My Tween has lost his Self Esteem – Memoirs #1

My Tween has no self esteem

It’s so stressful sometimes watching your children feeling low and down about themselves. My youngest son has always had a hard time at school albeit in some cases his quirky personality and style actually makes him a target to other children most of the time. Only in the last few months he has been very quiet a little different lets say and we eventually got to the bottom of that when my husband found out he was being bullied by a girl at school.

Whilst the bullying was taking place I had noticed signs of him feeling down and not really wanting to go to school and he would just not give me a reason as to why. Like I said my husband is a little more subtle than I am and whilst they were on their journey to school my son told his dad about the problems he had been having.

A girl in his class had been making fun of him and at one stage told him he would not be here the next year at school, when my son asked why she replied “because I am going to kill you before then”. It was the day after this had happened when he must have realised that he need our help! he was also told that he was ‘FAT’ which was done ever so discreetly whilst he attempted to get passed the bullies chair. Since starting at high school the lovably little boy who got along with everyone is starting to fade away and now he seems to be a little more distant and certainly retains his feelings making us as parents as little aware of situations as possible.

More recently only this week my son has started to tell me he thinks he is ugly! When I have asked why he thinks this, he clams up and says “I Just think I am”. I have told him over and over again he is not, but he genuinely believes he is. I have asked him what’s wrong but he tells me nothing, which is extremely upsetting. Some of the things he thinks he has wrong with him are that he has spots, a big chin of all things and he even doesn’t like his eyebrows!

My youngest son is certainly not the type of child who says things like this. As I said good night one evening he said to me totally out of the blue “I wish I had more confidence, because I am not very confident mum”. Although, I have an older son who is now eighteen he never had any problems at school especially related to self esteem issues and bullying. I don’t know what to do at the moment but I know one thing I have to help my smallest little soldier get his confidence back and help him in any way I can. I don’t want him to change his personality in any way shape or form to suit others, so that is certainly not an option as I want him to retain everything about himself as possible.

I would love to hear if you have had any issues like this with your children. I certainly know this can happen at any age but I would love to know how you handled the situation if you are willing to share.

 

Rachel X