Excuse me ladies we are about to get started here please. My name is Sheila Green. I'm serving as the moderator for this session this afternoon. I am a federal women's program manager for the Natural Resource Conservation Service, an agency within the Department of Agriculture located here in Washington, DC. First of all, let me remind you and I'm sure you've heard this throughout the week, but this session will be taped. And we're asking that if you have any comments or questions, that you make sure you speak into the mike. This mike will not pick up your voice if you are not speaking directly into it. If you are interested in purchasing one of the tapes, then you may do so in the registration area. It gives me great pleasure to turn the workshop over to Flora Danielson. In your workbook, or what do we call that, your agenda, the name of the course is Self Esteem and Success. But I've been corrected. The complete title for the workshop is Positive Self Esteem, Basic Ingredient for Success. And I'm sure you all would agree with me that we all want success. So please join me in welcoming Mrs. Danielson.

Thank you. Are you hearing me in the back first of all. If you aren't at any time, do this because I tend to wander around and talk but I'll try to stay on this spot. They tell me this mike cannot be moved. Welcome and I want to congratulate all of you because any person that is in this room after as many speeches as we've had today, on a warm day, really, really must be seeking information and so thank you for coming. When I looked at the time, oh I don't know if anyone will come at that hour of the day, so I think you're really diligent and caring people and thank you very much. Okay. Our topic today is Positive Self Esteem. And I think I want to talk to you a little bit about it and I thought it would be fun to start out today by just asking a little bit so that I would know how to direct my talk. How many of you are parents in here? The great majority and I just rather expected that might happen. How many of you are teachers? Okay, a few. How about Social Workers? Okay a few. So we'll direct this quite a bit to parents as we go on. And then I thought the other thing fun for all of us, at least I have wondered about this in my other workshops that I've been at, I would like to know what countries are represented here. So I'm going to ask Nancy if she would just write these down. And I thought it would be fun to just list. I think you would be interested and I certainly am interested. To me the absolute joy of this convention, aside from all the wonderful speakers and they are good, is meeting and sitting and visiting with people from so many countries. We learn so much from one another and that's why I thought you'd like to know today. Just call out the names of your country and if it's one that isn't listed, call it out. Can you? Canada, okay. Australia, somebody else said one. South Africa, United States, we should get that one in too. Are there any other countries? I didn't catch the name of it so I'm just waiting. St. Lucia, very good. Anybody else? Okay I congratulate you people for being so caring and coming so far for a conference like this. That's what makes it valuable for all of us. Okay the next thing I wanted you to do is when you came in today, I think you were given a sheet of paper, colored sheet of paper. Is there anyone that doesn't have one? I want to make sure everybody has one and is there anyone that does not have a pencil? Everybody has a colored sheet now? What I would like you to do is open your hand up like this, put it on that paper and just trace around it. Like this. Is to think just a moment about yourself and write one thing on each finger in your thumb on your hand about yourself. Just write one simple thing, doesn't have to be elaborate, one thing about yourself. If you haven't, go on writing while I talk. You can do both. Okay the first thing that I am going to do today then, is tell you a little bit about myself. You see, I did the same thing so I don't expect you to do something that I haven't done. First of all, you've heard my name. It's Flora Danielson and I am the wife of a successful dairy farmer from Wisconsin. We have about 100 head of milking cows on our farm and we farm together with our family. And I have seven children, all of whom I'm very proud of and we have 3 sons and 4 daughters. And now I know I might get in trouble for this, but I've been in trouble before. I'm fortunate to have three of my daughters here today and I just want them to stand if they can. I know I'll be in trouble for that. Okay. I'll pay the price later baby. But I am proud of our family and I want you to know seven have gone to college and have finished college. And are all each of them working in their field of training. And I guess I feel like if we can do that with our families and still feel close, I think we've done a lot. Our three sons are all farming. Two of them farm on the farm with us and one farms on a farm 2 miles north of us. And we use much machinery back and forth and he breeds our cattle for us and so on, so there are very good relations there. And the minute the cows are out or anything else goes wrong, we're all together helping each other. And it's, my husbands family also started out that way and to this day, if there's a cousin who has a cow out or a problem with a cow down or anything else, we are there for each other. And I guess I think that's one of the greatest, greatest values that we can get from farming and working with our children. So I wanted to point that out. Now just a quick word about who I am in addition to being a wife and mother, I am a retired teacher. I taught for approximately 30 years. And the first two years, I was a general classroom teacher, and then I was married and moved to northern Wisconsin, or not northern but north central Wisconsin. And then I became a reading teacher and a reading specialist. And so I have worked for these 28 years with children who have severe reading problems. And sometimes come from very under privileged homes, and so self esteem became my number one thing that I had to teach these children. And I felt it was so crucial that they would learn that in kindergarten, and first and second grade. When I started out I had kindergarten through sixth grade and then as they added more teachers they'd say, well do you want to go to the top or to the bottom and I kept moving down because I enjoyed the younger children. And I felt that was the time to correct the problems that they were having, so that they will have good self esteem. I retired from teaching in May of last year and it was a difficult decision to make because I really enjoyed my teaching. It was never a problem to get up and go to school for a day. I'm sure those kids did so much more for me than I ever did for them. But I wanted time to travel with my husband and we were reaching the age when we could retire on the farm. We're still on the farm, but we're shifting more and more of the work to our sons and to our family. The other thing I am, on the last thing on my thumb is I am a 4-H leader, Farmers Union Youth Leader, have been a YM and YW leader in my younger days when I was teaching at Zenda. I've been a Sunday School teacher and many of the things that each of you have been. You've been through that too. And if you have, you know working with young people is important. And that's the time and a way to develop self esteem, I think.

Now, I want you to take your hand and I want you to find somebody sitting right near you, preferably right next to you, if it can't be next to you, in back of you or find somebody that you really don't know. Please don't take somebody you know. Find a stranger and spend just a couple of minutes giving a very brief introduction of yourself and then doing some active listening to the person sitting next to you, because in a minute, you're going to get one more assignment. Quickly, can't you tell I'm a teacher? I'm really happy that you are talking so much that it's difficult to stop and I hope that I haven't stopped somebody in the middle of telling something really important about themselves. Maybe at this time, I'll take just a moment to see if all of you that came in after we had started managed to get a hand out. If not, they're on the chair right by the door. Probably if you would raise your hand, somebody would bring you one.

Okay. Now, one more quick little assignment, just a short one. Turn to the person that you were speaking with and compliment them on one of the things that they told you about their family. At this time, we will resume. But I want you to know you have just achieved two things with what you've done. You've provided a bit of security for yourself because you now know at least two other people in this room. The person you have just been speaking with and something about myself. And as you'll learn as we go on today, security is the first building block of self esteem. So, in addition to that you have increased the other persons self esteem because you have complimented them about something they are proud of. And that's another of the necessary components. So while we were doing all this and getting acquainted, we've done some good for both ourselves and for the person we were speaking with.

Okay let's talk then a bit about what is self esteem. Now the trick is to remember to speak in here and to point over there. Self esteem is built of five basic components. Self esteem is really based on the way that you feel about yourself. As a child grows and has more experiences, his inner picture of himself increases. And we call this inner picture, self concept. Now his self concept is going to be developed from every experience he has. The positive and the negative. If he has a good feeling about himself and thinks, yes I can do that, yes I am able to do that, he will have a positive self esteem. Just for convenience, sorry about that. In my book, he and she are the same as far as equal, equal. As far as equal. I'll try to remember to say she. What if I slip? Okay. All of these five components. The first one being security. That's the feeling of ease and trust that you get with other people with parents, with your peers. The second one, self concept. By self concept, that doesn't mean we have to think we are the very best in everything. Obviously, we all have some faults. We all have certain things that we can do better than other things. And it's entirely up to us what we want to dwell on. If we want to think about everything we can't do and didn't do, we can think rather poorly of ourselves. But the beauty of it is not everybody else knows all our weaknesses and unless we choose to share them, we can build a positive self esteem. And we can demonstrate the things we can do and should do. Affiliation, a feeling of belonging, to a group. We've all had an experience when we've gone into a meeting some time and we felt like we were on the outside and everybody else kind of knew each other and feeling uncomfortable about it. I think the people at this conference don't have that feeling very much. It seems like that any meal that we've sat at or anytime we've dropped down a few moments to visit, most of the people that I've met are very willing to visit and share. And I think we do have a good feeling of belonging by this third day of the meeting. A feeling of mission is another step of it. And we have to develop a feeling of responsibility. I'll talk more about these things later, this is just a quick introduction. And a feeling of success or competence is the last step of self esteem.

Why do we hear so much about self esteem today? And really when I began teaching 30 years ago, we heard very little about self esteem. It just wasn't a big issue at most workshops. Today, as a teacher going to many workshops, we've had a lot to do on building self esteem and how to do it and working on it. Part of it is because the changing times that we are going through. I'm speaking of course using statistics from the United States because those were the ones that I had available. I can't say it's true in every country of the world, but I would imagine that there are these elements in most of countries. And so I think no matter what country you are from that you will see a common problem. We have broken homes. Three in five born today will live with a single parent by the age of 18. Child care, 3 out of 4 children aged 18 and under live with parents who both work. Drugs, one student in six by ninth grade have tried marijuana and one and three alcohol. And these statistics were taken from a few years ago, they were the latest that I could find. But, I'm sure it's at least that much or probably worse. Sex, the percentage of girls under 15 who have had sex has tripled in the past two decades. Of every 100 children born today, 13 will be born to teenage mothers. And 28 will be born out of wedlock. Poverty, the percentage of children living in poverty in the United States has dramatically increased in the past two decades. And drop outs, of every three students who start school, only two will complete high school. And that's at a time when we consider that we have public education for all. These then are reasons why self esteem is suffering. Based on what I just showed you on the last overhead, security, feeling of belonging, can you see how these things do not happen just automatically. Not nearly as much as they once did when we had smaller farms. When I first started studying about that, I thought, those figures were pretty overwhelming to me. And I thought, I wonder if that's really true. So I contacted our extension service. Which most of you from the United States know what extension service and I'm sure many foreign countries have it. But I talked to her and I said, do you have any statistics for Tippo county which was the county I was from, and here is just a few quickly that I will show you. This is comparing the state of Wisconsin to our county. But notice the top four categories all deal with married households or families with two parents. The bottom two do not. They deal with non traditional households. But 46% of married couples in Wisconsin, 46% of couples in Wisconsin are married with children. Compared to our county, 30%. So I guess maybe it was true that these statistics I was finding were true for our county. Notice the increase down near the bottom on one person households. Or on the second to the bottom where it's 11.7 were one person households and now there are 22.8%. So we have a reason for this. Part of this is because people are choosing to marry later and so they have their own homes longer. Part of it is because marriages are breaking up so there are various reasons for it. And part of it is because people are choosing to have a career before the marry.

Another thing that has affected our sense of security in the home and our sense of being with our children and so on, is the number of people working. In the United States today, 25.7% of the people are working outside the home. I mean only 25% are in the home. 70% are working outside the home. This doesn't mean they're bad people this means it's the patterns we've developed so that we can have things nice in our home. But it has it's cost and part of the cost is the time spent with the children. And just one more of these because I want to point out that today families are consistently changing. People don't stay in one household indefinitely, rather they move from one type to another because of changes, that they, their parents, or the children go through. This chart shows that it is common for individuals to go through as many as 9 or 10 household type changes during a lifetime. And they worked out an example of this. An example of this is this boy, this girl we're going to say aren't we, I've heard that already today. An example of this is this girl, born into, no we have to say boy in this one it won't work to say girl, born into a single parent family. In his early years his mother marries and then divorces when the boy is in his teens, and if I could stand I'd be pointing to it but it's hard to be both places. As a young adult, he first lives with roommates, probably going to college or off to work, and then he lives alone, later he cohabits with a woman friend, and in his late twenties he marries, but together with his wife they postpone having children for a few years, and so in his fifties, he divorces his spouse, lives alone for 15 years and finally in his seventies, moves in with his daughters family where he lives out his years. All of these things are intended to show why people have less self esteem, less security, and problems. Because she couldn't marry a wife. And if I said she, and I said he married a wife and to live with his wife and then he lived with his daughter and so on, that's why. I would like to please you and say women because I see that it's important to some of you. Okay, enough of the gloom and doom. I'm not condemning it. I have many people that I know are divorced that I have great respect for, so please don't understand that I am condemning it. I'm simply saying that there is less security, less following through with family with brothers, sisters, father and mother both there and spending time. I do understand that and I think that you're probably misunderstanding how I am intending it to be said. I was a teacher and I was always very, very grateful that my husband, who was a farmer and lived on a farm and we had seven children, it would've been easy for him to say, you stay at home and just help me, and I wouldn't have felt put down if I did. I had an older sister who chose to do that and she was very happy and I equally respect her, but I do think that when you are trained for a profession and then you suddenly marry and then they say, no you can't do it anymore, it can be frustrating and so I'm sorry if I gave the wrong impression. I certainly respect when people do. But I do know that after I went back to teaching, I did have less time with family than I did have before. And I guess that's what I'm trying to point out that it can be a problem. But thank you for questioning that. I'm glad you're thinking through what I'm saying anyway. Okay. As I was saying enough gloom and doom.

Dr. Nathaniel Brandon is probably one of the outstanding psychologist and authors who has written building on positive self esteem. And I took a class on him one summer and he had many, many excellent ideas. And he has a small book called Building Self Esteem that if anybody has a problem or if you know of somebody who is having a problem, might be helpful for you to read. He says, "I regard self esteem as the single, most powerful force in our existence. The way we feel about ourselves reflects virtually every aspect of our existence. Work, love, sex, interpersonal relationships of every kind." And I believe that with all my heart. Children who have positive self esteem are willing to tackle tough assignments. They're more willing to say no to cigarettes, alcohol, or drugs. Positive self esteem makes kids happier, have more friends, and be accepted by their peers. And at this point I would say remember that you, as parents, are your child's first and most important teacher. You are the most important person in that child's life. So everything that you say to that child really does bear weight. Sometimes they'll act like it doesn't, sometimes they think that you don't know anything, but deep down when you praise a child that helps. When you criticize a child, that hurts and they don't forget it easily. Okay, now this talk is going to be geared at us mostly as parents. But I do want you to be thinking about yourself, if you have a self esteem problem with yourself. I want you to apply it to you too. As I say, being an elementary teacher, I directed it towards my students that I was teaching and much of what I did with them, I want to share with you. And that's what I'm going to do. How can we as teachers, parents, youth leaders, or church workers build this important positive self esteem? Robert Reesner is from California and he has worked a lot with building self esteem and he said building self esteem in children can be viewed as a sequential, step by step process. And this is the same process that I referred to a little earlier when I showed the first thing and we'll go into that more. Now, a lot of the material that I used in my study was from Michelle Borbus book on building self esteem. I think she's excellent, I think she has a message to you as parents, I think she has a message for you as any youth leader or a person working with young children. She tells how to go about it step by step and I used a lot of her materials as I was working to do this with my students.

Okay. The first step she said is building security, a sense of security. A feeling of strong assuredness involves feeling comfortable in faith, knowing what is expected, being able to depend on students in situations, and comprehending roles and limits. And sometimes parents are afraid to impose rules. They are afraid that the children will resent them. They think that they won't love them. And this is totally not true. We have to impose limits. If we love them, we do, we impose limits. But we have to be careful not to make the limits so high, that they can't obtain them. Sometimes as a teacher, I used to be horrified when I would sit at a youth conference and I'd hear parents come in and say, I'll give a dollar for every A you bring home. Maybe that child wasn't capable of getting an A. But he might of worked his tail off to get a B. And when that level was always a little too high, I believe in having high expectations, but I believe in having them reasonable. If a child was having difficulty learning, and was putting his best forth everyday, consistently doing his work and so on, we should've set the limit a little lower so that he would feel like he was achieving. Because what you are saying to that child is, yes, I'm proud of you, you can do it. Or no you'll never quite reach up there and those things last with them for a long time to come. Steps that we use for doing it are building a trusting relationship, setting reasonable limits and roles, and then create a positive and caring environment. And one of the studies was done by Stanley Coopersmith. He's a child psychologist from California and he studied over 1700 boys in this particular study and he found that they came from homes where they had love that expresses respects, concerns, and acceptance for both their strengths and limitations. And parents had clearly defined limits, standards, and expectations. As a result, children felt secure. Children want limits. Yes. The families function with a high degree of democracy, children were encouraged to present their own ideas and opinions even when they differed from their parents. Sometimes your child has different opinions. If you could draw back long enough to listen and discuss it with them and find out why they are thinking, you'll be surprised to find out that maybe sometimes they're right and you're wrong. But you have to have that patience. Yes? I do apologize. I didn't intend to do that but I guess this is the way I've presented it other times, I'm really sorry because I do not wish to offend. I will try to say she. (Inaudible question)

It certainly does. We have done some projects in Kadat, to try and have after school hours for children who are latch key kids as we call them that the parents are gone and can't be there and we've tried to have some older people come in and that they can meet with, or some of the teachers have volunteered to spend extra hours at school. Those kids really want to talk. When school is out, they've had experiences that day. And they really want to tell you about them and if they go home and somebody isn't there, that is an important thing. And as a grandparent, if you can be there, that's wonderful.

(Inaudible question)

I can't say that I've noticed it to be more in one than the other, I think much depends on the home situation. And one of the teachers that I taught with had three daughters and one son. And the son had some problems at birth and wasn't able to be in sports and the father was a coach, so that was pretty important so I saw some problems developing there. But I don't think that we can blame it to one sex or another.

(Inaudible comment).

I can't say that I've noticed that, I'm no expert, but I think it so much depends on the people, the young people work with. I know it's getting late and I think some people are anxious to go. But what I think what we need to do with our young people is to do activities that make them believe in themselves. I think, when I look at my own family, one of the things that we did a lot of, they were in 4-H activities, they were in speaking contest from the time they were ten years old, and the exhibited at the fair, and sometimes we got a blue ribbon and sometimes we got a pink ribbon. And it was always a lot easier to smile when you got the blue ribbon. But it was just absolutely as important to smile when you got the pink ribbon and to be able to walk over and congratulate the person who got the blue ribbon. And I think that if we view every instance and everything we do as a learning experience, whether you're on the top end or the bottom end. I think that helps to build self esteem. That helps to build the second part of it, the knowing yourself, knowing what you're good at, knowing what you're poor at. Always being willing to work to improve the things that you probably are not good at. But, not letting that rule you. If you have a problem and you're not good at it, why should you let it dwell on your mind. Fix the things you can and the things you can't, do the best you can. That's all any of us can do. As a reading teacher, I told you that one of the things that I had to do so much with our students coming in, was to build a self esteem. And one of the projects that I did every year, one of the first things I did with my students when I had them, was to build this little book. It's called Welcome To Our Chapter One Room and I think in your handout I gave you a copy of that. And that woman that left should've stayed because I said a girl who has. And a girl who likes to and maybe if she looks at her book tonight she'll be happy to find that. But anyhow, in the beginning of our book, I had the children fill this out and I insisted that they could describe themselves and it was difficult for some children to describe themselves, but they had to put something like a girl who has long blonde hair and blue eyes or a girl who has short black hair, or whatever they wanted to put but something to describe themselves. That's to make them realize I am an individual, I'm an important person. Then they went on a girl who likes to and I told them they had to find some things they like to do. They had to name at least two things they like to do. And a girl who is good at. They had to pick out some things they were good at. A girl who likes to eat, and they had to fill in three things that they liked to eat. And a girl who lives, and they had to describe where they lived. Then we put this on a computer and each child, we talked about writing stories and how you picked a little picture to go with your story, something that illustrates it, and then we took a photograph of the child and put on the bottom of this and this is what the finished book. It looks something like this. But this was probably the most popular book in our room. Now the one I have here is kind of put together of the left over stories. Here's a good sample page. At the end of the year, I would keep all their writings they had done from the first day of school until Mothers Day, and they were put into a booklet, and we use this as their cover page. This particular child happened to move and that's how I have that left. But, it was their cover page on their booklet and you can see such improvement from the beginning of the year until the end of the year. And kids need to see this and parents need to see this, they need to see the improvement. And so this was one of the books and whenever we would have anyone come in the room, you want to see our title one book, and they were really proud of that. Another project that I worked very hard on during the year, and this was just trying to find their interest and things they were interested in, was our special interests. Every Fall, we had approximately 24 people from our community come in. And I went around rummaging those people up, this was my special project when we started it, and they came in and talked on many different topics. Just to name a few of them, there was Christmas in October, Kisses the Clown, Bees and Honey, Halloween Trick or Treat bags, Kadat Clean Up Crew, Reading and the Dole, Halloween Haunts, Food and Fun, Norwegian Baking, Visit to a waste treatment plant, making a ghost, egg drop, and so on. But we tried to get as many varied topics as we could. And then every child, about two weeks in advance, signed up for a project they were interested in. First, second, and third choice. And every child possible was scheduled into the first choice and if they couldn't make their first, they at least made their third. Nobody was left out from one of their three choices. And then we spent an afternoon doing this with them. It was a lot of work to organize, but those kids were so happy that day that's what learning and teaching should be all about because they loved it, they were all doing things they wanted to do, and we had community people involved. I think that was another really good project. And I just have some snapshots, if you have time and want to afterward, you are welcome to look at it, if not, that's fine.

Another of the projects we did in the selfhood was, it was important these children were having reading problems and it was important to find out what type of problem they had so we gave them an oral reading test, and then we gave them word study test and then we made cards for the words that they didn't know and we also worked on those and they wrote out a little sheet that said Two Stars and Wish. And they had to pick out two things that they were good at, that they were stars at, and one wish of something that they want to work on and improve. And then they would work on that for a time and then at that time, they'd write on two things that they were good at, and what they were going to work on next. And we kept going that way. And then when they could see the progress in the Spring of the year, we had parent meeting, parent portfolio and we showed all their work and then along with that, we made a tape of their reading at the beginning of the year, we made a tape we tried to make it four times a year, but we had at least three times, and they had to get their little booklet, and they had to read for their parent and show them the improvement. Look I was on this level, now I'm on this level. And actually the reading was taped and they listened to it with their parent. So that they were getting self esteem by seeing their improvement. These are simple things that you as parents can do with your child at home. These can all be done and I think you would agree that they will pay off. The affiliation, part of that was that booklet that I showed you.

Another part we did that may seem silly, but I think you can do at home. When we had a child achieve at something, we worked very hard at the beginning to tell them there is no failure. The only failure is if you think you can't do anything and won't try it. Then you are a failure. And we don't allow failures in here, we don't allow failures to come into our room, and so everybody was encouraged to try. And when they did something that was hard, the other children and I would clap for them. Maybe it sounds silly to you but for kids that haven't been clapped for, or clapped at, or being a success in the classroom, it was a rewarding feeling. And they got so they would try things because nobody was allowed to put anybody down. It takes a while to build that, but once you have it, it's powerful and it's good. And it's that next step that they talked about, it's the affiliation.

Feeling of I can do this and I really do want to this and I really do want to achieve this. And so we had to work in small increments. I used to have them read books at home and when they brought it back they had a smiley and they had to give a book report in the morning as they came in. And then from time to time, we had these little parties, we had during the month when they learned all their site words, there were 220 site words and when they learned the ones they didn't know on these little cards, when they could say them 3 times in a row with no mistakes three different days, we had a popper party. These were called the popper words. They had to pop out of our mouth before I could pop my fingers and so when they got it all done, what would you have at a popper party. We had popcorn, pop, and they came in just during that class and we had that. Little small steps that children can see, yes I am achieving, yes I am climbing, don't wait and say I'll buy you a bicycle when you can do that. Because it's so long before the children can achieve it and the bike doesn't really matter. It's far better to have little treats with small steps to see them keep growing. And then one thing that worked good was during the months of February and March, I would always have an ice cream sundae party, and they had to read fifteen books and report on during those two months. And it was a book that was at their level and as we saw them improving, we moved it up. They had to move it up. But anyhow, if they got fifteen then I would bring ice cream and all the different toppings and that day when they finished their lunch in the hot lunchroom, we'd come and make ice cream sundaes and they could put whatever they wanted on it. And that was another big motivator. And that's the kind of things we'd use which achieved with them. And the last thing is a feeling of comfort, tense and success. And that was achieved when we had their portfolio night and we went over their things with the parents and once people have these five steps, they will develop a positive self esteem. And I think that you as grandparents, you as parents, if your children are not all grown and gone, can achieve these things. And again I point out the importance of activities. I think one of the reasons that our children got a good start, I don't think that we're better than anyone else in the world, but we were fortunate in that we went to a small rural church and our kids and the cousins from up the road, played guitars and sang and in our church that was wonderful. We didn't have a big choir and so they were happy to have the kids play and sing. And they had to be Sunday school teachers at an early age, because we didn't have enough. And so they got to do things before they were really perfect. If you belong to a huge church and big things all the time, or a big high school, you probably can't do these things until you're really skilled at it. But I think the chance to do things at the level you're at and to see success and move forward is really an important part of it. I think with that I'm going to close and ask you people if you have some things you would like to share. Some things you have worked on with your kids. There is one more thing that sums up what we've been saying today. Every new skill you teach your child will build their positive self esteem. Remember when a child says I can't, it could mean I don't know how. Children need to be watered, fed and nourished. Kids can't be perfect so don't expect all schoolwork to be perfect, every performance to be perfect, or every chore to be perfect. Have we always been perfect in our lives, I don't think so. But, sometimes we expect it of our kids and we shouldn't. Plan times with your child so they can accidentally, on purpose overhear a compliment about them. That goes a long way. And comment on the positive you see in your child.

For example, they use to say a glass is half full of water and you can either say it's half empty or it's half full. Let's be the kind to talk about the half full part. Thank you for putting your dirty dishes in the dishwasher, it saves me an extra trip to the kitchen or I really appreciate seeing your rooms clean today without a hassle. Kids begin to feel good about themselves and see themselves as helpful and needed members of the family. This basically deals with kids, but as I say, this can apply to you too. If you feel that you have, and I think I put one more sheet in there, but I think that maybe you people are tired from sitting so long. The last sheet that I hoped to do with you, or thought we would do, would be to stop for a minute now and think about your children at home. Turn to that last sheet. List three goals or expectations that you have for your child by the time he or she is eighteen years old. Doesn't have to be formal. Only you are going to look at it, you don't have to worry about how fancy it is, but take a minute to do it because if you rush right out, you might not. And then name four factors that could prevent your child from reaching the above goals. Four things that you can think of that could happen. And what can you do to prevent those factors from happening. And then three activities that you enjoy doing and three that your child enjoys doing and think about what you have done to show interest in your child's activities. I hope you can write there that we've shared some common interest and did some common things together. I won't make you do it now because I think you're tired, we've been meeting all day. But I hope you won't just throw that sheet away, I hope you'll give it a little thought. Maybe as you're riding on the plane or you'll have some time to think about it and it would be a good little activity to pull out and work with.

May I ask you to put it on the mike though, please? I really would like it because that's the only question that will be recorded.

I don't know how many of you in other countries have the problem we've had in the United States the past years with the shootings in our schools, of our children, but I have, I live on a family farm with grandchildren. And all of our family have discussed this and so today as I was listening to Flora, I was transposing those things in my mind as things that as a grandparent who is home when the parents are working, the mothers, they work off the farm. One husband works on the farm and one off. And sometimes I am the only adult who's there when the children come in on the school bus. And I was trying to make a, I was trying to get more pointers. Obviously there are some things that we already do with our grandchildren. In fact we have one little child that my, he particularly feels badly about himself because he's had speech problems and he's had eye problems. And his grandfather, when he's down at the bottom of the hill and has begun to bring the truck up by the road and let Ben run up this way. And he came in recently and he said "I'm faster than a Ford". And he frequently comes in and says "You know, grandpa says I earned a coke." So what I really came to this for is for, at first I thought it was self esteem for myself and immediately I could see that this would be a wonderful way to touch up my skills, my listening to children skills, these things. Because we do have a problem.

I think that's very good. Is there somebody else that would like to relay something that you've tried. Please come up, we'd like to have you.

I'm Jordan Caper from Australia. But I just wondered how do we get on if the parents don't have any self esteem or have a problem with self esteem and then they have to teach their children self esteem. Could you answer that one?

It's not always easy, but as Mr. Brandon points out in his book, self esteem can be developed at any age. It's a lot harder, a lot harder, if somebody has developed a poor self esteem because you have to reverse that before you can correct it. But fortunately we have people in the world today who do have time and I think this is a wonderful place for our senior citizens to come in. We had foster grandparents in our school system. And in my title one room when I was a teacher, I had a foster grandparent and I had green thumb worker, two of them. Two older women that were, I've got to be careful here now. But they were past 75 and their families were raised and they came in and they would sit and listen to the children read and they would take book reports and they would bring little treats for the kids and they developed very, very warm caring relationships with them. And I know that it's up hill work, but if you could have a neighbor child or somebody or a grandchild, somebody that's there, yes I have the time to sit down and read. I love to hear stories and that's so important to them. They want the time. They want somebody to care about their life. Maybe you can ask about some hobbies you see them doing. Or maybe if they have a hobby that's something you could do. Favorite part of my day is when my grandchildren come. Sometimes I'm very busy and my husband will say, well you can't have those kids here you got things, hey wait, what could be more wonderful than having some child. And we had a little neighbor child that came from a pretty tough home and the father was an alcoholic and the mother was struggling trying to hold the family together. They got so they loved to come, they loved to come to the farm and see things. I love having them too. And to this day, those kids are older and they're important to us and they're important to me. And it can be done, but you have to watch for ways.

I just have to say that I can truly relate to what you're saying. Because I have very low self esteem and through Nancy and many people, I had the courage to present today. And I don't think this goes for children, I don't have a problem with the he / she. I feel we love our children all the same, whether that they're boys or girls. And I appreciate what you've done today.

Thank you so much for saying that I went to that presentation this morning and I was just really impressed at what they did. And you know what, speaking from that matters to me, and I certainly have no biased between boys or girls, I think they're both wonderful. And I did apologize if I was using the word boys and it did something to destroy some of my self esteem when that woman walked out of here. But I have to understand that we all come from different backgrounds and probably something I said was a little annoying or something so, you know, we need understanding too.

Thank you. All I can do is share my experiences and hope that we have people like you people that have shared that they feel like they've profited from it. But I hope they have because I certainly feel every word that I said. Please come up and share.

I met this lady, Tamara. I was going to another room and I accidentally asked her for a different room. And I said, "I'm trying to find Garble room" and I really meant the Calvert room. And she says, "Oh I would really like to go there would you let me go with you and I said "sure". So just as we came in and I thought, something must have happened in here and then I seen the lady walk out and so for one you lost, you gained two. Congratulations.

Probably enough has been said about the he/she part. But forty years ago, I was privileged to hear a speaker, Iris Davenport, and I don't know if any of you have heard of her, but she was an editor of a southern farmer magazine, and in her talk even at that time, back in the middle fifties, she said something about man and in this case, she was so sweet, she said in this case, man embraces woman. And so when you said he I thought well he embraces she.

I don't have any children but the other thing I was thinking about when you were talking about the self esteem is that as leaders in our communities in our organizations we all have a chance everyday to build someone's self esteem or to step on someone's self esteem. And sometimes there's something that you do for your organization and you know exactly how to do it, and you know you could just do it yourself, but then you decide to bring someone else into do it and you give them that opportunity, and they do a fantastic job and you say, wow there I had all that talent there and I'm really glad that I allowed that person to do it and I think that's one thing a lot of the people sitting in this room are leaders in their communities. And so we just have all these great chances to build people's self esteem. And you find out when you take the opportunity to do it, you end up feeling pretty good yourself too and besides you don't have to end up doing all the work yourself.

I just want to say thank you very much. You're obviously a wonderful mother, a wonderful teacher, so thank you very every thing you've said here today. And I think if one of my children would've been in your class, I would have been so very, very grateful that you would've been their teacher. Because I know that you would've picked up many things probably that I might have overlooked. And so I just really appreciate your presence, I appreciate you being here, you are a wonderful person. Thank you very much and I wish you would've been in our school system because there are lots of kids, and you know and we talked about single mothers and I am one. And we have to try so very hard to be equal and to cover all of the bases and we get down and we think, we feel guilty a lot of the times, I know that I do. I lost my husband and that was very difficult and so I had, I feel like I had an awful lot to make up for and there are so many things that I just simply couldn't no matter what I did. My daughters a school teacher and she talks about children in her classroom and those that don't have the self esteem building at home from their parents and when you have a teacher like this, you know who is going to hang in there and who is going to cover up and take care of the other end of the load, and you don't have to do that, that's not your job. But thank God there are people like you because you know without you some of those kids would really suffer and I just want to say thank you.

Well I certainly thank you and I will say that some of the very best parents that I ever worked with were single parents. So I certainly did not mean to apply that if you are that you are less I'm just saying that you have extra problems and it's certainly fine for us to work together and add what each of us can add to the other. You've been waiting.

Really that lady just said what I was going to say and I've sort of left is to last and it's something that I always do I seem to always hang back. Because as a child, I really didn't have a lot of self esteem, but life to me has been a challenge, a real challenge and it's only through women like Flora that I have been able to achieve what I am now a state president for the Country Women's Association in Western Australia. Just learning about self esteem and it's just so important. But on behalf of everybody here today, thank you very, very much.