LOL, hi, Etrees, noticing how beautiful your children are because they're yours would be "referred" self-esteem; that's cheating :-) you need to see how beautiful, inside and out, you yourself are, "self" esteem.

Make friends with yourself by appreciating when you make a good decision as a mother, that you're a good mother (and, then infer that you make good decisions, period). I still remember the day I was grocery shopping alone and my died and I took it to the local gas station and it was going to be a huge amount of work. However, the owner of the gas station had his grandmother's car he was selling, way better, newer, etc. than mine but thousands of dollars! My husband was out on his own and I had no way to contact him, do I buy the car? Women/I can't buy the car/spend that kind of money on their own! Then I remembered my husband saying (about something else), "I trust your judgement." So I thought about it, about decisions I had made in the past and what my husband thought of my decisions/judgement and what I thought of what my husband thought :-) etc. and decided that "Yes! I do make good decisions! I do have good judgement) I think thought over this problem; whether it was a good idea to buy this car at this time (had the money, that was not a problem) and decided, "Yes", so I did. It was another stunningly wonderful decision by Perna.

That is how you build your self-esteem; instead of putting yourself down inside your head/heart, you champion yourself when you do good things and sympathize when things go wrong, knowing you're trying your best and everyone makes mistakes, etc.