Photo: iStock
Cheryl Bradshaw was teaching a group of high-school students how to dissect a frog when something happened that changed her life forever. A female student suddenly collapsed, began convulsing and lost consciousness. Paramedics were called, and the student was rushed to the hospital. As it turns out, the teen had tried to end her life by overdosing on medications.
That student survived, but through conversations Bradshaw had with her other students afterwards, she sensed that more than a few were also contemplating suicide. The event forced her to reevaluate the impact she could have on teens. ?I started to want to work with the core of what happens with these young people,? she says. Today, Bradshaw is a psychotherapist in Waterdown, Ont., specializing in youth counseling and teen self-esteem. Her recently published book, How To Like Yourself, makes a compelling argument: that as hard as high school is, the biggest threat to a teen?s self-esteem is not what happens to them, but their inner self-critic: that unrelenting, negative inner voice that can cause you second-guess your self-worth. But is the development of a negative self-critic inevitable" If your kids are still little, can you help them avoid this" We spoke to Bradshaw to find out.
Why are you so focused specifically on kids? inner critics"

As a society, we teach kids how to work with others, achieve, study, be polite. But we don?t teach them about their relationship with themselves?...