What Causes a Lack of Self-Esteem in Americans

In the movie, The Karate Kid, Miyagi says "There are no bad students, only bad teachers." I say that there are no bad kids, only bad parents. This is a generalization about Americans. It does not apply to all of them. It probably applies to most European countries.

This lack of self-esteem is not because American parents do not love their kids. It is because they never learned how to raise infants. The way that kids are raised now is described in the book, Revolution from Within: A Book of Self-Esteem by Gloria Steinem (1992). This tells how children are alive to serve the parents and the parents are perfect and always right and it goes on and on.

But this starts with the terrible way that infants are raised. This information comes from the book, The Continuum Concept, by Jean Liedloff. She spent 2 years with Amer-Indians, who had been raising babies the same way for 100,000 years. The way that the infant knows it is loved is by being held or being against someone. The other senses are underdeveloped and it takes time to learn how to interpret things.

So the baby goes by its sense of touch. When it is against someone, it feels loved. When it is not with someone, then it feels unloved. In many Asian countries, they make sure the infant is held all the time and it sleeps with its parents. By not feeling loved, it never gets the self-esteem it needs.

A sling can help you carry your baby with your hands being free. Dr. Martin Seligman was president of the American Psychological Association and he has written many books on psychology. His wife has many degrees in psychology. They slept with all 4 of their babies. If you are drunk or on drugs, this is not a good idea since you may roll over onto them.

So here is the worst thing about raising an infant. The parents believe they need to break its spirit. This is what you try to do when torturing someone. They believe that this makes them a good parent. You put the baby in its crib to sleep at night. It starts to cry and you let it cry for hours until it cries itself asleep. It will then have a future of crying itself to sleep for the rest of its life.

The author, Jean Liedloff, says that nature never makes a sound (like the baby crying) like someone is being tortured, unless that is actually the case. So by the baby, not being held, it makes it feel that it is unloved and this is the foundation of the person having a severe lack of self-esteem. According to Gloria Steinem's book, lack of self-esteem leads to many different problems.

Before I heard of this book, I did many personal growth seminars. I am more into self-improvement than anyone that I ever met. At these seminars I was very surprised how all these people had a severe lack of self-esteem compared to me. I had no idea how I ended up so different. Then I read this book. My mother got divorced after I was born and moved into her parents house. This book had not been written yet but my grandmother would hold me all the time.

She did this because, even though they were wealthy, her favorite thing in the world to do, was to hold me. This is why people find babies so cute, so they will want to hold them. Once I was babysitting for a 3 month old baby. I sat down with some neighbors. There was a mother with her 7 year old girl and the mother's female friends. The girl kept grabbing at the baby.

So I said to the girl, "Do you want to hold him?" The mother said "Are you crazy?" I told her that I would also be holding the baby like making sure the baby's neck was supported. So the girl held the baby for 5 minutes and was happy. Then the mother asked if she could hold the baby and she held Liam (the baby's name) for about 5 minutes or more. Then this was repeated by the other 4 women there. So that proves what that book was saying.

Babies brought up this way are very calm and have a lot of self-esteem. Also they are much more mature because instead of being in a playpen, they are around other people all the time learning about how to interact. They now have this term after the baby is born as the 4th trimester.

The baby is outside the body, but still needs to be in contact with another body. So even though the infant is outside of the body, it is treated as if it were attached to someone's body. Because of this lack of self-esteem, there is an epidemic of Teen Depression. Copyright 2008 by Chuck Bluestein. www.phifoundation.org

Chuck Bluestein is an herbalist, nutritionist, and an expert on fasting. His website has information on Neck Pain,losing weight, colds and flus, healthy diet, weight loss, depression and anxiety self help, cutting, Amazon Herbs, lemonade diet, fasting, natural cures and finding happiness.