ABSTRACT
In considering the issue of the emergence of self-esteem, an important developmental question concerns the age at which an appreciation for one’s worth as a person, as a self, first emerges. Two broad classes of constructs drive these processes, cognitive-developmental level and socialization. At the outset, it becomes critical to discriminate between the age at which children are able to verbalize a sense of their self-esteem versus when they appear to manifest it behaviorally in their actions and demeanor. Young children (ages 2–3) begin to use self-relevant pronouns such as I” and “Me” and may be able to make domain- specific self-evaluations such as “I can run fast”, “I know my letters and numbers”. These represent rudimentary signs that they can begin to evaluate concrete behavioral attributes about the self in terms of their valence, namely positive versus negative attributes. However, due to normative cognitive-developmental limitations, they cannot yet conceptualize the fact that they are a person, much less that personhood carries with it a sense of self-worth or self-esteem. Thus, young children do not possess a conscious, verbalizable concept of their self-esteem.
