Self confidence issues in teens - Research Proposal Example

“…adolescence is a time to achieve ego identity and avoid role confusion”, states Hart and Rollins (2011). What inculcates self-confidence in teens is the appreciation from their parents’ side that they are well blessed human beings who can do anything and everything; that they are loved no matter how they look and who they are; that their parents always feel proud of them; that they will be appreciated whenever they will do a good deed; and, that they will never be considered as inferior to another of his age.

This is all they need to build self confidence in their personalities. Issues arise when parents and significant others criticize them on whatever failure they face, do not encourage them, and do not appreciate them with who they are. When their abilities and strengths are not being recognized, this leads to total shattering of their confidence for which they have to pay the price in their adult lives. Self-confidence and high self-esteem is also a trigger for good school performance, according to Baumeister et al. (2003). When parents tell their children that their efforts are counted more than their results, this naturally motivates them to perform at their best in their academics.

They are sure that they will be able to get the grade if they work hard. Appreciation, encouragement and pride that their parents hold for them is enough to make them want to perform better. However, it is also believed, as Bolyn (2010) writes in her article, that “undeserving praise can increase a teen’s level of entitlement and materialism”. This is because children will get the feeling through undeserved appreciation that they will be held entitled to praise even when they have done nothing to achieve it.

Hence, it is a very big responsibility at the part of parents to be extra cautious about when to praise and how much to praise in order to inculcate the right kind of self confidence in their teens and to channel their “energies in positive directions” (Bauer, 2000). Rosenthal, Moore and Flynn (1991) conducted a research on how self-confident teenagers perceive sexual risks and how their sexual self-esteem affects them. There were 18 participants in their research who were all sexually active adolescents.

They found that when teens felt confident, they were able to say no to undesired sexual demands which resulted in safer sexual activities and health. According to the researchers, “lower levels of risk with a regular partner were predicted by these respondents' lower confidence in the ability to assert their sexual needs, together with lower levels of their own sexual self-worth”, which implies that less confident teens were unable to assert their sexual desires which although resulted in safer sexual risk-taking activities but lead to lower sense of self-worth.

The researchers’ recommend that the teenagers must be self confident in the sexual field so that they are able to say ‘no’ to risky behavior in sexual domain and enjoy safer sexual health. This study implies that self confidence in teens is greatly important in improving their sexual self-efficacy. To sum up, it can be concluded that parents and teachers can play a very important role in defining self confidence i