Teach My Heart: Why Too Much Nurturing Can Hurt Your Child’s Self Esteem

One afternoon Merilee was holding a meeting in her kitchen when her three year old walked in and began to pick out supplies to make a sandwich…on the floor. Aghast, a woman at the meeting exclaimed, “Merrilee! Your son is making a sandwich on the bare floor!”

Merrilee was quick to respond, “I know. Isn’t that fantastic! He just learned how to make sandwiches this week.” Merrilee asserts that a parent who nurtures his or her children too much can be communicating to the child that they’re incompetent.

Too much nurturing (doing for your child what they could do for themselves) can cripple a child’s self esteem, sending the messages that they’re not smart enough, reliable enough, old enough, responsible enough, or worth your trust. Parenting must be balanced.

Parents who keep their nurturing focused towards future confidence and competence do their children a favor. Merilee points out that she could have made her son’s sandwich on the clean counter but she would have been sending him the message, “You can’t do this –you’re too little.” Instead she praised him before he walked off with his dusty sandwich. She says, “This parental attitude conveys a singularly important message to the child: ‘You are valuable and capable and worthwhile.’”

Read more advice from Merrilee Browne Boyack in her entertaining and instructive book, The Parenting Breakthrough. Fun and practical, author Merrilee Boyack has readers laughing out loud as well as feeling grateful for her parenting advice. She's a mom who's spent the last 22 years in the real-life work of parenting. “I have four sons, 13, 15, 17 and 22. You know what that means,” she writes. “I'm an absolute expert in raising children 23 and older.” Merrilee offers the “Parenting Breakthrough” for training kids — from toddlers to teens — to be independent. It includes ideas for how to teach kids about money, investing, debt, and the importance of earning their own money; how to help children with emotional and spiritual development; and much more.