Here's another question.
What are some helpful responses for when my child shuts down and says, concerning self-blame remarks, after they make a mistake, they are overly hard on themselves?
Hmm. Yeah. That's where we see a lot of shame in our children. Overly critical, perfectionism. It has to be exactly right. Type A personality.
So one of the things that we do there is we actually give them permission to make a mistake.
I remember just giving an example of this, I was in graduate school and, as parents, we want our children to do the best we can. And usually when people get into graduate school, they've had to excel in undergraduate, and to get into graduate school, they're having to perform on a high level.
I'll never forget my professor, he looked at the students the first week of class, and I'm listening to him and he said, "Alright, everybody, I just want you to understand. You're all type A personalities. In order to get into this school, you have to perform at the highest level. So my challenge to you is to get a B."
And they were all like, "What?"
He said, "Look, your life is super busy," and he listed off everything they have to do. "You're going to have to do a thesis, you're going to have to do 500 hours. You're going to have to do your schoolwork, and you have to keep that up. And it's two years of go, go, go, go, go."
He said, "When you get done with this program, nobody cares whether you got A's. They care whether you got a degree."
Now, sometimes that goes against a lot of parenting protocol, right? Image, appearance matter. But the most effective parenting isn't about image and appearance. It's about relationship connection. It's about bonding.
So one of the things that when our child is a perfectionist, it's actually helping them understand the power of being in the mess and not being perfect. That we make mistakes and that's okay, and we learn from those mistakes.
But the moment we shift it and turn it around, there's something wrong with me. I'm flawed. That's the voice of shame. And shame almost always creates more problems. Shame is not effective when you beat yourself up. What it does is it prohibits you from actually looking towards a solution because it's inward. There's something wrong with me.
So when you hear your child defining themself down in shame, I would encourage you to say things like, "I hear the way you're saying that. I just want you to know I don't feel that way. I think you're pretty incredible."
And I would encourage your child to think about what it does to you. Does it make you better when you beat yourself up like that, when you talk to yourself that way? I want to teach you a more productive way. Would that be okay?
And that's where I would install or teach Carol Dweck's work on mindset. It's a phenomenal resource about the difference between a fixed mindset and a growth mindset. In a fixed mindset, you're going to see more of that language. More of that shame, more of that "I'm not good enough," or "I failed."
In contrast, with the opposite of that, which is the harder we work, the better the outcome. And it doesn't even mean we're going to always win. We might lose. We might do our very best. And that's what matters the most, is that we're giving it the effort. And if something happens, that's okay. That's okay.
So we're teaching our children a growth mindset because a growth mindset typically gets better outcomes by research, and it helps reduce that voice of, "There's something wrong with me. I'm not good enough. I can't get math. I can't do this. I'm not smart enough."
In contrast, we're teaching them work ethic, diligence, and patience when you're not perfect.
