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“How many times do I have to tell you?”

“What am I ever going to do with you?”

“What’s wrong with you?”

“Don’t you ever listen?”

Imagine yourself to be a young child listening to your parents repeatedly ask you questions like these.  … If you stop for a few moments, listen to these words inside your head, and experience what it feels like, you will have a clear picture of what far too many children feel every day.

But what’s even worse than the momentary hurt you probably felt as a child are the beliefs that you probably formed if your parents used words like this day after day, year after year. You’d probably conclude: There’s something wrong with me.  I’m not good enough.  I’m not capable. Mistakes and failure are bad.

As parents we would be horrified to discover that many of our conversations with our children result in these beliefs.  Nonetheless, speaking to them this way has a significant negative impact on them, not the least of which is a negative sense of themselves due to low self-esteem.

For over 25 years we have been working with people who’ve had a wide variety of dysfunctional behavioral or emotional patterns.  Some were relatively minor, such as the inability to express feelings, procrastination, and obsessing about what others thought about them. Some were serious, such as eating disorders, chronic depression or anxiety, and phobias.  We’ve helped these people with the Lefkoe Belief Process^® (LBP), a technique I developed that allows people to quickly and permanently eliminate the specific beliefs that are responsible for any undesirable behavior or feeling.  When the beliefs disappear, the patterns do also.  (To use the LBP to eliminate one negative self-esteem belief without charge, go to: http://www.recreateyourlife.com.)

In session after session, hour after hour, we have heard thousands of clients describe the experiences they had with their parents, most of whom loved their children and meant well, that led the clients to form the beliefs they were trying to eliminate: “My mom and dad always did …, they never did …, they always said …, they never said ….”

In the parenting e-Book my wife Shelly and I co-wrote, Guide to Effective Parenting, we explain in detail how what parents do and don’t do, say and don’t say, provide their children with the experiences that the children interpret into beliefs.  Those beliefs, in turn, then determine their behavior and emotions and, ultimately, their lives—for better or for worse.  (For information about this e-Book, go to http://www.lefkoeinstitute.com/parenting-ebook.html.)

Shelly and I have read numerous books on parenting and have taught countless parenting workshops.  Nonetheless, we still found ourselves doing some things that were interpreted negatively by our two girls when they were younger.  But we finally got in the habit of asking ourselves the question after we interacted with our children: What has my child just concluded?  When we think the answer is “probably something negative,” we go back to our children to apologize and reopen the discussion.

As an example, one day when our daughter Brittany was about five years old (she’s now 21!) Shelly went into the bathroom before bedtime to brush Brittany’s teeth.  Our daughter flatly refused, being the independent young lady that she is.  After all of Shelly’s parenting skills and tools failed, she found herself physically overpowering our daughter with one arm around her neck and one hand with the toothbrush in her mouth.  After a few moments she regained her sanity and realized what she was doing.  She stopped immediately and apologized to Brittany.

Shelly realized that, as important as brushing Brittany’s teeth was, far more important was what our daughter would conclude about herself and life out of that interaction if repeated consistently.  A couple of possibilities include: I’m powerless or What I want doesn’t matter. (Rarely do just a few experiences lead to negative beliefs.  A number of experiences usually are required before we reach specific negative conclusions about ourselves and life.)

How can we get our children to do what needs to be done (teeth that don’t get brushed do get cavities) without them forming negative beliefs about themselves?  Knowing how to interact with our children in a way that facilitates a healthy self-esteem and a positive sense of life is not self-evident. There are many books and courses that provide excellent skills and tools.  One of the best techniques is to ask your children what to do and give them a choice. When Brittany didn’t want to go to the bathroom to brush her teeth, we learned to ask her how she’d like to go—with Shelly leading a parade and her following (you should have seen Shelly as a drum major!), with her in my arms or on my back, or did she want to meet me there in five minutes?

Most of us think we are successful parents if we get our children to behave properly, to learn what we think they need to learn, and to be happy. The question we suggest you ask yourself is: At what cost? If you succeed in achieving what you want for your children, but they form negative self-esteem beliefs, such as, I’m not good enough or I’m not worthwhile, or negative beliefs about life, such as, Life’s difficult or I’ll never get what I want, was your behavior really “successful”?  In other words, are the benefits you achieved short term with your children worth the long-term cost?

I am not saying that our children’s behavior on a daily basis, the information they acquire from us, and their happiness are not important.  Of course they are.  What I’m saying is that the single factor that has the greatest impact on whether or not your children achieve true happiness and satisfaction in life is a healthy self-esteem and a positive sense of life.  Nothing we do, learn or feel when we’re young will have as much influence on our adult life as the fundamental beliefs we form and take into adulthood.

To make this real, let’s assume that your children have one of the two following sets of beliefs: I’m not good enough; There’s something wrong with me; I’m not deserving; I’m not loveable; I don’t matter—or: I am good enough; I’m worthwhile just because I am, not for any reason; I’m loveable; I matter.

Which set of beliefs would most likely lead to anxiety and depression? To substance abuse? To teenage pregnancy? To eating disorders? To satisfying relationships? To a productive career?  To a truly satisfying life?

Given the critical importance of beliefs, what should be the primary role of parents?  Influencing behavior?  Teaching information?  Making their children happy?—or assisting their children to form positive beliefs about themselves and life?

If you chose the latter, the best way I know of to insure that you are getting your job as a parent done is constantly to ask yourself the question: What are my children likely to conclude about themselves and life as a result of this interaction we just had?  If it is a negative decision, go back, apologize and clean it up.  If it is a positive decision, congratulations!  You got your job done.

P.S.  Several of you wrote and said I never finished the story about my argument with Shelly in my post last week.  So here the end of the story: As soon as I realized that my upset really had nothing to do with her, and was the result of conditioning, I told her that, apologized for getting upset at her and withdrawing, and that was the end of it. We actually have a game when we have an argument: Who can “get off it” the fastest.  More and more often I don’t get hooked at all so I don’t even have to get off it, because I never get on it.

If you haven’t yet eliminated at least one of your limiting self-esteem beliefs using the Lefkoe Belief Process, go to http://www.recreateyourlife.com/free where you can eliminate one limiting belief free.

Please share my blog posts with anyone you think might be interested (as long as you tell people where they came from) and provide a link from your own website or blog.   http://mortylefkoe.com

To purchase DVD programs that we guarantee to eliminate eight of the most common daily problems people face, go to http://www.recreateyourlife.com/store.

Follow me on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/mortylefkoe and join our fan page on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/LefkoeInstitute) to get my latest insights on the role of beliefs in our lives.

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Mike had become a wealthy entrepreneur, but he had a hard time enjoying his business success because it seemed that every minute he wasn’t solving a business problem he was worried about what others thought of him and what he could do to get their approval.

Janet probably had as many good ideas as Mike, but because she was plagued with procrastination, she was nowhere near as successful.

Roger always talked about his dream of doing something on his own, but he just didn’t have the confidence to leave his safe (and boring) job.

And finally there was Marlene, who complained of bouts of anxiety that seemed to come over her without warning and paralyze her.

Stories like these from our clients go on forever.  We’ve heard tens of thousands of them. It seems as if no one really escapes.

Escapes what?  … Having a low sense of self-esteem, a negative sense of oneself, a little voice in one’s head that is constantly critical of oneself.

Common Myths About Self-esteem

Before I explain why so many people have low self-esteem, let me first dispel a few common myths about self-esteem.

First, people who are described as “full of themselves,” or who have “too much self-esteem,” are people with low self-esteem who are trying to convince themselves and others of a worth they don’t experience. Low self-esteem is the result of negative self-esteem beliefs, such as I’m not good enough, I’m not important, I’m not worthy or deserving, and I’m not capable. People with high self-esteem don’t need to convince anyone of their worth; they know they are good enough and important and don’t need anyone’s approval to experience being okay.

Second, low self-esteem is not limited to the “losers” in life. A survey that makes this point crystal clear reported than many CEOs of billion dollar companies had the fear that “someday I’ll be found out and they’ll take it all away from me.”  It is possible to be successful by conventional standards (plenty of money, a good job or your own company, selling your artistic endeavors, achieving whatever you set out to achieve) and still have low self-esteem. In such cases the low self-esteem shows up as a critical “little voice” in your head that criticizes much of what you achieve, as a feeling that you don’t deserve your success, or as a fear of rejection, or a need to get others’ approval. All of these things that undercut the enjoyment you get from your success are the result of low self-esteem.

Third, not all people with low self-esteem are unable to function well.  How well you are able to function depends not only on self-esteem beliefs, but also on what other beliefs you hold.  In a study the Lefkoe Institute did with incarcerated teens and adults a few years ago, we discovered that those subjects had the same negative self-esteem beliefs as the CEOs we saw in our private practice.  The difference was that the CEOs believed that what made them good enough or important is being successful (by society’s standards), while the people in jail believed that what made them good enough or important was getting away with things others couldn’t do, or being part of a gang, or not accepting anyone else’s rules.

Why Is Low Self-Esteem So Common?

The question that is probably occurring to most of you right now is: Why do so many people have negative self-esteem beliefs?  Why has almost every one of the 13,000 clients we’ve talked to had the belief, I’m not good enough?

As I’ve described in previous blog posts, almost all of our self-esteem beliefs, positive or negative, are formed in the first six years of life as the result of interactions we have with our primary caretakers, almost always our parents.

Any yet most parents love their children and want the best for their children.  So what goes wrong?

To begin with, most parents are not aware that children are forming beliefs about themselves based on their interactions with their parents, which usually doesn’t appear to be at all harmful.

But even when parents are aware of this, they can have a hard time stopping their inappropriate behavior because they are rarely aware of the conflict between what they as parents want and what children are able to understand and do at various ages.

Parents, being adults, generally like quiet; children are not quiet and cannot even understand why anyone would value quiet.

Parents for the most part want their house to be neat; young children don’t even understand the concept of “neat.”

Parents want to sit down for dinner when it is ready and before it gets cold; children are almost always doing something that is far more important to them and don’t want to stop doing it when their parents call them.

In other words, parents usually want their children to do things that they are developmentally incapable of doing.  They want their young children to act like little adults, which they cannot possibly do.

If we expect children to “do things right,” we have to explain what “right” is.  And we may need to explain something many times to a child under the age of six or seven before they really get it.  And, finally, there are some concepts that young children are just incapable of grasping.

The question is not, Do children frequently “disobey” their parents?  Children are developmentally incapable to living up to most parents’ expectations. The only question is how parents react when their children are not doing what the parents want them to do.
And because few parents go to parenting school and most bring their own beliefs from their childhoods with them, their reactions range from annoyance and frustration to anger and abuse, with every possibility in between.

What Is The Question Young Children Ask All Day Long?

Hint.  It’s only one word.

Yes, it’s “Why?”.

Children know that they don’t have the answers (kids are always saying, “When I grow up, then I’ll be able to….). Children think their parents (because they are adults) know everything and have all the answers.

It’s as if the child thinks to herself, “If my parents don’t like what I do a lot of the time and are unhappy with me, they must have a good reason.  I guess I’m not good enough to have their approval.”  Or, “If I can’t get their attention, I guess I’m not important.” Or, “If I always have to do what they want me to do and rarely get to do what I want, I guess I’m powerless.”

In other words, children form their beliefs about themselves trying to make sense of their parents’ behavior, statements, tone of voice, and facial expressions … every waking minute.

It is important to emphasize here that rarely will just a few parental actions or statements lead children to form beliefs, positive or negative.  It is only when something is done or said many times that a child forms a belief.  It’s as if children say to themselves, “Why does this keep happening?  Oh, now I know what it means.”

Parental Clichés Lead To Low Self-Esteem

Some of the phrases parents commonly use have become clichés in our society:

• “How many times do I have to tell you?”
• “Don’t you ever listen?”
• “What’s wrong with you?”
• “Are you just clumsy/stupid?”

What would it mean to a child aged two to six or seven to hear those phrases uttered repeatedly in anger or frustration?

Thirteen thousand clients have told us:

I’m not good enough. Mistakes are bad.  I’m not capable or competent.  I’m inadequate.

Do you understand now why so many of us have low self-esteem, which shows up in so many obvious and subtle ways, including worrying about what people think of us, being afraid to take risks, having a little voice in our head that keeps telling us that what we do isn’t good enough, etc.?

Thanks for reading my blog. I really would appreciate your comments and questions. Please feel free to share my blog posts with anyone you think might be interested as long as you tell people where it came from.

If you haven’t yet eliminated at least one of your limiting self-esteem beliefs using The Lefkoe Method, go to http://www.recreateyourlife.com/free where you can eliminate one such belief free.

To purchase an on-line interactive program where you can eliminate 19 beliefs, go to http://www.recreateyourlife.com/sales.html.

Follow me on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/mortylefkoe and join our fan page on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/pages/The-Lefkoe-Institute/54781675766?ref=ts) to get my latest insights on the role of beliefs in our lives.

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Remember the last time you heard a parent say: “My kids are wonderful. They always obey me.” Or, “They never talk back.” Or, “They are never a problem.” Did you sigh with envy and say, “Oh, I wish my kids were like that”? Think again. What would children have to believe about themselves to always obey, never talk back, or never be a problem?

I started out as a typical parent who sometimes envied those parents with “perfect” children.  Then when my first daughter was about three, I developed the Lefkoe Belief Process (LBP), a technique that assists people to identify the specific beliefs that are responsible for any dysfunctional behavioral or emotional problem.

Examples of such problems include anxiety, concern with what others think of us, procrastination, lack of confidence, stress, self-criticism, and relationships that don’t work.  After the beliefs are identified, the LBP enables people to quickly and permanently eliminate them.  When the beliefs disappear, the problems do also.

What We’ve Learned From Our Clients

In working directly with over 13,000 clients we have seen how the beliefs we form in childhood determine how our lives turn out in almost every respect.  And, most importantly, how the beliefs that lead to “good behavior” as a child are not necessarily the best beliefs to have later in life.

Most of us would be thrilled if we called our child and told her dinner was ready and we found her sitting at the table seconds later.  But what would she have to believe if she was totally immersed in playing when we called and she immediately dropped what she was doing to come to dinner?  She would have to consider what we want to be more important than what she wants, which might result from such beliefs as What I want doesn’t matter and I’m not important.

The biggest problem many of us have with our younger children is getting them into the car when we have to leave the house.  A child who was always ready to leave would bring joy to any parent’s heart.  But, again, what beliefs would a child have to have to always act that way?  In addition to the two just named, another belief might be The way to be accepted is to make people happy, to never upset them.

Some Specific Consequences As an Adult

What are the long-term consequences of such beliefs?  One of our clients, Joan, always did what her parents wanted when she was a kid. Her parents described her as “the perfect child.” Two of the beliefs that made her compliant as a child were What I want doesn’t matter and I’m not important. As an adult these same beliefs led to passive behavior and a sense of victimization. Larry, another client, had concluded early in life: The way to be accepted is to make people happy, to never upset them. His problem as an adult was an obsession with what others thought of him and a fear of expressing his own opinions.

In session after session we have heard thousands of clients describe the experiences they had with their parents that resulted in the beliefs they were trying to eliminate as an adult: “My mom and dad always did …, they never did …, they always said …, they never said ….”

In my book, Re-create Your Life: Transforming Yourself and Your World, I explain in detail how what parents do and don’t do, say and don’t say, provide their children with the experiences that the children interpret into beliefs.  As I began to see how our behavior as parents led to our children forming beliefs that then determined the rest of their lives, I began to question the long-range implications of having children “obey.”

Short Term Benefits versus Long Term Costs

Maybe getting children to behave is good for us as parents, but not necessarily good for our children.  It might make our lives easier but what does it do to them?  My wife Shelly and I asked ourselves the question:  If we succeed in getting our children to do what we want, and, as a result of our interactions with our children, they form negative self-esteem beliefs, such as, I’m not good enough or I’m not worthwhile, or other negative beliefs, such as, What I want doesn’t matter or I’ll never get what I want, is what we achieved short term with our children worth the long-term cost?

I’m not saying that our children’s behavior on a daily basis is not important.  Of course it is. There are some things that children need to do for their health and well-being and there are some things children need to do for our well-being.  We clearly would be remiss as parents if we took a totally hands-off attitude and allowed our children to do whatever they wanted.  So we need to learn parenting skills that enable us to influence our children’s behavior when necessary, without leading to negative conclusions.

A Parenting Tip

For example, instead of calling our children just when we are about to sit down to dinner or two minutes before we are about to leave the house, expecting them to drop whatever they are doing because our schedule requires their presence, we can give our children ample warning.  Fifteen minutes before we will need them we can ask them what they are doing, acknowledge that it probably is very important to them, and then ask them if they can complete whatever they’re doing in fifteen minutes because dinner will be ready, we will be leaving the house, etc.  If we treat them with dignity and respect what is important to them, the odds are good they will respect our needs, without forming any negative beliefs about themselves.

And that is the crucial point.  The single factor that has the greatest impact on whether or not our children achieve happiness and true satisfaction in life is a healthy self-esteem, a positive sense of life, and other positive beliefs.

To make this real, let’s assume that your child has one of the two following sets of beliefs: I’m not good enough; There’s something wrong with me; I’m not deserving; I don’t matter; I’m powerless—or : I am good enough; I’m worthwhile just because I am, not for any reason; I am worthy and deserving; I matter; Life is whatever I make it.

Which Set of Beliefs Would Lead to a Good Life?

Which set of beliefs would most likely lead to anxiety and depression? To substance abuse? To satisfying relationships? To a productive career?  To a truly satisfying life?

Given that fact, what do you think that the major role of parents should be? Getting children to behave, or assisting them to create positive decisions about themselves and life?

If you chose the latter, the best way I know to insure that you are getting your job as a parent done is constantly to ask yourself the question:  What is my child likely to conclude about himself and life as a result of this interaction we just had?  If it is a positive belief, congratulations!  You got your job done.  If it is a negative one, go back, apologize and clean it up.

After we’ve changed our focus as parents, from getting our children to obey, to assisting them to create a positive attitude about themselves and life, we may no longer consider the ultimate parenting accolade to be: “Your child is so well-behaved.” We may come to prefer: “Your child has such a positive attitude about herself and life.”

If you haven’t yet eliminated at least one of your crippling self-esteem beliefs using The Lefkoe Method, go to http://www.recreateyourlife.com/free where you can eliminate one limiting belief free.

To purchase an on-line interactive program where you can eliminate 19 limiting beliefs, go to http://www.recreateyourlife.com/sales.html.

Thanks for reading my blog. Comments and questions are welcomed.

Follow me on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/mortylefkoe and join our fan page on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/pages/The-Lefkoe-Institute/54781675766?ref=ts) to get my latest insights on the role of beliefs in our lives.