Self-esteem means feeling good about yourself: people with it feel liked and accepted, are proud of what they do, and believe in themselves. Feeling good about yourself starts when you feel safe, loved and cared for by grown-ups. Serve and return interactions reinforce brain circuits that are at the core of early emotional well-being and social skills. When adults are patient with mistakes, kids learn to accept themselves, while harsh words can stick and become part of how a person thinks about themselves. It can also grow when kids make progress toward a goal, make friends, do favorite activities, help, give or be kind, and feel understood and accepted. Kids who feel good about themselves have the confidence to try new things, and learning new things can build that confidence.
Each thing you learn and do is a chance to feel good about yourself, even when it is new and not perfect. Challenges that are not too easy and not too hard, and that let kids try on their own even if they make mistakes, help self-esteem grow. Paying attention to what you do well and enjoy, and having chances to build those strengths, helps as well. Setting a goal, making a plan, and tracking your progress can help you feel good about what you have done so far. The National Health Service in the United Kingdom says learning new skills can build a sense of purpose, boost self-confidence and help you connect with others. The National Health Service lists five steps for wellbeing: connect with other people, be physically active, learn new skills, help other people, and pay attention to the present moment.
The things you say to yourself in your mind play a big part in how you feel about yourself. A way to check your self-talk is to ask whether you would say the same thing to a good friend. When you hear yourself think "I'll never make friends," the KidsHealth teen guide suggests rewriting the thought in a way that is true, fair and kind. For a few days you can write down what you say to yourself, then rewrite the harsh lines the way you would say them to a good friend. A KidsHealth example: instead of "Missing those questions on the test was so stupid," try "Maybe I can try a different study technique, like flash cards, and do better next time." Thinking you have to be perfect makes it hard to feel good about anything less, so it helps to accept your best.
Self-esteem often involves comparing yourself to others. Greater Good reports that too much of this can lead to narcissism and avoiding chances to grow. Self-compassion differs from self-esteem because it lets people accept their shortcomings with kindness instead of judging themselves or avoiding their flaws. Self-compassion researchers say being kind to yourself is a more effective motivator than harsh self-criticism, because we try to achieve out of care for ourselves, not to avoid self-judgment. In research, the usual way to prompt self-compassion is to ask people to write three short paragraphs about a struggle: one noticing the pain, one about how others share such struggles, and one with warmth and kindness for themselves. A self-compassion break can be done by talking yourself through three steps, silently or out loud, and with repeatable phrases it takes less than a minute.
A researcher named Kristin Neff defines self-compassion as three parts: treating yourself with kindness rather than judgment, being mindful of your own painful feelings, and understanding that suffering is part of being human. When we struggle or make mistakes we often feel alone, as if we were the only one, but struggling is part of being human. Some teens worry that being kind to themselves will take away their motivation to do their schoolwork. Being kind to yourself is not a magic fix, but it can ease everyday difficulties, and it is a better motivator than harsh self-criticism. In a study of over 2,000 ninth graders, students with low self-esteem who were kind to themselves did better a year later on well-being measures than students with low self-esteem who were not.
Treating yourself the way you would treat a friend who is struggling is called self-compassion. Self-compassion means being kind and understanding with yourself when you struggle or make a mistake, instead of harshly criticizing yourself. In a study of middle and high school students, self-compassion was linked to higher life satisfaction and lower perceived stress and negative feeling. A 2015 Greater Good report said one survey of teens could not determine the causal direction of the links it found between self-compassion and well-being. In one study, fifth graders praised for being smart did worse after failing than those praised for effort or not praised. They were more likely to blame things other than ability and to give themselves excuses. Praise also feels real when it is honest and fits what happened.
Praising ability can put children in a fixed mindset, while praising effort tends to put them in a growth mindset. Effort praise leads children to focus on the process of work and the development of learning skills, leading to greater persistence after setbacks. Modest praise ("You did well!") acknowledges performance without raising the bar; inflated praise ("You did incredibly well!") sets a higher standard for next time. In a virtual reality study, modest praise encouraged children with lower self-esteem to explore more, unlike inflated praise. People who think abilities can grow tend to see effort as something that helps them learn and see setbacks as chances to build new skills. Researchers also found that when growth mindset is taught alongside a supportive school culture, it is more likely to take root.
A fixed mindset can lead people to avoid challenges, because they think that having to work hard or making mistakes means they are not able. In a Michigan State University study of 25 college students, those with a growth mindset showed stronger brain responses to their own mistakes than those with a fixed mindset. In that study, the stronger brain response to errors went with doing better right afterward, which suggests growth-mindset students processed mistakes more deeply and corrected them right away. In a nationally representative US study of 12,000 ninth graders in 65 schools, a 45-minute online growth mindset session cut fixed-mindset beliefs. In that national study, the lower-achieving students who got the growth mindset lesson saw their grades rise, and students at all achievement levels were more likely to take advanced math the next year.
Over four weeks, 9- to 11-year-olds in 19 Vancouver classrooms were asked to do three acts of kindness each week, compared with others who were asked to visit three places each week. In the Vancouver study, kids chose what counted as a kind act; the researchers only gave examples. In that study, students who did kind acts gained more in how much classmates accepted them than students who only listed pleasant places they visited. The authors of the Vancouver study described it as the first longitudinal experiment to prompt preteens to do a simple kind act and measure the change in peer acceptance. Researchers explain that peer acceptance matters because it is related to academic and social outcomes, including a lower chance of being bullied. Researchers also note that kind acts can help classmates accept you, and being happy, kind and well liked tend to go together.
Research finds the link between happiness and kind acts goes both ways: happy people have the resources to do good for others, and prompting kind acts increases well-being. Gratitude is a quality people can cultivate: it may feel forced at first but grows stronger with use and practice. In a 10-week study, people who wrote each week about things they were grateful for were more optimistic and felt better about their lives than people who wrote about daily irritations. Researchers warn that studies such as the Seligman gratitude-letter experiment cannot prove cause and effect, though most studies published on gratitude support a link with well-being. A research paper notes that happiness strategies are better established in adults, but some interventions have boosted well-being in children and adolescents by encouraging gratitude.
Gratitude has two parts: noticing that there is goodness in the world, and recognizing that its sources are outside ourselves, in other people. Gratitude means noticing the good things in the world and the gifts you have received from others. Gratitude researcher Robert Emmons writes that gratitude can help people cope with hard times, not just celebrate good ones. Psychologist Martin Seligman tested positive activities on 411 people: writing and delivering a gratitude letter to someone who was never properly thanked brought a big, immediate rise in happiness scores that lasted about a month. A study found that children and adolescents who wrote and delivered a thank-you letter may have made the other person happier but did not improve their own well-being, which suggests gratitude may grow with emotional maturity.
Sleep affects alertness, attention, mood, resilience, and learning and memory in children, and research links it with happiness too. Children who get enough sleep tend to have better school performance, behavior and memory, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. Regular sleep loss often leads to irritability and difficulty concentrating, and teens need more sleep, not less. Experts recommend that children and teens ages 6 through 17 get 60 minutes or more of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity daily, as of November 2026. In a Harvard Center on the Developing Child guide, learning to cope with manageable stress, called positive stress, is described as critical for developing resilience. If a person feels they must never make any mistakes, the KidsHealth teen guide suggests asking a trusted adult, like a parent or teacher, for help. A grown-up you trust can help.
Words to know
- mindset: way of thinking
- narcissism: too much self-love
- longitudinal: over time
- resilience: bouncing back
- causal: cause-and-effect
