Importance and usefulness of evaluating self-esteem in children

UNICEF's adoption of the document "A World Fit for Children" (2002) states that children, including adolescents, must be empowered to exercise their right to expression in accordance with their evolving capacity; build self-esteem; and acquire knowledge and skills needed for conflict resolution, decision-making, communication, and endurance of life's challenges. The World Health Organization's "Preventing Suicide: A Resource for Teachers and Other School Staff" (2000) states that positive self-esteem protects children and adolescents from mental distress and despondency, and enables them to cope adequately with difficult and stressful life situations.While no consistent views on the definition of self-esteem, how it develops, and its relationship with social adjustment have been established, its importance, particularly for children, has been mentioned at several occasions and is widely accepted as common knowledge. This paper reports on previous definitions, evaluation methods, and ideas for the development of self-esteem, as well as introduces our own research and examines the effectiveness of evaluating self-esteem.Kant and others have argued conventionally from a philosophical and ethical standpoint that self-esteem is "the awareness of the absolute value of one's own personality or dignity." In 1980, James [1] stated that self-esteem is "the satisfaction or dissatisfaction with oneself." In reality, humans select a certain pretension and think of failure in that pretension as a true defeat and of success as a true victory. Feelings such as shame or joy occur as a result, respectively. As such, James saw self-esteem as a ratio found by dividing one's successes in areas of life of importance to a given individual by the failures in them or one's "success/pretensions".Subsequently, in the field of psychology, self-esteem began to be viewed as "a feeling of self-appreciation." Numerous psychologists have defined and debated the definition of self-esteem, but no uni