In praise of praise

This is a bit of a companion piece to the one on banter; a kind of opposite-of-banter type thing.

I’ve got a bit of a crush on my daughter’s teacher. It’s O.K, my husband knows about it (I think, I might have told him when I'd imbibed, one night). It’s not a big deal - he thinks the teacher looks like Mr. Tumble.
I’ve discussed it with one of the other ‘Mums’, who feels the same as me, and we think it’s because he was nice about our children.  I sat at the parent consultation yesterday (the new name for parent’s evening), listening to him sing my daughter’s praises and idly wondering if he was wearing mascara (blue eyes, inky lashes - unusual combination, non?) and reflected on how nice it was to hear positive things. Whatever anyone says, it’s great to hear that your kid is doing well because it reflects well on you, as a parent. You feel that you must be doing something right. (Of course my child is her own person and not an extension of me or anything but I can claim a bit of credit, can’t I?)

I think that I said jokingly-but-not-really to the other mother that I wanted someone to tell me that I was doing really well.

At a child information talk a few years ago a health visitor told us that you can never praise children too much. ‘Give them lots of encouragement - they can never have too much praise.’ She said.

I sometimes wonder whether, when I was growing up, the adults had been given the opposite advice - ‘For god’s sake don’t praise her neat colouring-in skills; she might get above herself’.
Someone I once worked with colluded with this; that it was a ‘thing’ when she was a child to ensure that parents didn’t give their child a ‘big head’. Affirmation was in short supply. (She had a much better job than me though, so it can’t have held her back too much)

When my friend and I watched Fatal Attraction, as teenagers, we weren’t sufficiently distracted by the vigorous sex or bunny boiling, to notice the ‘wronged wife’ character telling her young daughter that she loved her.

‘I’m going to say that to my children, when I have them.’  My friend said.

I silently agreed, not that I intended having children, but that nobody said ‘I love you’. It was seen as being overly sentimental and ‘American’ somehow.

I’m not trying to shame my parents; it was clearly a generational thing. And it is something that I struggle with a little myself; expressing affection, I’m not the most effusive person (apart from when wine is involved but I do tell my children that I love them). But it was obviously something that my friend and I craved.

Ironic then that I’ve put myself in for something which involves almost constant rejection. It’s an almost weekly occurrence to get a knock-back from an agent or a publisher. It never feels any less painful - each time is like a medicine ball in the guts (I had to stop myself from typing cannon ball there).  But I keep going back for more.

Therapy has taught me that the more of a 'core sense of self-esteem' you have, the easier it is to withstand the ‘slings and arrows’ of life. But where does this core come from in the first place? Are you born with it? Or do you need to be told, in verbal and nonverbal ways (attachment theory: http://www.simplypsychology.org/attachment.html), that you are valuable, from the moment you are born?

People who didn’t get enough affirmation when they were kids seem to be the ones most in need of it as adults. But is it even possible to redress that balance in adulthood? What I’ve observed happening, in others as well as myself, is that however many nice things you say to someone with low self-esteem, it doesn’t seem to have a lasting effect. It needs constant repetition. Or, they fall into the Groucho Marks (via Woody Allen) trap of not wanting to belong to any club that would have them as a member. In other words, they think less of you for thinking highly of them.

(BTW if you are reading this and thinking - first world problems, whining privilege etc, then sod off, I mean, consider the positive effects on society of raising happy, well adjusted children.)

I seem to have veered here, from simple praise to affirmation to, well, love. Perhaps they are all manifestations of the same thing (all wrapped up in a fuzzy, pink ball!).

Confidence is not the same as arrogance, in fact the latter could be perceived as an extreme reaction/cover-up for low self esteem.

I think that, eventually, you can redress the balance, sometimes you need need to call in the professionals (in the form of therapy), but it can be done.

In the meantime, if you see your friend sporting a rather fetching looking new hat, or roller-skating in a particularly impressive way, tell them about it!