Valentine’s Day enters the classroom with impact every year. Children assign different meanings to the holiday. It’s a holiday about peer relationships and family feelings. For everyone concerned it can be a day of fun or tears. Some children take it lightly. Others take it seriously by making it a measure of acceptance by others. It can raise or lower self-esteem.

Parents of six-year-olds can help make the day a happy one by purchasing inexpensive boxes of valentines so their child has one for everyone in the class. At that age if everybody gives and gets a valentine, unhappy feelings are spared and excitement is part of the fun.

Starting at age seven children have “best friends,” “friendship circles” or cliques. Issues of self-esteem and acceptance by others become more delicate. Seven- to nine-year-olds may still want to give a valentine to everyone in the class, but have special valentines for special people.

Some children in the 7 to 11 range protect themselves by not participating in the holiday. They feel that if they don’t give valentines, they won’t feel hurt if they don’t receive any. This may be a red flag for the child with a vulnerable self-esteem. Even though that child nixes the holiday, she’s still quietly on the lookout for what she may or may not receive. Parents need to reassure their child that the holiday is once a year and isn’t a measure of how the child is valued.


Focus on Self-esteem

• For husbands, get a T-shirt or express the sentiment that says Love Is Patient.
• Self-esteem for a young child is a measure of how valued and accepted she feels by her peers and parents. As children get older, they have an internal measure that they carry with them into situations such as Valentine’s Day. Here are a few ideas:
• A good rule of thumb is to consider first the real likelihood of cards the child may get, like six cards from six friends and compare it to the child’s wish for double the amount from unknown admiring classmates.
• The difference between the six and the 12 may become a measure of the child’s unrealistic self-esteem. Guiding your child to what’s realistic (maybe four out of five) will prepare her for how much to actually expect and not get her hopes harshly dashed.
• The wish for 12 can be a hope, but not an expectation.
• Give the child the perspective that things are done differently each year. This may salvage hurt feelings.

Laurie Hollman, Ph.D. is a psychoanalyst who practices adult, adolescent, child and parent-infant psychotherapy at 1 Wawapek Rd., Cold Spring
Harbor, NY, 11724.