen to her. Don’t let anyone continually tell her that she is wrong. I’m sure she is aware of her son’s strengths and proud of them. I am also certain that she is constantly worried about needed remediation - and when that doesn’t happen she can’t focus on anything else - so to the school it looks like she is ignoring her son’s strengths.

Meet her half way with her requests for services - allow her to focus on progress through those services and relax. Then she might start to trust you and be able to accept some of your comments. But she has been down a long, hard path already - probably has been lied to by the school several times (not you, but others - maybe even with her older son) - and it will take a lot to build that trust. Without it, you will continually be at odds re: helping the child - and that is what is most important.

PS - I’m delighted he is your favorite. I’m sure you are a great teacher for him.