How Parenting Shapes Your Child’s Self-Concept & Self-Esteem | Dr. Alyssa Landau-Glick

Welcome back to Boundaries & Banter — the podcast where sisters-in-law Taryn & Michela get real about family, parenting, boundaries, and mental health.
In this powerful episode, we sit down with educational psychologist Dr. Alyssa Landau-Glick to explore how self-concept and self-esteem are formed in children. We dive deep into twice-exceptional (2E) learners, the difference between self-concept (your life story) and self-esteem (how you feel about yourself), the dangers of fixed vs. growth mindset, the impact of parental labeling (“you’re so shy/smart/awkward”), collaborative problem-solving, grit, scaffolding tasks, and how gentle parenting can either build or unintentionally harm a child’s inner narrative.
Dr. Alyssa shares practical tools for fostering resilience, autonomy, and authentic confidence without over-praising or projecting our own emotions onto our kids.
If you’re a parent (or planning to be), this conversation will shift how you speak to and support your children.

00:00 Welcome & Dr. Alyssa’s Journey
03:45 What is Twice-Exceptional (2E)?
08:30 Self-Concept vs Self-Esteem Explained
14:20 How Parents Shape Self-Concept (Labels & Language)
20:45 Fixed vs Growth Mindset in Kids
27:30 Grit, Resilience & Scaffolding Tasks
34:10 Collaborative Problem Solving & Gentle Parenting
42:00 Zones of Proximal Development
48:30 Would You Rather Parenting Edition

Drop a comment: What label did you grow up with that stuck with you? How do you build your child’s self-concept?
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#Parenting #SelfEsteem #SelfConcept #GrowthMindset #TwiceExceptional #GentleParenting #ChildDevelopment #BoundariesAndBanter #EducationalPsychology #MomLife

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome back to Foundries and Banter. We are your host, Tarina Michaela. Today we are joined by Dr. Alyssa Landau Glick. She is an educational psychologist. Alyssa, we're so excited to have you. So excited to be here. Can you tell us a little bit about what you do, your history, how you got into this? Yeah, so I'm gonna take it way back.

SPEAKER_02 0:21

Okay, please do. I mean like elementary school. So as long as I can remember, I've always had just like this comfort and like interest in being around individuals with disabilities. And that emerged like very early on. I remember I had a friend in elementary school who had a brother who had severe brain damage from a traumatic birth. And I would go to her house and I would ditch my friend so I could hang out with this brother of hers who needed to be fed through a feeding tube, who was nonverbal. And I would sit with him, we would play music. I even at certain points, like I remember had these vivid memories of feeding him. Like his mom would sit and teach me. And I was so interested in it and I was so comfortable with it, which is obviously.

SPEAKER_00 1:06

How old were you?

SPEAKER_02 1:08

Elementary school, maybe second, third grade. Like it really just was something that was like came very naturally to me. And um, this is also the point which like my parents noticed that this was something that was like special about me. At that point, I started to like volunteer for Special Olympics, like just was something that was like, you know, not like front and center in my life because I was a kid going to like a typical elementary school. Yeah, but it was there. And so um, you know, I followed this interest. I studied psychology in undergrad where we met.

SPEAKER_01 1:39

We've been we've been best friends for like Alyssa said almost 20 years, which would make us 40. We are not 40. Our birthdays are a day apart, so we're exactly the same age.

SPEAKER_00 1:49

This podcast was low-key, just like Michaela bringing her best friends on.

SPEAKER_02 1:53

But in college, I studied psych. At that time, I also was doing an internship at a school local to our university for students with severe autism. And it was a really good learning experience for me because at that point I realized that working with kids with severe disabilities was maybe not my calling. Like I didn't, I was never comfortable with like the self-harm and the different things that you would see day to day in that type of environment. Took my learnings from that and then applied to get my master's in special ed. But at that point decided that I was gonna specialize in mild to moderate disabilities. So that would be working with kids who had learning disabilities, verbal spectrum, um, you know, more like the typical kids you would see like in a mainstream classroom, but had, you know, support or were pulled out for different things. So um I worked at a school when I was doing my master's in special that was for kids with learning disabilities who like on the surface, you would never know that these kids had disabilities. But maybe like a 12th grader who was reading at a fourth grade level. So, you know, a lot of like self-esteem and confidence and um kids who really learned to like hate school and um finished that degree, got a California teaching credential, and a month later I moved to New York City. So, you know, I was 23 at the time. I was like, it doesn't matter. We're packing up and we're leaving. So, you know, um, I went to New York and there was like a bridge year where I worked in a preschool. So I went from like working in this high school for kids with learning disabilities all the way down to like a preschool for, you know, affluent New York City children. So it was like a big contrast and like, you know, kind of quickly realized that was also not where I wanted to spend my career, but it was fun. I worked there temporarily, knowing I wanted to go back to special ed. And one day I was walking around in my neighborhood and I noticed a sign outside of this like broken down synagogue. It said the quad preparatory school. So I looked it up. I was like, interesting. They're like right here. Let me see what this is about. It's obviously not a public school, and since I don't have a credential, maybe I can teach there. So I look it up and it turns out that it's a school for twice exceptional students, and they're in like their piloting year, which is why they were in the synagogue space. They were renting, you know, a basement with um a handful of kids who really failed in other environments because twice exceptional means there's two exceptions to their development. They're gifted in some domain, and then they also have some kind of disability. It could be learning disability, social emotional, um, behavioral. You see all sorts of things.

unknown 4:35

So wait.

SPEAKER_02 4:36

It so they at the time, they had a handful of kids in this little basement. And I walked in there and I was like, I wouldn't I'd like to come in for an interview. When can I do an interview with the two of you? And they're like, how's this afternoon? It was a very informal environment, you know, like there was just kids sitting at long tables learning, like there wasn't really nothing to it. But um I came in, I did an interview, and they're like, you know, we think you'd be perfect. We're gonna pilot our elementary program next year. And pilot means that we are gonna be doing it DIY, like startup style. We're gonna figure out like what curriculum we're gonna use. We're gonna figure out, like, you know, we're gonna have to really study and understand the kids that are coming to us.

SPEAKER_00 5:17

And you're gonna be a part of that.

SPEAKER_02 5:18

Yeah. I'm gonna be the lead teacher in this classroom. So I'm gonna be the one with the kids all day long. Um, and you know, there was an amazing team, and they still have an amazing team of uh physical therapists, occupational therapists, speech pathologists, psychologists.

SPEAKER_01 5:34

It still exists. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:36

Oh, well, I mean, I'll get there in a minute, but the school and the demand for two e um education has like grown exponentially. When people started to realize what two e learners are, it became very relatable.

SPEAKER_00 5:49

I think um just twice exceptional.

SPEAKER_02 5:51

Yeah, twice exceptional. So the exceptions. So if we're thinking of development, like typical development as like, you know, reaching certain milestones and like not having challenges that come up along the way. So that's like a typical trajectory. These kids have two exceptions to that trajectory. The first exception is that like they show giftedness in some certain domain, and that can be like any domain. So, you know, there's musical giftedness, there's kinesthetic giftedness, you know, that's like an athlete, there's um artistic giftedness. Um, and then of course, like there's classic, like learning giftedness. Um, and that's also can be just specific, like within mathematics. Or um, I remember there was a student at the school, he was maybe like seven years old at the time, and he was able to draw world maps in every city and label them by memory. Wow, and with like a periodic table, he could label every element on the periodic table and would like paint it in watercolors, like truly like off the charts, inspirationally gifted.

SPEAKER_03 6:54

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 6:54

But he was on the spectrum. So his social, his emotional, all of those like benchmarks of development, um, you know, were delayed. Right. And he also couldn't function and sit still and be in like a typical classroom. He wasn't interested in what kids were learning in a typical classroom. He wanted to learn what he was interested in.

SPEAKER_00 7:15

I just want to go back because the reason why I wanted you to set the stage for the viewers, because this was like a very this was like the pivotal moment right out of your life.

SPEAKER_01 7:23

Uh right out of college for her.

SPEAKER_02 7:24

I just like didn't stop. So I went to college, studied psych, went directly to get the masters, went directly to New York to start teaching. And like I was just like running with this passion. And that's something that I really believe in like inspiring kids these days who have, you know, we can you can blame it on a lot of different things, but they don't have much direction. And you know, they think that like they can just switch direction so quick. And if something spikes your interest, like, oh, now I'm doing this, you know. Like there's something really to be said about like finding something that you're passionate about and like riding it all. Yeah. And of course, there's like bumps along the road, but like sticking with it and like becoming an expert in something.

SPEAKER_00 8:06

But like, had you not walked past that street, had you not seen that street.

SPEAKER_02 8:10

You know, I probably would have ended up in a different education special education environment, but like that was so meant to be.

SPEAKER_01 8:17

You built this entire thing. And then the bump in the street for you became COVID.

SPEAKER_02 8:22

Well, even before COVID. So I was teaching at the school for three years, loving it. I completed a program they had offered because a lot of the administrators were doctors and specialists and like, you know, top of the field people. So they created their own like certification program in 2e education and 2e learners. So I did their cert and then I was like, okay, I love learning. I'm I need to be back in school. That's like the nerdy part of me. Like I just really love being in a classroom setting. I love school.

SPEAKER_00 8:52

And yeah, it's the best.

SPEAKER_02 8:55

So um, for some, like it's not the best for everyone, which like it's all good.

SPEAKER_00 9:00

Like it doesn't have to be, which will be like if I could make a career of just being in academia, like if I could get paid for being in academia, I would do it for the I mean that's how I am too.

SPEAKER_02 9:09

So a big drive for me is like I want kids who really struggle in school and hate like my perfect student is a kid who hates school. Because like I want to figure out why and I want to give them ways in. Okay. So anyway, though, I finished the certification and then I started to look into doctoral programs because I was like, what can I do next? Um, I knew I didn't want to go to a clinical program and like become a psychologist and you know, do all the clinical hours and get a license. Like that wasn't necessarily the path because I was already going down the teaching path. So I ended up enrolling at the City University of New York in their educational psychology PhD program, which is a research-focused program. And at the time I had never done any research. I had been teaching all these years. So I never did like formal research, was never a research assistant, nothing. So I just like jumped on board with this program. Some for some reason they let me in with zero research, but they saw my passion and they, I guess they figured I could do it. I'd figure it out. And I started my doctorate. And um, I was teaching at the quad and going after school hours to midtown to take classes. I finished all my in-person coursework and then COVID hit. So COVID hit and everything shut down. I started teaching online, and luckily for me, to finish the PhD, I just had to do research at that point. So I got to do all of the in-person learning and then had to figure out how I could do like a COVID-safe doctoral level research project, my dissertation. Um, and I ended up writing my dissertation on self-concept, which I know is a big topic we want to get into. So I looked at um the self-concept of twice exceptional students and basically was comparing like self-concept of these students to the published definition of twice exceptional students. Like, does their interpretations of themselves and what this term means to be twice exceptional match up with the published research that we have, where someone else is looking at them and saying what they are?

SPEAKER_01 11:14

So that was my project. But you also like what we want to talk about or what we want to get into is the idea of self-concept as it relates to you know, kids on a whole, right? So can you explain what self-concept means? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:27

So the reason I went so in depth with my own story is because what I just did is my own self-concept. So it's a narrative about who you are and how you came to be that person. So, like, what is your journey? Um, what is your story, and how do you explain it to people? So that's your self-concept. It's not about like what someone else is saying about you and explaining who you are, it's about how you see yourself. And then those experiences, like how I explained to you guys, my walk around the East Village and all these other things that like influenced me, how that's part of you know, my identity and my self-concept. So kids do this, um, and it starts to emerge around adolescence. And the reason that it emerges at that point is because prior, like kids don't necessarily have like enough life experience to piece together a narrative, nor do they have like the narrative skills to be able to like, you know, explain like this is my story, like here's my art, you know, like so um, but around adolescence, we know there's so many factors happening with development. First of all, hormones, like their brains are like starting to go wonk, you know, crazy anyway. Um and it's also a point where like they've been in school for a long time, they have strong opinions on who they are. Um, they, you know, they want autonomy. So there's like so many things that go into creating self-concept, and then how self-concept is like, you know, it accumulates throughout your life and how it changes and develops and what parts of it you hold on to and what parts of it you forget about. I'm sure McKay could tell you I left out a lot of my self-concept and descriptions of myself. But you know, when I sit here and I tell you who I am, those are the things that I yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:12

So is that really different from self-esteem?

SPEAKER_02 13:14

So self-esteem is more about like the feelings that you have about yourself. Um, whether you like yourself or you don't, or you feel confident about certain things or you don't. It's more like a feelings-based um concept versus your self-concept is or sorry, it's more of a feelings-based construct versus self-concept, which is like a story. You know, when I talk about my self-esteem, I'm not necessarily referencing like episodes from my life. But when I talk about my self-concept, I'm giving you my life story. And you can make your own evaluations of how I might feel about myself or the effective language I use within my concept. Um, but it's they vary like one is much more micro, like, you know, this is how I feel about myself, or this is how I feel about something I've done in the past. But um, self-concept is like the big picture of who you are. Okay, so what age do kids start to like have these beliefs? I have two kids and I see it, you know, I get to see their development happening day to day, real time. And um, one of the things that I've really noticed is when it comes to their self-esteem, a lot of what they choose or choose not to do based on how comfortable or safe they feel in their environment has to do with my level of comfort and the attachment they have to me. Am I helicoptering? Am I anxious? Am I telling them no? You know, that then affects their esteem when it comes to trying new things, being comfortable. Um, you know, especially my one and a half year old is going through that big stranger danger, um, you know, attached at my hip velcro baby phase. So on like a very extreme level right now with him, I can see, you know, he's checking if I'm there, but how willing is he to go into, you know, a new environment, a new music class with new skills, with new people comfortable with that? Yeah, I mean, they always are are there to, you know, they're looking to check. Is mommy here? If something, if I need her, is she gonna be there? You know, their attachment to you really sort of predicts their esteem and their comfort when they're young. And then, you know, self-esteem is very much a product of like our experiences and our resiliency. And, you know, as things come up in life, like how are they supported? How are they spoken to? How are they guided? Um, I think all of that contributes to self-esteem. And we see that much earlier on than we do with self-concept. But of course, like the esteem factor predicts so much of what they're going to do as they build their self-concept.

SPEAKER_01 15:54

Does that also have to do with like the kind of parenting you do, like gentle parenting or like strict parent, whatever it is? Okay, right.

SPEAKER_02 16:01

So when we look at parenting, I think there needs to be like less rigidity around like this is the style parent I am. Like I'm a gentle parent, or I'm a strict parent, or you know, whatever your views of how you want to parent are, and we need to look at like what's going to be received by the child.

SPEAKER_01 16:19

Because every situation that you have with your child, you need a different kind of parenting.

SPEAKER_02 16:23

Yeah. And also, like, what's the temperament of that kid? Is my gentle approach like, oh, I can see you're so disappointed. I'm not giving you another lollipop today. You know, it's okay to be disappointed. Versus, like, if you need to be stricter in that situation, like we had a lollipop, we're moving on. Like, we've had this conversation, let's go, you know, onto the next. So you have to sort of know your kid, know their temperament. Um, and I suggest like you can just type like child temperament research to look up the different temperaments, excuse me. And um, that's like really informative. It's really interesting, and you'll be able to identify your kid really quickly and then see what what does my kid need and in with what context, you know, like so when are they gonna listen? When are they not gonna listen? And then you modulate. And I, you know, when we talk about boundaries and parenting, I think that like the big strong boundary is that you never project your own feelings onto your kid. And then the rest like falls into place. As long as you hold that boundary, that you're not going to like guilt your kid for however they're behaving, you're not going to, you know, make them think that they're the reason that you're upset or you're sad or you're angry. Like it's about them and their experience and learning to get through whatever they're getting through.

SPEAKER_01 17:43

So, like, for example, your kid spills their juice on the floor.

SPEAKER_02 17:47

Sure. Your kid spills their juice on the floor. Um, the gentle parenting approach might be, oh, honey, like, you know, I see you spilled your juice on the floor, like, and you're so sad about it. Let's, let's, you know, clean this up and get another juice. And it's, you know, it's okay. The non-gentle parenting approach might be like, spills happen. Let's wipe it up and move on. Like, that's it. And then the gaslighting approach would be like, oh, I'm so angry, you've done it again. You're so sloppy. I can't believe you spilled your juice on my floor, like, you know, scolding. And like that child and that child internalizes that exactly. And then believes that they're sloppy or they're, you know, like that's just that's where for me the boundary becomes apparent for parenting and building positive self-esteem. Is that you know, we talk about a lot about gaslighting in relationships, but when it comes to parenting, like it happens as well. Like parents often, you know, will say to their kids, like, you made me feel this way. You embarrassed me when you had a fit-in target or whatever, you know, like that's not that's the big red flag.

SPEAKER_00 18:57

That's so I have two questions, and I think two will require big answers. One is what is the fear, right? So why don't we want to do this? What is the fear? What are the consequences? What does this look like in later years of their life when you're, you know, guilting your kid or projecting your own emotions on them? And then I guess two, which is the next topic we can get into, is how much of their self-concept is created by other people and self-reporting or mainly their parents, or their parents or whatever, or or versus like self-reporting, because they don't necessarily have those tools at that young age.

SPEAKER_02 19:38

There, Carol Dweck came up with this theory called fixed versus growth mindset. And they're exactly like what they sound like. A growth mindset means that a child or an adult thinks that, like, you know, circumstances you can grow from, you can learn from, you can change the next time that something happens, how you might handle it, or what you've learned from it. And you you build on those skills, right? You grow. Fixed mindset is the opposite, the consequence of what you're acting, where someone may internalize so deeply that they're a certain way that their mindset becomes fixed.

SPEAKER_00 20:15

Give us an example of both.

SPEAKER_02 20:17

Okay, so in like in an academic setting, um, let's take a kid who maybe has struggled with dyskalchlea, which is basically dyslexia with numbers, and has now been told so many times that they can't do math, and that like maybe when they're home and a parent is trying to help them do math, that they're all there's so much frustration and like, why can't you learn this? Why can't you do this? Like, and then they go to school and they look at the test, and then they are, you know, in their own head told again, like, I can't do this. And like, that's where it becomes fixed. That kid might say to themselves, like, math, me, we're, you know, like I'm never gonna be able to do it. Anything like around math is triggering. They might avoid a math lesson where they then start acting out, having behavioral consequences. And it's just a snowball of like being so fixed around like this is who I am, and like this is what I'm told who I am, that like, you know, they become in it's like a rush.

SPEAKER_00 21:17

Right. Like they could literally be the most amazing person at mathematics, but they would never figure it out.

SPEAKER_02 21:23

Right.

SPEAKER_00 21:24

Or they might not be the most amazing, but they might be, it might not need to be such a source of being like But maybe they're capable, but they wouldn't, maybe in later years of life they wouldn't look at professions because it's fixed. So you know what I'm saying?

SPEAKER_02 21:35

Exactly. Or they just right, like there's they might just say, like, oh, I'm not good at this. It just might become part of it.

SPEAKER_00 21:41

Like the world becomes blocked off for them. Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 21:44

And like math is just a simple, clear example that a lot of people relate to. A lot of people like think they're not math people. Um, when I was working on my doctorate, I had to take a lot of statistics courses. And like I said, I didn't come from a research. Background. And so there was a lot of self-doubt with the math. Um, like, I don't know if I can do this. And then I like the first time I had to take my comprehensive examin stats, I didn't pass it. So, like, I can relate like to that doubt and that anxiety. But you know what? Like, it doesn't need to be, I'm not a statistician, that's not who I became, but I like exhibited grit, which is another um construct I really want to talk about with kids. And I pushed myself through something challenging and I had an accomplishment because of it. And there was good that came of it. So that's the growth mindset. Yes, when we talk about fixed versus growth mindset, like we have to be so careful about like labeling kids a certain way and putting them into that fixed mindset because you just don't know the consequences as they grow up. Right.

SPEAKER_01 22:49

Like saying, like, you're you're so shy or you're so even you're so smart. Because then they might only think that.

SPEAKER_02 22:57

Right. And they also might feel a lot of pressure because of that to perform a certain way. Um, you're so smart, and these are my expectations of you. You know, you have to be the all AP student, or you have to go to the Ivy League school. And you know, there's all this stuff about like CEOs and how they a lot of, you know, the most successful people didn't even go to college. That's another conversation. But like again, it's about like the individual path that leads to like someone's happiness, someone's success, um, being a productive human. Right. And when we fix people into certain categories, we may prevent them from finding that path for themselves. And I spoke, I mentioned for a second about grit. Yeah. Um, go on having a growth mindset often requires a bit of grit. And grit is basically just this idea that like you are capable of being resilient in doing things that are challenging for yourself. So, Angela Duckworth, she's an incredible psychologist. She's the one who's done like most of the research on grit. She has a TED talk and a book. I highly recommend watching her TED Talk, it's very interesting. But she talks about how the highest achievement, the biggest predictor is grit. So, can you stick with things when they're challenging? And a lot of that has to do with your mindset. If you have a growth mindset, you're gonna stick with it because you have a belief in yourself. And this belief also has a psychology term called self-efficacy. It's the belief that, like, yes, I may have not have the skills in this moment, but like I can get where I need to go. I can do it, I can overcome a challenge, I can be resilient, it might be uncomfortable for me, but I'm gonna get there. Yeah. Right.

SPEAKER_00 24:40

Do you just on a side note, do you think that I mean, my experience in the professional world, because I'm an attorney, and our generation, like millennials versus Gen Z, is so different. And I feel as though based on what you're describing as grit, which I know like colloquially what grit is, right? It's the hustle, it's the grind. It's the same meaning, meaning, right? Yeah, I feel as though there's a lack of grit amongst the youth.

SPEAKER_01 25:16

Yeah, they're lazy, I think.

SPEAKER_00 25:18

Well, yeah, but I also feel like there's like a lot of the parenting is not uh like encouraging the grit. It's like kind of just like, oh, if this isn't for you, babe, like that's okay, honey.

SPEAKER_02 25:29

Like great, we'll try something else. Yeah. You know, we hear this term gentle parenting a ton. And I think one of the gems of gentle parenting is that it forces you to collaborate with your child. And there's a whole method of doing this called collaborative problem solving. And that is fantastic. I think that when you understand where a kid is coming from and you meet them where they are and they're open and they communicate with you, like there's a partnership that develops there versus being authoritative and telling a kid what to do.

SPEAKER_01 26:02

Right. So basically figure out why your child doesn't want to do something and help figure out a solution as opposed to forcing them. Exactly, collaboratively, like figuring it out together.

SPEAKER_02 26:12

And I think that gentle parenting gets at that, but then is like soft around enforcing things, you know. And I think when you're talking about future generations, like, is there grit? Is there not? I think it also comes down to like what I was saying before about like a lack of direction. Like you need direction to be able to have grit. There has to be a goal, there has to be like something that you're aiming for. And it doesn't need to be like a fixed goal, but it needs to be something where like it keeps you moving forward through, you know, challenging times or challenging experiences. But um, like I said, maybe with uh all of the options that are presented to people these days, like when it comes to what the workforce or it comes to like career paths, all of that stuff, we're dissuade from like taking the grittier route because it's gonna be harder. And so let's just let's just jump to something else, right? I'm gonna get on LinkedIn and figure out a different job to apply to, or I'm gonna, you know, if the degree is hard, I'm gonna switch my major right away. I'm gonna, so I think we see that more and more, but um, yeah, it's all about like the influence. Like my parents and especially my mom was always very like committed to reminding me, like in hard moments, like you you do this or you stay committed, like you push through.

SPEAKER_01 27:35

And yeah, yeah. So are there like subtle ways that parents influence the way that their kids see themselves without even realizing it?

SPEAKER_02 27:47

Yeah. So I love this um learning model called the zones of proximal development. It's um Lev Vygotsky, who's a very renowned psychologist, who came up with this. And basically, it presents that kids learn the best when they're in their zone of proximal development. So if you think of learning and tasks as like three rings surrounding each other, and the center ring is, you know, things that kids can do by themselves, so fully independent. Then the middle ring is things that need to be scaffolded. So a parent needs to, or a teacher or whoever needs to be supportive, but the child can still participate and do the task, right? Like the parent might need to set it up or coach them through it. And then the outer ring are things that are just like way beyond their abilities developmentally at that time. So if we're pushing kids to like the outer ring, we're gonna lose them, right? Like it's we don't want to like challenge them to that level to like not be interested because they might not have the skills yet. But like something parents can do is like really aim to work within that middle zone. So we, you know, we want our kids to be independent. There's a lot of time for that for independent play. But then, like when we are with them, we may want to encourage them to do things that they're gonna need our scaffolding and our support with. Um Give me, give me an example. Sure. So I'll use my three-year-old as an example. So um, she, let's say her center zone is like playing in her toy kitchen. And if I ask her, can you make me a turkey sandwich? She'll go get the wooden bread, the turkey, she'll put it together. She knows what goes in the sandwich and she'll bring it to me. Doesn't need me to prompt her or scaffold her whatsoever. But then if I was to say to her, Can you make mommy a turkey sandwich for lunch today? She would struggle. You know, she probably couldn't reach the things off the shelves. She might not know how to like put the bread and spread it herself. But like, let's say I was like, okay, what ingredients do we need? And she then told me, okay, now we're gonna lay them out. Next step is you're gonna put the condiments on the bread. And she did that. I gave her a knife and she did it. And I was supervising, I gave her her stool so she could reach the counter. These are all examples of scaffolding a task where I'm making it something that's approachable for a three-year-old, even though it's not something she can do independently. Their self-esteem, like they're learning all of the things that are gonna happen in that zone where you're participating with them and guiding them, but still giving them the independence to sort of do it on their own. It's just like tenfold. It's like the best place for them to be, and they're gonna be happy. You're gonna, you know, you're gonna like have like such buy-in.

SPEAKER_01 30:35

So I don't know if you remember on Friday night when you guys were over, and my daughter wanted to make sparkling water, and like you put it in the machine and then you pull the lever. And obviously, she can't do that by herself. You know, she knows what to do, she knows the stuff she can't do by herself. And then your husband helped her, and then she said to all of us, this was the perfect job for me. So I think that that is exactly what I mean.

SPEAKER_02 31:00

And it doesn't need to be this like sophisticated educational psych, like abstract thing that I'm talking about. It's like little day-to-day tasks where you're connected to them. And encourage them and that are not like out of your way. Like, you know, you wanted to make the soda anyway. Like let them participate and like maybe it's in her third ring to like change the cartridge herself, or like you don't need to like push it to a level that's like beyond them, but um, you know, to bring it into that place where like they feel like they get a lot of like autonomy and like you know, confidence and pride over what they're doing.

SPEAKER_00 31:40

So that's how you encourage their self-concept in a really positive way.

SPEAKER_02 31:45

Yeah, well, and their self-esteem, right? Because I don't think my daughter's gonna like make the turkey sandwich example part of her like life story. But maybe like she is going to go to culinary school and that's you know, like maybe she'll be like, I can cook. That would be amazing for me. But you know, like that's what I'm saying is like um we don't want to like hold kids back because we don't think they have the ability to be involved or that it's gonna be more of a nuisance to involve them. We find that like, you know, it's like Goldilocks. We want to find that like perfect spot where we're, you know, getting them to be involved and we're coming up with tasks that are like authentic and engaging, and it doesn't need to be like you're reinventing the wheel to do that.

SPEAKER_00 32:29

I want to talk about how parents, particularly parents, impact the idea of self-concept. So, for example, let's say your kid comes home from school and there is a situation in which, you know, let's say your kid pushed another kid, but not necessarily in an aggressive way. Maybe the other kid was like reaching to get her snacks or you know, and so not having like let's say she's two or three and not having the developmental schools, the bet developmental skill to say, please don't touch my snacks or whatever. So she pushes her, she's in her space, that's just whatever. And then you know, your daughter comes home and says, you know, this is what happened at school, uh, you know, I pushed Josh or whatever. Uh telling, you know, your kid, you know, that's bad, or you're a badly, or whatever it is. And the opposite kind of what does that look like?

SPEAKER_02 33:30

So I think relating in that moment, being like, you know, oh, it must have been really upsetting to you when Josh took your sandwich. And I can understand that you lost control of your body because you know, the anger got into your head and you didn't think about like what the next step could be. And you pushed him because you wanted your food back. Like that makes sense. Like, we can understand why those things happen, especially when kids are developing like self-awareness and body control, and you know, all the things like I was talking before about executive functions, like all the things that like have to come into play. Like, if you think about all the micro skills that go into doing anything, yeah, like break it down and they're trying to navigate all of that at once, and they're babies for the most part. We're talking about three and four-year-olds who might like push, or you know, of course that becomes a different conversation when a kid is like 10, but when a kid is little, like you are relating to why they might do that, but then setting a boundary, like of how to deal with it the next time. Like there's like children's books that go through like the thing, you know, the feeling of being mad and like the angry superhero gets inside your brain and controls your brain. And like there's ways to break this down for little kids so that we're not using like abstract terms about feelings and emotions and like making it, you know, so much beyond their developmental capacity. Cause, you know, we don't, we're not looking for like a therapy session, we're looking for a moment of relatedness. You don't want to lecture them. You don't want to lecture them, and you don't want to make it like developmentally beyond what they're capable of understanding. So, you know, you relate and you talk about it and you explain what happened, and then you give them the skills. And hopefully you can also, they have a teacher who's open to collaborating and like being on the same page because we haven't talked about consistency yet, but like consistency for kids is like how they feel safe. Like, is what my mom is telling me at home, what's gonna happen at school with my teacher. So if you're willing to collaborate with the teacher and make sure everyone is handling it the same way and giving the child the same language, like the chances of them pushing over and over and over, unless there's something else behavioral going on, like I don't think you're gonna see that again and again. They don't want to like, you know, hurt other people for the most part. They don't want to like, you know, upset a friend. They don't want conflict, like they want to like maybe protect themselves and like establish that like this is mine, but they don't want like, you know, to make someone like that, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 36:09

But what does it do? I mean, I think it's normal. I'm not a parent, so I don't know. But from what I've seen of my friend parents or just life movies as that, I feel like it's normal for parents to kind of have like a gut reaction of being like, no, that's really bad, don't do that, or whatever. But what does that do to a kid's self-concept?

SPEAKER_02 36:31

Okay, well, there is a difference between keeping your child safe. If my kid starts running towards, you know, the street, then immediately I'm gonna be like, no, don't do that. Stop right now. I might scream her name. I might try to scare her to stop her in her tracks, you know? Um, and then there's situations but like in a situation with Josh. Yeah. So what like pulling the sandwich away?

SPEAKER_00 36:57

Yeah, like pushing Josh.

SPEAKER_02 36:58

Like what do you think if if the parent is there?

SPEAKER_00 37:00

If the parent is like if the you know the kid comes home or the teacher calls the parent, okay, and the parent goes to the kid and says, That's that's really bad. You're really bad for doing that. Like you're really bad for pushing. Really bad. Okay. Like, what does that do to self-concept?

SPEAKER_01 37:15

Or self-esteem.

SPEAKER_02 37:16

Well, that goes into the labeling thing again. Um, and something I talk about in my dissertation work that I actually coded all of these self-concept narratives for is something called appraisals. So, how is a kid like appraising their abilities? What like adjectives and descriptive language do they use to describe themselves? And um, what's really interesting is that my research found that within these narratives of kids who like displayed both like high ability and low ability, like the negative affect always came out, even in like the positive, the things that they were talking about in their high abilities. So it sticks with them.

SPEAKER_00 37:56

Can you give us an example?

SPEAKER_02 37:58

Um, yes, there's a really cute example that comes right to mind. And the documentary I use to do this research because I couldn't do collect-in-person narratives at the time, it's called Twice Exceptional. And it's a really cute documentary that you guys can stream if you ever want to see it. But there's a girl, and and they were all seniors because I said, like, self-concept, you really need to look at like adolescents to have like a fluid narrative. So there was a girl who they interviewed and she's talking about her abilities, and she goes, Like, I am really good at animation, but I'm really bad at parties. Like she was talking about like her strength, like being really good at animation, and she continued on to go to college for animation. This was years ago, so she's probably still working in that field. And um, she still had to follow up that like she was good at something with like, oh, but I'm really bad at this, you know. Like it always coincided with like, you know, this is like what I'm taught to know about myself is that like I can't, I have a hard time socializing. And like it's okay to have a hard time socializing, like socializing and to know that about yourself and to have social anxiety and like but it to be but to say I'm really bad at parties, like you know, that's where it's part of your actual story. Maybe someone has in your story, exactly. And maybe someone has said to her before, like, oh, you're so awkward or you're so this, and like those things, you know, are I'm not saying like we're perfect human beings and we can go around all the time being like hyper aware of the things we say and you know, so sensitive to everyone's like emotional development, all that. Like we have to be realistic. But when we're parenting and we're with someone, you know, who we're giving feedback to repeatedly, like there has to be some awareness around those types of labels. Like you're shy, you're awkward, you're so uncomfortable, like loosen up, like you know.

SPEAKER_01 39:46

So basically, to sum it all up, the way that you talk to your children and the labels that you put on them and the way that you I guess like encourage them to do certain things will really build their self-concept, which goes hand in hand with their self-esteem, right?

SPEAKER_02 40:06

Yeah, exactly. And you know, especially if a kid is struggling with something, right? Like not dismissing the struggle and trying to like fill it with something that they're good at, like sitting in that and like letting them know that it's okay, you know, and that you can, you know, encouraging that growth mindset. Um and, you know, if you think about it, like especially when they're little, like you're your kid's whole world. And then there comes a point where like their peers become, you know, it starts to outweigh the parents' opinions. But like imagine if you've built a foundation for your child where they feel self-confident, they have self-esteem, you know, they know who they are, and they can go into their social relationships or into the world or into academic settings or whatever it's into camp. You know, it could be literally like a basketball game. And a child's mindset will change everything about how they navigate how they navigate their surrounding and you know.

SPEAKER_00 41:05

I guess I mean, not that I meant to talk about this movie, but I guess I love it.

SPEAKER_02 41:10

Keep it coming.

SPEAKER_00 41:11

Don't give me any spoilers though, because I'm gonna but what it made me think when I just said about how like self-concept also affects like what you're saying, how they navigate a situation. So it would affect how they advocate for themselves, right? Like if you're keep telling a kid, you know, like you're stupid or you're this or you're that, and then they get grow up and they're getting bullied and they're like the butt of all jokes. Like maybe their friends are like making fun of them for being dumb. They'll just go along with it because they have this like insecure feeling about this is how I am.

SPEAKER_02 41:38

Well, also imagine the ownership of like, so this is a big thing. When I was working at the Quad, the two East School, I started piloting that elementary program. And as the years pass, I really wanted to creep my way back up to the upper school, which is what I did. And one of the big skills that we always talked about with kids in the high school were how do we prepare them to advocate for themselves and to go into like, you know, a workforce or a college setting or whatever it is with self-awareness because the disability is not going away. They need to know that they have it and be able to discuss how they've navigated it and how they live with it, but to still know that like they have so much worth and that there's other things that like outweigh that, you know, like the disability doesn't define them. Yeah, that the disability doesn't define them, that there are other strengths or other interests or other things that like bring worthiness. And like, you know, if we can figure out a way to flip my find my research findings where like maybe they're discussing their deficits, but then can, you know, overwhelmingly overshadow that with like, you know, this is what I can do well, and this is how I manage my challenges and my deficits. Actually, think about that for like anyone who's typically developing too. If we weren't like so focused on like where we fail and what's hard for us and what we don't like about ourselves, and we instead like started to actually internalize like what our strengths are, because everyone's a little too y. We all have things that we're better at and that we struggle with. But if we could like really focus on our strengths, like everyone would be so much happier, yeah. And it's like we live in this ultra competitive, um, you know, very and now everything is like so public online, and you know, this world where we compare and like it's so easy to get sucked into that trap.

SPEAKER_00 43:33

But yeah, yeah, you know what that makes you think of, like you brought up Love on the Spectrum earlier, you know that show. Maybe yes, of course. Like that's what that makes me think of because she's so proud of herself.

SPEAKER_02 43:46

Yeah, I have to say, like, all of the parents and families that accompany the Love on the Spectrum um cast are wonderful. Like they all are so loving and they all like. Really proud of their yeah, and they all like yeah, so Abby um or not Abby, what's the character the uh person on the show who is like really into the beating and she and her American girl dolls and I don't know you know who I'm talking about though? Do you know who I'm talking about?

SPEAKER_00 44:17

I didn't watch the show like you guys I watched once one season, I think.

SPEAKER_02 44:21

She I wish I could think of her name right now, but she's adorable, she's an adult, but she's really into dolls and beating and like a lot of things that are like maybe developmentally immature, is how someone might view it. But like she lives in her own apartment. She's like, you know, really into her things, like her beads that she sells online and has made a business out of. And now she also, because of the show, has like a lot of brand endorsements, and she like lives a life with her dolls and all her stuff, and she takes ownership of who she is. No one's telling her you're an adult, get rid of your American girl dolls. They're teaching her how to be an adult and have an apartment and make money for herself and now have fame and have, you know, inspired other people and still be who she is and be proud of that and not be shamed for it. So, you know, I love that show. I think everything about it is perfection. But yeah, it's um that's really what I'm getting at is like you don't have to change who someone is to encourage like them to be well, to encourage them to be who they are, you know. Like they don't, yeah, to encourage their strengths and to let them still have that. You don't need to change the aspects that are quirky or you know, any of that. Yeah. But you need to enable them and and that comes from a young age of telling them all of like the things that they're wonderful at versus all of the things that maybe and also ensuring that grit and knowing that things aren't always wonderful, and you know, just making sure that we know we can push through challenges, we don't have to avoid them.

SPEAKER_00 46:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 46:01

Collaborative thing, as you said.

SPEAKER_01 46:03

Yeah. I think it's a good time to get into her. Would you rather so would you rather your child grow your child grow up with extremely high self-esteem, but very little self-awareness or very strong self-awareness, but frequent self-doubt?

SPEAKER_02 46:19

I think definitely having um the low self-awareness and high self-esteem, because self-awareness can be taught. You can, you know, if someone's sitting too close to you, you know, you can start to create strategies, very concrete strategies about like, you know, there needs to be a little bit of space. You want me to give you a ruler for a little while that you can use to sit between, you know, to have between you so you know how much space that is. Or if it's something like you they can't follow a schedule, like you can create so much structure for someone to learn self-awareness or even manners or anything, you know, all these uncomfortable things are like, oh, I can't tell someone to like you at the fork. Like someone can in a loving way, in a helpful way, and that creates self-awareness. Yeah. But self-esteem, we as we've been talking about through this episode, is so much harder to undo the damage, yeah. You know, right.

SPEAKER_01 47:15

Um, would you rather your child be known as the smart one and avoid avoid failure or risk losing that identity in order to grow? Do you want to answer for me?

SPEAKER_02 47:26

The ladder. The ladder. Growth mindset, baby. Yeah. I mean, if you have a growth mindset, you could it's like a few years.

SPEAKER_01 47:34

And then our last one is would you rather your child be wildly liked but struggle to say no, or risk disappointing others but hold strong boundaries? I would like somewhere in the middle, you know.

SPEAKER_02 47:47

I think that Alyssa, that is not the game. I don't think either of those are beneficial developmentally. I think that kids need to understand context and not just kids. You know, I'm so used to saying kids and students, but people need to understand context. There can't be environments where you're always gonna say no because you're a strong-willed person and that's like your identity, is that you are gonna be the like I worked with a lot of students like this, especially who had failed in other schools and then came into my classroom and please open your book. No, like everything was no, no, no, no, no. Um, it's hard. Yeah, and that's not that doesn't benefit them in the long run. But um repeat the other side of that, that it was wildly liked. Wildly liked it. Widely liked, right?

SPEAKER_01 48:36

Wildly liked, not widely likely.

SPEAKER_02 48:38

Wildly and widely loved by all their adoring. Loved by all or no, because obviously you need to. So that one, I'm sorry. It's not gonna be a clear answer from me. Fair enough. It's gonna have to be yeah, fair.

SPEAKER_00 48:58

Okay, well, thank you so much.

SPEAKER_02 49:01

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 49:02

It was really nice smile.