Self-worth determines how well people get along with other people. In the grand scheme of life, we can’t or don’t respect and appreciate others more than ourselves. Until proven otherwise, they have the same shortcomings we do. And, how we view others governs how well they get along with us. Early childhood makes all the difference.
Baby-care adults infuse a child’s subconscious mind with three major factors that govern human behavior: self-worth, self-image, and self-interest. They help with two others: self-talk and self-fulfilling prophecy. This post focuses on the first factor.
Definition. Self-worth is how a person likes, loves, respects, and appreciates himself as a person. It’s his subconscious value of himself to himself.
Development. For simplicity only, I explain it this way: Nature and genetics wire the newborn brain. Care givers, people nearby, and surroundings program the baby’s subconscious—whether intended or not.
· Self-worth develops in infancy and mostly before an infant’s conscious mind develops.
· Intensity of development is exponentially high in the first three months of life and less intense for the rest of the first three years. (Times are approximate and vary.)
· Both a floor and ceiling on self-worth are ‘built’ in these early years. In the tweens, minor up and down adjustments occur until they stabilize in puberty. Movements pretty much stop after that.
· Many childhood mistakes and corrections push self-worth downward. Kind and appreciative words uplift. However, both are outweighed by wiring and programming already made permanent in the earliest years. So, daily ups and downs of feeling good and bad about oneself bump into a floor and a ceiling.
· In the tweens, a child’s conscious mind interferes. It evaluates, accepts, and rejects the validity of how he’s treated and what he’s told. This process eventually stabilizes both the upper and lower limits of self-worth.
· In the teens, hormones solidly seal self-worth into whatever it was at puberty. A primary cause of teen angst, it will be visited later.
· Floor and ceiling work for life as limitations on how one likes and appreciates himself. After puberty, penetrations occur during personal highs such as success and lows such as failures, but they’re temporary.
Child-care adult behaviors that program both high and low self-worth will be presented in new posts.
[More about the mind appears in posts 193, 192, 187, 178, and 177. If not hyperlinked yet, scroll down or search by the number. ]
1 Comment
05/16/2008 at 2:15 pm
Hi AGM,
I was wondering if you had any information on how child sexual abuse could factor into this and what could be done.
Miss Dawn: Watch for future posts on Weans, tweens, & teens. Some answers will be available soon. Guy