How to Guide Your Kids Through Feelings of Insecurity and Comparison

How to Guide Your Children Through the Obstacle Course of Comparison and Insecurity

The fattest trousers ever!” Fat bottoms! Flabby underwear!

Nona is as chubby as Miss Piggy, they said.

Nona, you’re a home on your own!

Even as early as first grade, I can recall being teased about my weight by my peers. Even though I didn’t know what it meant, the tone in which it was delivered made it clear that being labeled “fat” was insulting. When I was in preschool and kindergarten, I was a healthy weight, but when I entered first grade, I began using food as a way to cope with the sexual abuse I was suffering at the hands of my mother’s boyfriend. I didn’t realize it at the time, but binge eating a whole box of Oreo cookies was a coping strategy for me when I was worried about my safety while my mom wasn’t around.

During the summer between kindergarten and first grade, I put on a lot of weight, and when I began school, I fell into a vicious cycle of being branded “fat” and then turning to food to make myself feel better. Over the course of middle school and high school, I continued to give credence to the widespread negative assessments of my looks that I had heard. Nonetheless, in ninth grade I hit upon what I believed was the answer. I stumbled into a daytime chat program about eating issues while channel surfing. Some of the ladies on the program suffered from an eating disorder called anorexia, which caused them to drastically reduce their caloric intake. And then it hit me: I think I’ll simply quit eating.

I distinctly recall being inspired by their accounts. The fact that those ladies had the strength of mind to abstain from food gave me hope that I, too, could do it. There was only one snag. During the performance, I began to have rumblings of hunger in my stomach. We’re not eating, I rubbed my stomach and told myself. But an hour later, I heated up a mountain of leftover spaghetti, covered it with a couple of inches of parmesan cheese, and ate it while drinking a tall glass of Kool-Aid. Tears welled up in my eyes as I rinsed the dishes. The thoughts of the attractive, slim, popular females in my courses filled my head, and I couldn’t help but feel dejected. No way could I ever live up to their standards, I told myself. “I can’t go an hour without eating.” A revelation hit me, though, and it altered the next ten years of my existence.

The ladies on the episode who suffered from bulimia brought back memories. They would stuff themselves till they threw up so they wouldn’t gain weight. I had never thrown up before except when I was unwell and had no choice. I went to the bathroom, folded up a towel from beneath the sink, and knelt in front of the toilet as if it were a porcelain altar, all while fantasizing about being one of the attractive, slim, popular females. I had to force myself to vomit up 10 times to get everything out of my stomach, and each time was a dreadful, excruciating sensation. After I finished, I rose up and looked at myself in the mirror with watery eyes and had an overwhelming sensation of mastery. This is it, I told myself. Herein is the solution.

After some distance and reflection, I see that I was mistaken about my sense of agency at the time. Insecurity bred by comparisons was wielding its poisonous force.

Why Do People Feel Unsafe?

As a woman who has experienced insecurity and a mother of two sons who have experienced insecurity, I have read numerous wonderful books about insecurity that explain how a lack of confidence stems from a lack of confidence in oneself. Self-esteem is defined as “confidence and happiness in oneself; self-respect” by Merriam-Webster. Self-esteem, therefore, is a belief in one’s own value or competence. Using this description, it’s easy to see why parents often strive to boost their children’s self-esteem by showering them with praise and reassurance whenever they show signs of uncertainty or dissatisfaction with who they are.

My kid, who is twelve years old, is a huge basketball fan and plays on both his school’s squad and an AAU team (Amateur Athletic Union). My spouse made an attempt to bolster his self-assurance by highlighting his many talents as a ball player when he began discussing with us that he lacked confidence in his skills. No matter whether our kid hit the shot or not, my husband would take him to the basketball court and play with him while delivering words of encouragement. This is the end outcome. My son’s lack of self-confidence and dissatisfaction persisted, but his expression of it was more nuanced and revealed the actual cause of his uneasiness. Here’s why:

My kid always put himself and his talents in a comparative context when he spoke about them. If John called him trash, he’d respond, “I’m better than him.” He would respond with a “so what?” whenever John outscored him in a game. That hasn’t changed the fact that I’m superior to him. I’m not a piece of garbage. You could get the impression from this that he has a high opinion of himself, but if you pay close attention to what he says, you’ll realize that he only sees himself in comparison to someone else. He evaluates himself depending on how he thinks he compares to another person. This, not low self-esteem, is what causes insecurity.

The Origin of Our Insecurities

Instead of stemming from a lack of confidence, uneasiness results from pinning one’s sense of self-worth on shaky ground. The worth of a building on unstable ground must be judged by a subjective third party. Taking a step back to provide some context. Credentials, wealth, and outward look are three of the most common but also among the most vulnerable forms of identification we might use to prove our existence to others. When our sense of self is built on shaky ground, we become vulnerable to feelings of inferiority whenever we compare ourselves to others and come to the inevitable conclusion that others have more or are better off.

This is why I struggled with bulimia for ten years: I tied my sense of self-worth to how I looked, and when I compared myself to females who seemed to be the cultural “standard” of beauty, I felt inadequate. My youngster has anchored his sense of self in his physical prowess. His uneasiness is triggered when he thinks about how he compares to another kid who, to outsiders, looks to do better in sports. It’s possible that you’ve tied your sense of self-worth to your work title, and that seeing someone with a “more important” title than you does nothing except stir up your insecurities. Nothing in this has anything to do with how you feel about yourself. Even if you have a lot of faith in your own abilities, it’s possible to be plagued by feelings of inferiority if you often compare yourself to others and find that they consistently earn more praise or accolades than you.

The Key to Raising Confident Kids

So, where do we go from here? How can we best ensure that our kids have a solid sense of self-worth that is independent of the ebb and flow of their peers’ approval? Here are some ideas:

One thing you can do to help your children feel more secure is to first identify what is making them feel insecure.

You’ll need to assist your kids figure out which shaky support system they’ve built their identities on. It might be due to their achievements in school or extracurricular activities, their positions of leadership, or just their association with a certain group of peers (e.g., jocks, goths, pretty girls, theatre kids, etc.). Or maybe it’s a predetermined social media following.

Your job as a parent is twofold: Teach your kids how to turn negative comparisons into positive ones.

There are two possible consequences from a comparison: fresh air or sighs of relief. A person’s reaction to seeing another person’s achievement in a field in which they themselves are interested may either motivate them to work harder toward their own goals or discourage them from ever achieving them. In the event that your kid is comparing themselves to others and feeling deflated as a result, encourage them to look at the other person’s achievements as a means through which they might grow and develop.

Teach your kids to be happy for other people’s achievements rather than jealous of them.

To help your kid understand that their value is independent of whether or not they obtain anything they desire, show them what it looks like to praise the other person when they complain about someone else getting what they want. Inspire your kid to consider how they might find reasons to like the individual and grow to support them rather than find fault with them.

The struggle to overcome feelings of inadequacy brought on by comparison is something I face every day, and it’s something I face every day while guiding our children through life. In order to break free, you must first be aware of and ready to confess your emotions.