Building self-esteem - camps

Camping Magazine, Jan-Feb, 1997 by Kris Lishner, Judy Myers

Through the camp experience

Like many youth-serving institutions, camps are trying to strengthen and better explain the contributions they make in young people's lives. Our outcome-oriented society challenges camps to interpret for parents and others how they help meet children's basic developmental needs. For camps to create developmentally appropriate programs for youth, camp directors need to understand child and youth development.

Understanding human development, including the terminology and concepts developmental scientists and educators use, is a basic professional and ethical responsibility for adults who work with youth. Human development is a complex and multifaceted process. Camp professionals often identify self-esteem as a significant contribution camps can make.

The nature of self-esteem

Most child development experts and scientists agree that high self-esteem can be the most important developmental task in childhood. Camp staff are aware of self-esteem's importance; however, information about the essential characteristics and determinants of positive self-esteem is less well known.

Child-development experts generally categorize self-esteem within the emotional/social domain of development. This domain includes feelings, beliefs, temperament, relationships with others, self-concept, gender identity, and moral development. Young people's levels of social, emotional, physical, and cognitive development interact with their environmental experiences and messages to shape self-esteem.

Self-concept is generally considered the cognitive, non-judgmental part of a child's basic sense of self. Children develop this self-description as they mature. A child's self-concept could include awareness of being a girl, having brown skin, or being the oldest in a large family.

Self-esteem consists of the evaluative judgments children make about their characteristics and qualities, including their attitude about themselves and their sense of worthiness. According to Stanley Coopersmith, a well-known early researcher, self-esteem reflects the extent to which people believe themselves to be capable, significant, successful, and worthy. Their self-esteem could include self-judgments, such as being a poor student, a good baseball player, a homely child, or a trustworthy friend.

Parents, beginning professionals, and camp staff often confuse self-confidence and self-esteem. Self-confidence involves the child's belief that the he can successfully carry out a behavior or a task that produces a desired result. Campers could be self-confident about activities they know well, but still have overall low self-esteem. In contrast, campers with high self-esteem might have less self-confidence accomplishing a task they dislike or know little about.

Characteristics of positive self-esteem

* Display initiative, independence, curiosity, confidence.

* Show pride in their work.

* Trust their ideas

* Set goals independently.

* Explore and ask questions.

* Initiate activities with confidence.

* Adapt to change or stress.

* Handle teasing and criticism.

* Tolerate frustration.

* Are comfortable with transitions.

* Can adjust to change.

* Describe self in positive terms.

* Have a cheerful mood.

Characteristics of low self-esteem

* Do not display initiative, independence, curiosity, or confidence.

* Do not trust their ideas.

* Do not show pride in their work.

* Lack confidence to initiate or approach activities.

* Lack curiosity.

* Do not explore.

* Hang back or withdraw, sit apart.

* Have difficulty reacting to change or stress.

* Show immature behavior when facing stress.

* Give up easily when frustrated.

* React inappropriately to accidents.

* Describe self in negative terms.

* Display a depressed mood.

Differences between children with high and low self-esteem extend beyond personal or behavioral characteristics. Coopersmith points out "pervasive and significant differences in the experiential worlds and social behaviors" of children with differing levels of self-esteem. Those with positive self-esteem attract favorable adult attention and reinforcement. These children are more appealing than those with negative or low self-esteem, who may be less responsive and more difficult to work With. Children with high self-esteem usually receive supportive feedback that further enhances their self-esteem. Adults and peers often find children with low self-esteem difficult to be around. These children receive mostly negative feedback on which to base their self-evaluations.

Changes in self-esteem as children develop

Around age eight, children begin developing the cognitive and social skills needed to evaluate themselves in general terms. This middle-childhood group can describe themselves as clumsy, smart, athletic, helpful, truthful, hyper, talkative, or as good students. Their descriptors include more abstract characteristics compared to the individual, concrete, observable behaviors and attributes preschoolers use.

Children receive considerable feedback and information from adults and peers after they enter school. They have the cognitive and social skills to accurately compare themselves with peers and others. Partly due to this group's newly emerged capacity for self-evaluation and the vast feedback they receive, developmentalists recognize these middle years as very important in developing self-esteem.