Now that I am a mother I am always thinking about how my actions and decisions will affect my daughter and her life. It's no longer all about me, there is a new focus. There are a lot of practicalities to consider, I think about where we will live, what kind of school she will go to. I think about how I can incorporate the swedish language and culture in her life. I think about how I should best enable her to have close relationships with her grandmother and uncles in sweden. I also think about how my actions and decisions will affect the way she feels herself. If I am worrying about my weight and displaying negative feelings towards my body, what signals am I sending to her? If I take drastic actions to change my appearance (dieting, cosmetic procedures such as botox or even surgery) am I showing her that if she isn't "pretty" or young looking, she isn't good enough?
The big one for me is how to instil high self-esteem in her. It is, as we all know, key to happiness and is the foundation of self confidence and other positive emotional characteristics. All parents want their children to have high self esteem, but HOW do we go about insuring our children get it? Self-esteem is known to be massively affected by experience in childhood, such as abuse or bereavement. But I wouldn't say it's as simple as that. I had a good childhood with loving parents. They separated when I was very young, but I never experienced negative emotions towards this (that I can remember) and my father continued to be a part of and take an interest in my life. I was always told I was loved, my mother always had time for me, listened to me and took me seriously. I had a good relationship with my siblings, was never bullied in school (on the contrary, I was always liked and had many friends) and I never went through any major traumatic events.
In spite of all this I would say I have fairly low self-esteem. I worry a lot about what people think if me, if I am good enough. For example, before posting something on my blog I will consider how it may be received and what it could infer to the reader about me as a person. I don't assume that people like me or that what I have to say is interesting. Because of this I am quite jokey, in an attempt to get people to like me. I'm scared of embarrassing myself to the extent of not wanting to do things I am not very good at (like bowling!), or attempt things I might be bad at, for fear of what people will think of me (because of this I loathed P.E and stopped going all together at the age of 13). None of this is particularly extreme or uncommon, but I would say it points towards low self-esteem. I'd like to improve this because I believe it has held me back in work and affects my relationships with other people. But mainly I'd like to improve my self-esteem so that I can in turn teach my daughter to have high self-esteem. All I have to do is figure out how to do this... Easier said than done! Hopefully as I read up on the subject I can post about my findings here, stay tuned!
(I was just about to add a disclaimer about any mistakes or repetitions in this text (typing with a baby on my lap!) but realise this is another example of second guessing myself!)
