Lunch and Learn: Nurturing Self-Esteem in Children & Teens

For all people, confidence isn’t simply something we either have or don’t have. It’s something we’re building all the time through our experiences, our relationships, and the messages we receive about who we are and what we’re capable of.

When school has been a source of struggle, those messages can become particularly powerful. Falling behind, being corrected over and over, feeling different from peers, struggling with anxiety or neurodivergence, or simply being in an environment that doesn’t work well for them can start shaping how a young person sees themselves. Sometimes, what begins as “this environment isn’t working for me” becomes “there must be something wrong with me.”

In this presentation, Meagan Ku, LMFT, will explore three important building blocks of self-esteem: feeling loved and accepted for who we are, feeling heard and understood, and having opportunities to experience success as we define it. We’ll look at the everyday interactions that help young people develop those experiences, how our own fears can unintentionally enter the way we support them, and why encouragement, autonomy, appropriate struggle, mistakes, and repair can sometimes build more confidence than reassurance or praise.

Meagan is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and owner of Ammonite Counseling LLC in Mesa, Arizona. She specializes in working with teens and adults struggling with perfectionism, people-pleasing, anxiety, trauma, and the lingering sense that they somehow aren’t doing life “right.” Her work focuses not only on helping people understand why these patterns develop, but on creating experiences that help them build a different relationship with themselves. Her approach is direct, collaborative, neurodivergent-affirming, and grounded in the belief that meaningful confidence comes from being able to know ourselves, value ourselves, and discover what we are capable of.