Education

You should be ashamed of yourself!’

We’ve all said it at some point but how many of you can remember how it felt when you were on the receiving end?  Making children feel shame when they make a mistake is entirely counterproductive but it is a very common reaction when children make mistakes.

Children want to please, it really is an innate, programmed response that they have from birth.  Being a child is about learning, be it at school or not and the people they look to for guidance and advice consciously and subconsciously are parents, teachers and other children and adults around them.

Children never stop learning or being influenced by those around them and as they get older, occasionally they start to take influences from people that as parents and teachers we have less control over and that’s when things can start to get a little hairy … but if we don’t give children the freedom to experiment and experience life without fear of judgement, we are setting up problems for the future.

Children can be relied upon to make mistakes, we all do, but it is only a mistake if it isn’t learned from and in the process isn’t made again.  The trick is to help children feel secure enough in us as adults to know for themselves that they have made a mistake and when they do to support them emotionally. 

It’s this that leads children to grow in responsibility because they are confident that the adults around them won’t judge them or love and respect them any less. Making children feel guilty or ashamed about making mistakes can in time lead them to become secretive, or worse still, to make dangerous decisions as young adults which can have long-term consequences. 

A supported child is one who knows the difference between right and wrong and grows into an emotionally secure adult. This doesn’t mean that children shouldn’t be punished at times, but the nature of the punishment should not outweigh the misdemeanour. 

Time outs, removing loved possessions and stopping treats all serve to help children realise the consequences of their actions but it is important that they are proportionate.

For example, removing an iPad for a day rather than a week will have just as much impact because children learn more from the instantaneousness of the punishment rather than the amount of time imposed.

The most important factor when helping children to learn from their mistakes is to show them love once time has been served.  Discussing why you were cross or how their behaviour made other people feel helps them to understand more deeply why they were punished making them more likely not to repeat their behaviour for the right reasons, not because they feared the punishment or were made to feel ashamed because that just doesn’t work.

Shame and fear are primary feelings kids seek relief from with irrational and dangerous behaviour when they get older. It’s why they shut down academically, and drop out of society, to
protect themselves from more shame or to avoid consequences.

It also causes them to keep what they think and feel a secret. This allows them to repeat simple opinions about themselves and their lives to themselves like a broken record. If we continue to make children feel shame and not love when they make mistakes, these opinions start to feel like facts and can become the irrational logic for all kinds of damaging behaviour in adult life.