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American Children Are Drowning in Self-Esteem
- woodentable 10y agoOf course, the idea of children with low self esteem has been rising in correlation of increased usage of social media. I would add that the rates of anxiety are also related the high usage rate of social media users.
- joesmo 10y agoThere is another, more colloquial way, to describe artificially inflated self-esteem and overconfidence: being an asshole. Maybe that plain language translation will motivate parents to actually raise their children and teach them things so they don't all turn into stupid assholes like most everyone in America.
- sp332 10y agoIf self-esteem is so high, why is suicide so common? Giving someone self-esteem doesn't mean letting them whine all the time. Your swimming instructors saying “C’mon dude, stop complaining, let’s get on with it!” IS giving the kid self-esteem! Teaching many ways to add is important because not all kids are going to be able to learn the same way at that age. Different methods are going to "click" for different students. And those extra ways of adding aren't useless. In fact I spent a fair bit of time in college math and computer courses learning new ways to count, let alone add.
- tpeo 10y ago"So common" compared to what?
- sp332 10y agoOther causes of death.
- gozur88 10y agoIs suicide among kids any more common than it ever was?
- DanBC 10y agoIt's hard to know, because the definition of suicide has changed; the way it's recorded has changed; and religion in the US means some deaths by suicide are masked. But, in general, yes, suicide rates are rising for young people. This is worrying because young women were for years the group at lowest risk of death by suicide. (But with high rates of self harm and attempted suicide). (US media has terrible reporting on suicide, but this one at least has some details) http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-04-22/cdc-suicide-deaths-on-the-rise-among-teen-girls-and-middle-aged-men http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-04-22/cdc-suicide-d... You can get some stats from CDC here, I guess. http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/suicide/statistics/index.html http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/suicide/statistics/ind...
- ChuckMcM 10y agoThe argument I've heard is that children are not learning how to deal with failure or criticism early enough to develop a basic toolkit for it.
- alsetmusic 10y agoAgreed. A person who has unnaturally high self esteem will be more surprised by failure than someone with moderate or low self esteem. Losing a job, going through a failed relationship, flunking out of school, or any number of other personal "failures" may be that much more devestating to a person who places unwarranted expectations of success on themselves.
- 6stringmerc 10y agoIf you need this codified in the modern US media cycle, just take a look at the Corey Feldman / Today Show situation. He was terrible on appearance #1, the internet let him know (as it does, both in tempered and vicious ways) and he claimed he was being bullied, then came back and did appearance #2 which was even musically worse than the first one. Then he thanks everybody for the support, rather than pay attention to the valid criticism that he has not made a bit of improvement since his Howard Stern performance in 1992. Calling a terrible work product terrible isn't bullying.
- r00fus 10y agoI think kid celebrities live in their own bubble and not representative of the larger population of children.
- 6stringmerc 10y agoThe man is 45 years old now. He's not a child anymore so it's reasonable to stop treating him with child gloves, or, to the point, coddling his self-esteem.
- cbanek 10y agoCognitive dissonance? When people tell you you are great at something, but you don't know, or can't talk about it, and feel you can't live up to your parents/teachers expectations, that's a lot of stress. Also if you thought you were great at something in school, but actually you find out you suck in the real world, if that was a major part of your identity, some people just can't live with that.
- Balgair 10y agoFacebook. Suicide is considered 'contagious'. Before social media (1970) the 'contagiousness' (to really muddle a complex issue) was ~6. Meaning that each suicide 'affected' 6 other young people deeply, seriously disrupted their life, or left them feeling suicidal as well. Typically this was only close friends and family. Now, as we are all more connected, we see that a single suicide affects more people and more quickly. Now the 'contagiousness' of a single suicide spreads to 134 young people, a ~2100% increase. My wife teaches and this is all over the local schools now [0]. Kids are now live streaming and live snapping these grizzly acts. It seems that you become the most popular kid in school in an instant and that you get a lot of social capital when you kill yourself live. I want you to know that I am choosing my words carefully now: It is fucking crazy. Not even kids in a fucking Syrian war zone are doing this fucking crap. To borrow from Tumblr: I. Can't. Even. My wife is damn near at the end of her rope with this on top of all the other shit she has to deal with. I think she'll end up as yet another burnout teacher, I can't blame her. The linked article has a lot more and better discussion on the complexities of these suicide clusters and how hard it can be to identify and stop them. These clusters seem not to be linked to self-esteem and 'everyone gets a ribbon' culture as strongly as they are linked to Instagram and other digital shrines/death-cults generators. They may be linked, but it seems that the root cause of the self esteem cult and the suicide clusters may be social media. They are correlated, but not causal. This brings up an interesting case with the military suicide rates, as they are a very tight community that the rest of America has forgotten. To quote an Iraqi Porto-potty, of all things: 'The USA is not at war, the USMC is at war'. We are loosing the war with suicide, and social media is the enemy. If you are feeling suicidal, there are many resources available. Here are some sources: Call: 1 (800) 273-8255 (english) 800 273 8255 (spanish) Visit: http://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/ http://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/ (English) http://www.didihirsch.org/spc-spanish http://www.didihirsch.org/spc-spanish (Spanish) [0]http://www.newsweek.com/2016/10/28/teen-suicide-contagious-colorado-springs-511365.html http://www.newsweek.com/2016/10/28/teen-suicide-contagious-c...
- 0xcde4c3db 10y ago> If you are feeling suicidal, there are many resources available. There are resources readily available to stop you killing yourself right now. After that the prospects for help tend to dry up pretty quickly until you boil down to the next crisis. Hotlines are a fine thing to have and to promote, but they're not nearly enough.
- maxxxxx 10y agoThey don't have self-esteem but exactly the opposite. They are in constant need of external validation to feel good about themselves. A person with real self-esteem doesn't need to be praised all the time.
- sbuttgereit 10y agoThis. Self-esteem develops from personal achievement, not external praise. When you see the results of your actions and those actions have produced positive results, you gain that sense of achievement even if others don't recognize it. This is the big miss from the self-esteem advocate crowds... the ones that do the participation trophies. They aren't creating self-esteem with worthless praise and merit-less awards... they're creating a dependency on the praise of others and that's not healthy: it creates the opposite of esteem when not fulfilled.
- hackuser 10y ago> A person with real self-esteem doesn't need to be praised all the time. True. And from what I understand, adults get that self-esteem from being given unconditional love as children, when they don't have the capacity to provide it to themselves.
- sien 10y agoThe US is #30 on world suicide lists. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_r... South Korea and Japan are much higher. Also, given the US's gun laws presumably suicide is often more successfully completed in the US than in other places. Given this, the US suicide rate isn't comparatively that high.
- ljw1001 10y agofrom what i know about Japanese culture, they are not overwhelming their children with unnecessary praise. Korea also.
- adrr 10y agoI thought suicide was a measure of how well off a country is and also linked to alcohol and drug abuse rates.
- analog31 10y agoThey are under phenomenal pressure. Everything is more competitive, and they are under a barrage of ratings and selection processes. Endless standardized tests. There was one standardized test when I was a kid -- an intelligence test -- and my parents never showed me the results. I took the ACT and SAT, but they seemed much less critical to getting into a decent college. Grades seem much more critical today, due to competition for slots and scholarships in the more prestigious colleges. Ranking systems, such as who gets to skip a grade in what subject. Competitive selection processes, such as who gets into the youth orchestra, and which level of the youth orchestra. Increased pressure to attend college, and to major in a short list of subjects that are associated with lucrative jobs. Mountains of homework, yet we're also told that kids should learn how to "code" and to build up their "resume" for college admissions, oh and maybe also start a business. I learned to code in the ample spare time that I had because I had relatively little homework. I would not survive being a kid today.
- ljw1001 10y agoYeah, my personal experience with teens is that they are anxious and full of self-doubt. I certainly don't see an excess of self-esteem. I wonder how much hard-science there is on the harmfulness of praise
- agentgt 10y agoIt is ironic the author uses a swimming metaphor: "If their instructors had focused on making them feel good about swimming, instead of on making them swim, they could have drowned." Swimming is almost natural. Most mammals can swim with out training (even my cat knew how to swim). Fear on the other hand is what leads to drowning. You don't need formal training in swimming to stay a float. You need to not be afraid of the water. On personal level for the downvoters as to why this is such a crappy metaphor is I know several adult family members that do not know how to swim and one of them my wife and just trained recently.... it required lots and lots of confidence boosting and reassuring. So the instructor actually does need to make them "feel good" aka comfortable with the water. The author could have picked so many other metaphors where state of mind plays less of a role.
- maxxxxx 10y agoThat's nonsense. As a kid I was not afraid of water. I could dive 10 meters down without fear. But I still couldn't swim without instruction.
- agentgt 10y agoMaybe so. But the author says "drown" not swim. I presume you knew how to float if you weren't afraid of the water? I have seen adults that refuse to take lessons because... because... they are afraid. So regardless I still say it is pretty crappy metaphor.
- jseliger 10y agoWe actually want more self-efficacy: http://seliger.com/2008/05/01/self-efficacy%E2%80%94oops-there-goes-another-rubber-tree-plant/ http://seliger.com/2008/05/01/self-efficacy%E2%80%94oops-the... rather than self-esteem. Which is a topic that's been bandied about in the media for a while yet hasn't really taken hold.
- jasonkostempski 10y agoYour dad might have an em dash addiction.
- danbolt 10y agoI really like the idea of this concept, as it helps guide people to understand what's important to them. Having a grounding sense of goals, principles, and boundaries enables people to cultivate a productive self-worth that can be very powerful. I feel like a lot of Hacker News readers can probably relate to this, as I've sensed a lot of self-directed joy has come from their time spent learning and using computers. Looking back, other people's people evaluating/encouraging/criticising my math skills, swimming abilities, or self-esteem has done much worse for me than individually realising what's important to myself and wanting to work towards that. I really hope that we culturally have a change in attitude towards these things.
- jupiter90000 10y agoWhile they didn't turn out to learn much in math, they did learn how to sit still at a desk, which is perfect preparation for a later office job. At least the parents got a break and someone else to take care of their kids for a few hours each day.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- alex- 10y ago> American children came top at thinking they were good at maths, but bottom at maths. For Korean children, the inverse was true: they considered themselves poorer at maths than the children of any other country, but were the best. This really stood out to me because I often found my own examination results puzzling. I would ace exams that I thought I failed and just pass ones I was sure I had done well in. This has lead me to believe that the more I know about a subject, the more I know how little I actually know about it and the greater respect I have for subject as a whole. This might explain why children who are not great at maths might think they are. Not due to an inflated self esteem but because "knowing what you don't know" is a part of the learning process.
- Jenya_ 10y agoI like to have short names for similar things which are described by different people, in this case the name is likely to be Dunning–Kruger effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
- artpepper 10y agoThe author seems to be attacking common core ("so many different ways to think about simple addition") but then links it to self-esteem, without actually showing the connection. How does he know the math curriculum was designed to boost self-esteem? Also, the ability to do rote sums is not the same as understanding math. So the fact that his son "could add up already" doesn't mean much, at least out of context.
- sebastianconcpt 10y agoHow math curriculum boost self-esteem? You mean like being able to calculate precise predictions of any model of any discipline? In what way do you think that can possibly influence the self-confidence of anyone?
- ihaveahadron 10y agoHow about they learn English? I don't mean a particular dialect of English, I'm just talking any English at all. About 10% of Americans can not only not speak a foreign language but they can't speak A language. 10 fucking percent. And this is legitimately the most powerful country on earth. Disgustingly pathetic is what it is.
- NTDF9 10y agoWhat I've noticed common among a lot of Americans is a fear/inhibition of speaking the truth, mostly to not have a confrontation. I witnessed an example of this in a music performance of a teen rock band. In this performance, the band sucked overall. The guitarist didn't know what he was doing. But everybody (guardians, parents, teachers, friends) just keep saying, "Great performance brah, awesome shit, good going guys" etc. While this feedback raises self-esteem with positive feedback, there is no criticism of where they failed...at all!! Who's going to tell them, "Hey, your timing on the G-C chord switch sucked"? When these same kids go for a "real" performance/audition, they suck at it, fail miserably and thus causing anti-social behaviors, anger, and in extreme cases, suicides. I personally believe in a system of constructive criticism where positive feedback is necessary for the kids, yet someone actually tells them that they can do better in this, this and this area. Irrationally high/low self-esteem is a bane for competition.
- jug5 10y agoAs a whole they have become one of the most cowardly cultures.
- pavel_lishin 10y ago> "Hey, your timing on the G-C chord switch sucked" That doesn't sound like very constructive criticism.
- NTDF9 10y ago>> That doesn't sound like very constructive criticism. A constructive criticism isn't a one-liner on HN. If you're skilled enough to show how that transition works, show it to them and make them learn it.
- cwbrandsma 10y agoI think I understand what you are saying...but at the same time, given the example 6stringmerc used, there is nothing to "teach", the student has to practice more. That isn't teachable, the skill is only achieved via practice and work. (I give guitar lesions) Which we, as a society, also seem reluctant to do. "oh you must not be good at that, try something else", instead of "if you want it you are going to have to work harder"
- 6stringmerc 10y ago>At the heart of the problem is an educational ethos that prizes building self-esteem over academic attainment. I'm not going to argue this assertion, because I think it's a valid one, but I would like to give it context that the author is seemingly lacking: As a generalization spanning several decades, parents aren't interested in being parents and in turn the provenance of their responsibilities at home - discipline, ethics, morals, codes of conduct - have been transitioned to that of either the School System or LEOs in more extreme cases. I submit it's nearly impossible to be both an academic task-master and an emotional development coach at the same time and expect both of them to excel in all scenarios where the provider is a Civic Organization of some sort (e.g. school system). After all, it's a bunch of adults promoting the self-esteem bandwagon for these past few decades, not the kids. I wholly encourage Mr. Astill to join his local PTA and begin to address his long-term concerns with the root of the problem. I say this rather tongue in cheek, because actually doing something about the issue in one's one neighborhood is a lot harder than sitting down and writing about it (as a writer, believe me I know).
- zanny 10y agoThis touches on something nobody wants to acutally acknowledge or talk about. There is some subconscious shifts taking place - marriage later or not at all, fewer kids per household, etc - but fundamentally raising children is a ton of work. It is its own job, possibly in a class of its own in difficulty or at least rivaled by almost any other profession. But society and culture just expects the job of you. Do it, don't be trained to do it, and probably worse of all do not organize society around promoting those who are best at it. In any other disciple if you are amazing at it you should expect gainful employment carrying it out. And there is a dramatic difference between parenting and caretaking or teaching. And even those have really bad real world metrics to gauge success, given by how often sitters or teachers can perform poorly. But you don't solve this problem when you shove down every adults throat how not having children means they are a failure as a person, combined with the expectation that they should both be good parents and have an independent second (or first) career. Being a parent is its own job. Throughout history, humans have consistently dedicated tremendous amounts of absolute hours of its adult population to the raising of children. Societies often organized around the subjugation of an entire sex to do the job. It is crucial for the wellbeing and long term prosperity of current and future generations people accept that reality.
- Animats 10y agoThe article mentions that too much effort is going into teaching arithmetic by different means. Is that really necessary? Once kids get addition, subtraction, and multiplication as useful operations, and know what division is for, that kind of covers it. (Long division by hand is such a clunky operation, and done so much better by calculators, it may not be worth teaching any more.) "I like having low self-esteem. It makes me feel special" - Jane Lane, in Daria.
- r00fus 10y agoI have been hearing this from my kids' teachers as well. They're moving to spending less time on time-consuming operations like long-form division (because calculators allowed on tests and relied on for even textbook exercises). Not sure what to think of this - I always thought you had to learn/get proficient on the basics before delegating those to a machine...
- Animats 10y agoThere's a hand procedure for square root. It was once taught in schools. Few ever used it, even before computers. If you really needed square root, people used tables or a slide rule. Manual long division has reached that point. Computers don't do division that way, anyway.
- rimantas 10y agoLong division was probably the first algorithm I've learned. If you don't think that learning how to manipulate abstractions by applying algorithms is a usefull thing… well why not just skip arithmetics too, calculators are good with this one.
- greendragon 10y agoI bet you learned the 'new math' of addition and multiplication algorithms before long division. (e.g. for multiplication you construct a new set of numbers to add to get the final result.) But we probably should skip much of the arithmetic curriculum. We can move on to more interesting problems more quickly, or study different algorithms if that is the goal.
- jconley 10y agoInteresting anecdote. As a father I feel nearly the exact opposite so I'll share my opinion. On academics, I want my kids to learn how to learn. And to love to learn. I want them to learn to be persistent, have mental fortitude, be formidable, take risks, be collaborative, and not be afraid to fail. They should learn to be productive in whatever aspect of society they end up in. I want them to be happy. Lives are short. Childhoods are shorter. Striving to be the best at math and science academically gets a "meh" sort of reaction from me. Yes we need those skills, and raw academic achievement is an interesting measurement, but, I'd like to see some convincing stats that it holds a causal relationship to national productivity per capita and GDP. I'm guessing that would be the goal of an education, in terms of the economy.
- petegrif 10y agoIMHO it's an issue.
- smegel 10y agoThis isn't self-esteem. It's the foundation of narcissistic personality disorder. Self-esteem is simply the belief that one can be loved and respected for who they are. Needing to "achieve" (or believe that achievements are worthwhile) in order to feel good about ones self is the opposite to self-esteem.
- eeZah7Ux 10y agoExactly! Call it ego, entitlement or narcissism.
- nemo44x 10y agoI mainly agree but I believe the narcissism is in the parents more than the children. It is then passed on to the children. No one wants to just admit their kid is pretty average or below average at certain things. They believe they have failed themselves and that there is no way that their offspring could just be a regular person. Of course it has become harder to be a regular person and have a fine life in modern, Western society. We don't have the regular person jobs anymore that a regular person who is pretty average can take up like they could generations ago. The stakes are high and a smaller and smaller group of high achievers, or what appear to be high achievers get all the spoils. A parent has an instinct to make every effort to guide their offspring to that to the point you get average kids who honestly believe they are well above average. It has been reenforced.
- dmolony 10y agoI blame L'Oreal for this. "Because you're worth it."
- sebastianconcpt 10y ago"...the country’s elementary schools seem strangely averse to teaching children much stuff" <- If you really really want to understand why this happens, you should investigate the subject: "Cultural War"
- nick_ 10y agoIs it just me, or did seemingly every columnist switch from using "math" to "maths" in the past few years?
- aembleton 10y agoThis particular commentator is from the UK. Here, in the UK we say "maths".
- smsm42 10y agoThat self-esteem thing reminds me of this: http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?id=3978 http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?id=3978
- gaur 10y ago> SORRY, YOU NEED TO ENABLE JAVASCRIPT TO VISIT THIS WEBSITE. I need Javascript to read a magazine article? Nope. Bye.
- dwaltrip 10y agoIf the underlying issue is that you don't like ads or tracking, you could try installing uBlock origin instead of disabling javascript. There are some other useful extensions in this area but uBlock origin is the only one I have experience with. It's been great for me. Usage of javascript as a tool for building web properties is only going to keep increasing, and grumbling about it doesn't solve anything.
- gaur 10y ago> building web properties This phrase gave me pause (why not just say "making wesbites"?), but I think I have a handle on what it implies. "Making websites" is what you do when your main deliverable is content. Maybe you throw in some javascript for a little aesthetic kick or some nice features, but if a user comes to your website with javascript disabled, your goal is to still get the content to them. "Building web properties" is what you do when your main deliverable is non-content: ad clicks, tracking, etc. Whatever content you offer on the site is just a honeypot. If a user comes to your website with javascript disabled, your goal is to intentionally turn them away because they've refused the delivery of your non-content.
- dwaltrip 10y agoI used the term "properties" as I thought it would be a more generic term. We are past the days where the internet is only used for static web pages. I wasn't trying to imply monetization via ads. You paint a stark dichotomy between static websites and javascript powered "content honeypots". There are millions of web apps out there that are not the latter, and use javascript to provide real value.
- smsm42 10y agoRegular people build websites. Enterprises create (or, more frequently, acquire) web properties. Buying a website for 100M dollars sounds insane, buying a "web property" sounds distinguished.
- a-no-n 10y ago"Self-esteem" is a nice way of saying American children are becoming more arrogant with fewer skill, lower performance and less experience than ever. Adults, teachers and mentors need to do more to put them in their place, for their own good. Respect is earned, not entitled to "special snowflakes."
- cwyers 10y agoThe grading scale at my daughter's elementary school keeps moving more and more towards not having any sort of discernable outcomes. The possible grade as of her most recent report card are: Basic skill Progressing towards goal Meets goal Exceeds goal And in several subjects (it grows every semester), Es are not awarded at all. I am not sure I understand the point of this system.
- zhemao 10y agoBecause it's not meant to rank children against each other. It's meant to tell the parents and students how they are doing compared to the standard. If they have not met the goal, then something needs to change. If they have met the goal or exceeded it, there's not much to worry about. It's not like kids really learn much in elementary school anyways. Which is itself a problem, but a different one.
- zhemao 10y agoIt doesn't seem like this is a problem with self-esteem. The problem is that American schools don't have good educational standards or trained teachers. In the countries that rank ahead of us in the international assessments, even elementary school teachers need to have education degrees. That is not the case in most American school districts (just need a teaching certificate). Teaching is also a more highly respected profession in other countries. It's pretty much expected in the US that kids don't really learn much of anything in school until they get to 8th grade. I certainly think we could introduce more advanced math concepts at earlier grades instead of taking five years to cover basic arithmetic. That's not to say that I would like us to adopt a system like that of China or South Korea, in which students are drilled from morning to night on mostly rote tasks and then pitted against each other in a gladiatorial competition called the National College Entrance Examination. If there was a better way of squashing children's natural curiosity and love of learning, I can't really envision it.
- WallWextra 10y ago1. I don't know what education degrees look like in other countries, but I highly doubt more education majors in the US would solve anything without first overhauling that curriculum and making it more demanding. 2. Is there any factual evidence for this often-repeated stereotype about Asian children having less curiosity and love of learning than American ones?
- zhemao 10y ago1. I'm sure they are more rigorous than the education major in the US, which is pretty much a joke. I agree that the way we train teachers has to be revamped. 2. I never said that Asian students are less curious. From interacting with Chinese and South Korean classmates, they are just as intellectually curious as their American peers. I just don't think the East Asian model of education is very good at fostering individual engagement and understanding. It's heavily focused on rote memorization and is definitely "teach to the test". I would welcome a study on it with a good analysis. Don't really known how you would measure it though. South Korea also has the highest suicide rates in the developed world, and much of it is concentrated in those under 18. So there are plenty of reasons why we would not want to adopt it here.
- lukeasrodgers 10y agoThe author states "Nor is [poor education performance in America] due to high levels of inequality: the proportion of American children coming from under-privileged backgrounds is about par for the OECD." I'd be interested to see a citation for this claim; I think it's either misleading, or things have changed a lot over the last 5-8 years (which I doubt). What I recall from my time working in education research, looking at the international tests including PISA, is that average scores from the USA are brought down by the fact that the bottom-performing kids do so much worse than elsewhere, which if you look at the way public school funding works in America, makes a lot of sense (i.e. wealthy district = higher taxes = more funding for public education). The problem isn't that America has more low-SES students than other places, it's that we (speaking as someone currently living in America) do a worse job educating them. I'm not saying that the problem is only inequality, but it is definitely part of the picture.
- rdabane 10y agoI can attest to this fact ... I was a tutor to freshmans during my grad studies. The kids couldn't handle simple sum of fractions without a calculator. Forget about sum fractions containing a variable. I was astonished at how they managed to clear the SAT's.
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- mkempe 10y agoTo grok self-esteem, one must grasp eudaemonia. Self-esteem is reliance on your own power to think, judge, and act; regardless of what others may feel, say, or threaten. If some snowflakes cannot stand being judged by others, or cannot judge themselves, they do not have self-esteem. As for post-modern "teachers" who believe that unfounded praise, unrelated to achievement, is the source of self-esteem -- they are nurturing lemmings, alienated from their true human potential.
- gsg21 10y agoThere's a great book called "The Collapse of Parenting" [1] that talks about this. It obviously expands on these ideas, but here are a few notes: - Many parents confuse self-esteem with courage - To be courageous means to recognize the risks and your own limitations, but you find the resolve to move forward anyway. Bloated self-esteem means you aren't aware of your deficiencies - The right kind of humility means you recognize your own shortcomings and you are better prepared to take risks [1] https://www.amazon.com/Collapse-Parenting-Hurt-Treat-Grown-Ups/dp/0465048978 https://www.amazon.com/Collapse-Parenting-Hurt-Treat-Grown-U...