It always angers me when I read advertisements for infant stimulation products which promise to raise the baby’s self esteem. Infants don’t really have a self to esteem. The self is a mental construction which is built up in the course of maturation and does not reach completion until adolescence with the attainment of a sense of personal identity. Thereafter the self continues to be reconstructed in response to life circumstance and aging.

We usually think of adolescence as the age period during which young people seek to construct a sense of personal identity. Yet the search for a sense of personal identity begins much earlier. Indeed, we can see it at the age of two when the child acquires language and the ability to verbally identify himself or herself. In order to attain a beginning sense of self, the child may use the “no” as a way of asserting his or her will over and against the wishes of the parents.

While watching my great-nieces, Raven 3, and Stella Blue 5, at the beach on Cape Cod this summer, I was again impressed by the freedom, involvement and concentration of young children’s beach play. They dug holes in the sand and enjoyed simply flinging the sand with their shovels; they filled pails with sand and built a sand castle, then filled the pails with water and washed it away. Stella Blue wanted me to bury her in the sand, and seemed delighted as I poured buckets of sand on her feet. She kept urging me to cover her toes as well.