Self-Esteem in Children

Self-esteem is a general experience of oneself as being congruent with personal, familial, relational, or cultural values. It is based on a person’s own [Page 1483]evaluation of and feelings about his or her overall worthiness in a certain sociocultural context. Although the popular notion of self-esteem refers to a single, stable, fixed, and coherent experience, a more complete definition of the concept recognizes that self-esteem is: (a) constituted by one’s average experience of self in a variety of contexts and therefore represents the integration of multiple ways of being; or (b) associated with one’s specific, complex, and dominant preferred way of being in the world. For example, a child may feel competent about himself on average in athletic, academic, and relational arenas of life; or ...