Confession. I do not have a five-year-old. I have taught them, but I don’t quite have one yet. However, the speaker at our preschool the other night brought up a good point about the emerging self-esteem of the five-year-old.
Three and four-year-olds can be relatively fearless about trying new things. Yes, they have their worries, but peers aren’t one of them. A four-year-old will head out to the soccer field and kick a ball around, and she won’t worry at all about whether she is any good at soccer.
Five and six-year-olds are more fragile souls. They start to compare themselves to others. Now, if they kick a soccer ball and it doesn’t ever go near the net, they start to say that they are bad at soccer. They don’t want to play anymore. A five-year-old is starting to compare himself to others, and part of that comparison is feeling good or bad at different activities.
The first thing that you can do is to be hugely encouraging. A five-year-old may want to give up. Help him stick with a task and find some success at it, even if he may not be the best of the best.
The other thing that you can do to help your five-year-old’s emerging self image is to encourage your child to develop his own identity and interests. Yes, you may want your child to play the oboe and to become a world-class oboist. But if your child really wants to be a karate master, then enroll him in karate. Oboe too, if you insist. Honoring some of your child’s interests will help him feel like an individuating person, and that helps everyone’s self esteem.
Is your child starting to feel discouraged and compare himself to his peers? How do you support your child and help him try new things?