Self Esteem and Accomplishment --- The MEMO

To: Modern Parents
From: Joan The Yenta
Re: You Can't Give Your Kid Self Esteem, He/She Actually Has to Earn It
Date: May 5, 2010

The price your kid pays for the various tasks now done by YOU, like homework, applications to various hobbies, lessons and teams, schools, intervention with principals and teachers when junior has any problems whatsoever, intervention in normal conflicts in their social relationships, special treatment and tutors for ADD diagnoses and excuses(it's real, but it's called "too many toys", this was in an old memo), no winners or losers in sports, no valedictorians, and the LIKE is that your kid will pay with his self esteem.

Self esteem comes from accomplishment; the feeling that "I did this!" or "I did that on my OWN!!!" It's something nobody can take away from you and it's derived from within and not from random praise from outsiders. No outsider could have possibly given me the feeling I had walking up to the University of Michigan business school every day (I got in! I applied and I got in! after my dad married the biggest c u next Tuesday on the planet), no praise no nothing. Nobody could take credit for getting me my first job, just me. And my bank account is of my own making.

I don't give a shit what people think of me unless I do something to hurt them, then I care. If people don't like me, so be it. I have self esteem; I know I can if I have to do XXXX.

Nowadays, with this entitlement epidemic everywhere, people cry because they don't have self esteem? Maybe they shouldn't have self esteem! Or maybe they never learned how to get self esteem. It's a f&*ng shame.