Stop Telling Children How Good They Are

I have spent my entire career in Jewish education telling my students how good they are. I wanted them to recognize their goodness, believe in themselves, and develop healthy self-esteem.

And to be clear, I still believe deeply in the inherent worth of every person. God created each of us for a reason. Our lives have enormous value.

But while writing my new book, The Self-Esteem Trap, I began questioning one of our most deeply held assumptions: that healthy self-esteem requires us to think of ourselves as good people. I came to believe that there may be a better approach.

Instead of teaching our children to develop and maintain a positive opinion of themselves, we should teach them to accept their inherent worth—and then turn their attention away from judging themselves and toward evaluating their actions.

Because once feeling good about myself becomes the focus, I now have something I need to protect. When I fail, what does that say about me? When someone criticizes me, I need to defend myself. When someone else succeeds, perhaps his success somehow diminishes me.

The more critical message to give our children is: You are important.

Without realizing it, we may be teaching children to spend their lives monitoring and defending their self-image. Certainly, believing you are good is healthier than believing you are bad. But the hyperfocus on maintaining and defending our self-image can itself become a trap.

Furthermore, believing I am good does not necessarily demand anything from me. I can decide that I am a wonderful person and leave it there. I’m good. Great. Now what?

There is a more critical message to give our children: You are important.

God created you because He wants you here. Your life has incredible purpose. You have responsibilities. You have choices to make. You have a mission that no one else can fulfill.

Every word of Torah you learn matters. Every prayer matters. Every time you help another person, control your temper, overcome a temptation, or choose what is right when nobody is watching, it matters enormously. God cares about it.

And conversely, when you do something wrong, that matters too. Not because it proves that you are bad, but because someone whose life is important must take responsibility for his actions. If you hurt somebody, apologize. If you made a mistake, learn from it. If you committed a sin, do teshuvah—repent, repair, and return.

Consider the difference between telling a child, You are such a good boy for sharing your snack, and telling him, Do you realize what you just did? You saw that another boy didn’t have a snack, and you gave him some of yours. That was such a beautiful act of kindness. God treasures what you did.

The first compliment tells him something about himself. The second teaches him something about the enormous significance of his action.

That distinction matters.

Similarly, when a child fails, instead of rushing to protect his self-image, we can teach him something far more liberating: You did something wrong. Let’s figure out how to fix it.

There is no need for an identity crisis. There is no need to convince him that the mistake wasn’t really so bad because he is still a good kid. He can face what he did honestly because his entire identity is not standing trial.

Don’t evaluate yourself. Evaluate your actions.

Celebrate a beautiful action. Regret a wrong action. Learn from both. But don’t add the therefore.

I did something wonderful; therefore, I am wonderful. I did something terrible; therefore, I am terrible.

The problem is not the evaluation. The problem is the therefore.

That little word turns an action into a verdict about ourselves. And once we stop putting ourselves on trial, something surprising happens: we are freer to take our actions more seriously, not less.

We can celebrate the good because the good itself is precious. We can confront the bad because admitting a mistake no longer threatens our identity.

Let’s spend a little less time convincing our children how good they are and more time teaching them how much good they can do. They don’t need to spend their lives proving to themselves how good they are. They need to know how important they are—and live accordingly.

Their worth is something to accept. Their actions are something to evaluate.