KQED News Mind/Shift – Nimah Gobir
First, I want to correct a misconception that many parents have about self-esteem. There’s a widespread worry that if you foster healthy self-esteem in your kids, you could inadvertently turn them into self-loving narcissists. I have good news on this front: Narcissism is a very different beast from healthy self-esteem, and it develops differently, too. You can’t just fill a child’s self-esteem bucket “too high” and turn him into a narcissist. (Also, you may have heard of well-publicized research suggesting that we are experiencing a new “epidemic of narcissism” in the US, in that teens today are much more narcissistic than teens from decades past, but recent studies have challenged these claims.)