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http://sfhelp.org/10/kid_shame.htm
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This is one of over 150 articles focused on building
family relationships and
preventing divorce. This
introduction describes the Web site's purpose and the best ways to use
its resources. Each article is part of a
mosaic of ideas, so the
more you read, the more sense they'll all make.
These articles augment, vs. replace, other
professional help.
Before continuing, reflect: why are you reading this -
what do you
+ + +
Many kids and adults (like you?) are burdened with "low self esteem" (shame)
and excessive (vs. normal)
guilts. Can you describe the difference between these normal emotions, what
causes them, and how to tell if they turn from useful to toxic? Could
your parents describe these clearly? |
This two-page article
encourages family adults to help their minor and adult kids learn how to
recognize and manage excessive shame and
guilts,
and provides effective options for doing so. To get the most from this article, keep an image of each child in your family clear in your mind. Then
when you're not distracted, review...
-
-
these
articles about the wounds of excessive shame
and guilt, and...
-
-
If you're in
a stepfamily (or may be), also
study these ideas on nurturing
significantly-wounded stepkids.
This article builds on the ideas
in these baseline articles to focus on
ways family adults co-parents can help kids avoid and reduce excessive shame and guilts.
The ideas here apply equally to concerned grandparents, aunts, uncles, and
other nurturers.
What's the Problem?
Families like yours exist to nurture
(fill the
of) their members. My research
as a professional
therapist since 1979 suggests that
most average American (and other?) adults were raised in
environments. This seems to cause up to six significant psychological
The core wound
is developing a fragmented, disorganized
governed by a
This usually causes
excessive shame and excessive guilts. Shame is the crippling feeling
that comes from believing "I am worthless, no good, and unlovable - a bad
person." Guilt is the emotional reaction from believing "I broke someone's
rule - a should (not), must (not), ought (not), or have to."
These two
normal emotions usually occur together and amplify each other. They feel similar,
but have different causes, and are healed differently.
Significant psychological wounds plus adult
promote personal and social
and
Almost half of recent U.S. marriages have ended in legal divorce, and
millions more endure the daily
of
psychological divorce. Most American
stepfamily unions follow the divorce of one or both partners.
Implication: inadequate parenting and low-nurturance childhoods are
pervasive in our culture, and precede many stepfamilies.
My clinical experience also suggests that until significantly-wounded people
hit
and commit to personal
they (a) repeatedly pick
and
(b) unconsciously re-create low-nurturance families and wound their kids, despite their best intentions.
Implication: a
high percentage of American (and other?) parents and kids are burdened with
a mix of
two to six psychological wounds. The youngsters wordlessly depend on their caregivers to help
them understand and
reduce their wounds from toxic to normal.
Are you doing this for the youngsters in your life? Is anyone?
Status check: do you feel any
minor or grown kids in your family are burdened with significant
shame and
guilt? If you're not sure,
follow the links to review their common symptoms, and return. The rest of this article
assumes your answer is "yes."
Reflect - who's
your personality now - your wise
or
Perspective
Co-parents can minimize the odds of significantly wounding their young
kids by...
-
making three wise courtship
and then thoughtfully evaluating the pros and cons of each child
conception together; and...
-
clearly understanding (a) normal human
developmental needs and (b) the
requisites for evolving a high-nurturance
family environment. Then...
-
adopting a long-range vision of how they
want their children to be as independent adults, and agreeing to
give high priority to filling
and their children's needs over several decades.
When
parents can't follow these guidelines because of their own wounds and
unawareness
they risk wounding their kids without meaning to. If so,
caregivers can begin to help their kids
by (a) learning about this epidemic
(b)
themselves honestly for significant wounds, and (c) committing to self-motivated
(working at
Trying to
raise wounded kids without doing this is like painting a house
that's riddled with termites.
The
next most impactful long-term thing parents can do is to patiently help
each other sharpen their
and communication
- i.e. commit to working at their version of
as teammates.
This will greatly enhance efforts to heal wounded kids, protect descendents
from the ancestral [wounds + ignorance] cycle, and nourish couples'
relationships.
Another essential preparation is family adults wanting to negotiate
who is responsible for helping each
child to reduce their wounds and ignorances. I propose that this vital task is shared by all your family caregivers - including active
grandparents, aunts and uncles. Are all your adults comfortable in discussing this
responsibility topic? Do you all have clear family
yet? Are you all learning to resolve these three common co-parenting
blocks?
If
your co-parents are committed to progressing on these preparation tasks,
your odds for helping your kids to reduce and learn to
use major shame and guilts (and other wounds) constructively rises
sharply!
Typical stepfamily
co-parents have major additional tasks:
-
accepting their stepfamily
and what it
-
helping each other become a
family
and...
-
three or more
over many years, while they...d/or manage excessive shame and guilt.
-
identify, admit, and intentionally use
informed
to reduce up to nine common
to
child-raising teamwork, and staying
as they do so.
|
Because of the
number and complexity of these concurrent tasks, stepfamily
co-parents have a significantly harder time of helping minor
kids learn to avoid and reduce excessive shame, guilt, and other
wounds.
|
You're most apt to want to commit to
these wound-avoidance and reduction preparations if your true
Selves
your respective personalities. Reflect: on a scale of
one (our
co-parents are steadily antagonistic) to ten (we're steadily cooperative),
how would you rank your family adults as nurturing teammates?
How would each of your kids rank their co-parents' teamwork?
Recall: a
basic premise here is that shame and guilt interact, and are best managed
individually. Shame
is an automatic feeling that comes
from (subselves) believing "I am a flawed, inadequate, unlovable, unworthy
person" - in general, and/or in one or more roles. Guilt is
the normal reflexive feeling that comes from dominant subselves believing "I
have broken one or more important
(shoulds, musts, have-to's, can'ts, and ought-to's). Guilts amplify shame. Shame made public causes embarrassment.
Let's look
at your co-parenting options for helping your kids manage each of these
separately. As you continue, refresh your mental image of each wounded child
you wish to help. Note your option
of including your own inner
and
Children...
Transform Kids' Excessive Shame
into Self-love and Respect
Premise: helping overly-shamed kids grow genuine self-esteem and
self-respect can be divided into two main goals:
convert old shame into self-love and
appreciation, and help each child learn to avoid new shame. These
goals can be viewed as four concurrent co-parent tasks for each
co-parent...
-
maintain and model her or his
own self-respect and self love - i.e. harmonize their subselves and
reduce their own excessive-shame
wounds, if any;
-
become clear on the main factors
that shape kids' "self esteem;"
-
assess each child's (a) current level of
self esteem (low to high), and (b) the factors that cause and maintain
that level; and...
-
help each other replace psychological and
environmental factors that promote shame with those that increase self
esteem.
Do
these tasks make sense to you? Let's look at each of them briefly:
1) Evolve and Model
Your Own Self Esteem and Self
Respect
This is a
vital part of each co-parents' core task of reducing their own false-self wounds,
if any. A basic premise
here is that
co-parents usually will promote excessive shame and guilt in their dependent
kids, despite their best intentions. This is due to unawareness or
denial that a well-meaning
is controlling the adult's attitudes and
behaviors.
As
you assess and upgrade your own self-love and respect,
stay aware that "self esteem" is a
composite term for how you respect yourself (a) as a male or female person and
(b) in each important social role you or others hold yourself responsible
for - like child of God / adult (wo)man / co-parent / mate / employee or
volunteer / son or daughter / friend / citizen / neighbor etc. This is also
true of each of your kids. See this two-page
article for perspective and options on converting excessive shame into healthy guilt-free self-love and self-respect
as part of over-all personal wound healing.
The
second half of this task is to pay attention to how you co-parents
model your self-respect and self-love to other family members. Your kids
depend on you adults to show them how adults who respect and love
themselves sound, look, and act. Did your early caregivers model those for
you?
Note
that a common false-self wound is
excessive
People
with this wound often are unaware of it, or minimize or deny (distort) it. To guard
against your (subselves) distorting your reality, consider asking those who you feel know you "well enough" to tell you whether they think you're modeling
self-love and self-respect to your kids.
Caution: if your supporters are wounded and unaware, they're apt
to tell you what they think you want to hear and/or to distort their
perceptions of what you're modeling in your home and family.
Status check: on a scale of one
(I never model genuine self-love and self-respect in our home and family)
to ten (I consistently model
these in my home and family), thoughtfully rank yourself. If you have a low
ranking, it usually indicates a well-intentioned false-self rules you. Is
there something in the way of your improving this?
2) Learn What Factors Cause Kid's Shame or Pride
Try meditating and saying out loud what factors you think shape a
child's level of self-love and respect (self esteem). Option discuss
this with your other family adults and respected supporters as teammates,
not competitors. Use your beliefs to judge which of these factors were
present enough in each child's (a) early years, and (b) are present in their current
family environment. Compare your beliefs to these examples:
Factors
that shape a young child's self respect and self love include:
-
their perception of how much
each main caregiver. mentor, and hero/ine respects and loves themselves;
-
the (a) accumulated balance of criticism and
praise they perceive from their main caregivers (including sitters,
relatives, and teachers), and (b)
these are expressed -
-
the child's history of perceived approvals
and praise,
or criticisms, scorn, and rejections of other kids. All these combine to shape...
-
the
judgments of their
and
subselves. Until these tireless, well-meaning,
subselves
are retrained in adulthood, they
usually mimic the verbal and nonverbal values, voices, and examples of key caregivers.
-
(add your own factors)
For
each wounded child, assess nonjudgmentally which of these and similar factors (a) were
most influential in their earlier years, and (b) need to be improved now
with patient informed adult help. Discuss these with your other family adults, and
try for a consensus on how you each and all can make needed improvements.
3) Assess Kids' Current Level of Self-esteem
Think of the people in your life that you love now. Become
aware of what
your love feels like. Then imagine looking steadily at yourself in a
mirror and feeling the same thing about the person you see there. That's one
way to experience "self love."
Using
that experience, try ranking each child's self respect and self love on a
scale of one (very shamed) to ten (very self-loving). Note the difference
between healthy self-love and self-centered egotism. Now try to
identify the criteria you used to make your ranking.
Premise - each of us develops characteristic behavioral signs of our
self-love and respect. You can learn these signs, and intentionally use them
to gauge (anyone's) level of self esteem. You already know how to do this,
and may only need to become aware of the criteria you use.
See how your
criteria compare to these behavioral
symptoms in kids and adults. Keep your perspective: symptoms like these
usually indicate a person's current degree of shame and guilt, not just
shame.
A useful teaching + assessment option is to discuss with each child (on an age-appropriate
level) what shame, guilt, pride, and respect are. If s/he can
understand and relate to these concepts and terms, help her or him use them
to identify "someone who really likes themselves" and "who doesn't
'like themselves much."
If the child can answer those, then ask how s/he
likes herself or himself. An option is to illustrate traits that
you like and don't like about yourself, and then ask the child if s/he can
describe such traits about herself. Clarify that such traits are
normal and OK, and don't make a person "good" or "bad."
As you
refine your shame and guilt criteria and do this nurturing work, use your
criteria to track and discuss a child's progress toward replacing
excessive shame and guilts with self-love and serene self-acceptance. This
applies to your and other co-parents' personal healing, too!
4) Intentionally Replace Shaming Factors -
Within Your Limits
This subject deserves its own book, so what follows is skeletal. Usually, the two most powerful factors that cause and maintain a child's
shame are (a) their co-parents' attitudes and behaviors, and (b) the child's
Inner Critic and Shamed Child subselves. Each of these can be assessed and
changed - within limits. Let's look at each factor briefly...
Co-parents' Shaming Attitudes and Behaviors
Were
you fortunate enough to grow up with at least one genuinely-loving
caregiver? Do you remember how s/he looked, sounded, and acted with you?
Realities:
-
Adults
may chose a parent role because they want to or
because they have to.
Co-parents range from genuinely enjoying the complex challenge of
raising a child to resenting and disliking that responsibility and doing
it out of duty, guilt, and/or obligation.
Many stepparents find that nurturing
their mate's child/ren is less rewarding and more frustrating than they
expected. This promotes co-parenting out of duty or the wish to retain
their mate's approval, rather than from genuinely
caring about a stepchild. This is specially likely with wounded stepkids
who haven't grieved their family-adjustment losses, and steadily scorn
and reject their stepparent/s, however kind, patient, and attentive they
are.
-
Whether they enjoy being a parent or not,
caregivers range between "very
wounded and ignorant about
effective co-parenting" to "very
healthy and knowledgeable." Severely wounded parents may be unable to feel
and express love or genuinely
with other people - including their own child/ren. That strongly
promotes excessive shame and guilt and other wounds in their kids,
unless a child has access to a loving surrogate parent like a
grandparent, aunt, or uncle.
-
Wounded, ignorant parents often are unable to provide a
environment for themselves and their kids, despite their best
intentions. Premise: shame-based adults and kids always
come from low-nurturance childhoods.
-
Even
the most loving, knowledgeable co-parents can be significantly
distracted, unavailable, and overstressed because of their life
circumstances - e.g. having too little money and security, too many
non-parental obligations, a toxic environment, and/or poor health. A core variable to assess
for each of your family co-parents is "Is 'effective parenting' of your
minor kids consistently among this person's top five current life
priorities, as judged by her or his actions?" When kids perceive they're
not very important to a main caregiver - specially a bioparent - they
automatically conclude they're unlovable and worthless (shame).
Factors like these combine to shape how nurturing each of your kids'
co-parents have been and can be now.
Improving any of these factors depends largely on the strength and priority
of each
adult's desire to change and grow - e.g. to (a) reduce their
psychological wounds, (b) learn to communicate more effectively, and (c)
learn what kids need at various stages of
development and (d) how to best help them fill those needs over time, while keeping
appropriate boundaries and personal
Divorced bioparents and
stepfamily co-parents may (or may not) be motivated to also learn their kids' special
family-adjustment needs and work patiently to
help fill them, too
Some
specific aspects of co-parenting affect kids' self esteem more than others, and can
be intentionally improved. For example...
-
adults' basic attitudes about each child's
human rights, needs, worth, and dignity,
regardless of the child's age or behaviors - i.e.
the degree of
genuine respect each adult has for the child. Kids discern these
attitudes from
their adults' verbal and non-verbal behaviors day by day, and
assume they're absolute truths;
-
the way adults provide
child
discipline (rules and consequences);
-
the degree of empathy and patience each adult
has for a child in various situations;
-
adults' willingness to let a child learn
from experience (within safe limits) and to not over-protect against pain,
fear,
and frustration.
-
the degree to which busy adults take the
time to
to a child in calm and stressful times;
-
the frequency and nature of physical contact
- i.e. hugging, holding, kissing, and caressing;
-
the frequency and nature of adults' praising
and affirming the child's behaviors, talents, and achievements - and
each other's;
-
how often adults are critical of
each other and other people, and how they express their criticisms -
e.g. objectively and constructively vs. sarcastically and scornfully.
This often mimics what the adult saw their childhood caregivers
do.
-
the frequency and nature of adults'
willingness to play with and enjoy the company of a child,
balanced with supervising, protecting, and training them and filling
their own adult needs;
-
co-parents' tolerance for their child
being influenced by shaming kids and adults; and...
-
(add your own factors)
Imagine discussing these factors with your other stepfamily adults -
including active grandparents, aunts, and uncles. The theme of the
conversation would be "What can we all do to help (a specific child) raise
her self-love and self esteem over time?" Would your other
family adults be open
to doing this for each shamed child in your stepfamily - as teammates? If
not, you may need to confront them on the impacts of their own attitudes and
behaviors.
The
second impactful place to help a
child improve his
or her self esteem is...
Retrain the Child's Personality Subselves
How do you feel about this site's premise that normal
personalities are composed of semi-independent subselves, like talented
members of a sports team or orchestra? If you're ambivalent or skeptical,
read this, and try this safe
exercise. What follows assumes that you
accept this basic premise, and can apply it to each of your family's adults
and kids - including yourself.
Four universal subselves that dominate typical shame-based adults and kids
are the tireless
and the
Typical minor and adult kids (and most co-parents and family professionals)
don't know this. To permanently improve a child's self esteem, all your
co-parents need to (a) solidly believe that subselves exist, are normal, and can change
their values and beliefs; and (b) patiently learn how to retrain their
child's three subselves to believe in his or her genuine worth and
lovability - despite limitations and failures. This is no small challenge!
Ideally, your co-parents will have
accumulated experience at meeting and negotiating (retraining) with their
own subselves.
Because each child and family is unique, there is no "cookbook" way to
retrain these (and other) powerful subselves to shift their attitudes toward
self love and respect. There is a general framework you adults can
learn and tailor to help accomplish this vital retraining. In this site, the
framework is called
In this context, basic parts-work goals are to:
-
help
the shamed (wounded) child understand, accept, and "meet" each of these
(and other) subselves. Emphasize that subselves (a) are normal and
OK, (b) always mean well, but may be misinformed and/or ignorant; (c) are totally safe
to meet and "talk to," and (d) can learn, change, and operate from new ideas.
-
explain what each of these three subselves does - i.e. what their
jobs (personality roles) and special talents are. Then for perspective,
explain key other subselves' roles, like the Helpful Child, the Good Boy
or Girl, the Playful Child, the Creative Child, the Curious Child, the
Loving Child, and so on. Unless the child is a teen, it's probably too
early to try and teach him or her that s/he has a talented true Self.
S/He does, but it's probably not accumulated much life wisdom yet,
and so other subselves aren't used to relying on this subself's judgment
yet.
-
help the child safely experience "talking"
to her parts, and do that to learn what each of these subselves believes about the
child's worthiness and lovability.
-
use the child's life experiences to validate
that s/he has, at times, discovered that she believed things that
weren't true, and s/he "changed her mind when she learned what was
true. This is a reassurance that her shaming subselves can change if
they learn new information.
-
Work with the child and her or his subselves
to identify the specific reasons they feel s/he is unlovable, and
objectively describe those reasons as being untrue, one at a time. This
will probably bring up some talk about what is "a good person," "what is
'love'?", and "why people love each other."
It may also bring up
the normal differences between people, and that people's talents and
limitations don't determine whether they're lovable and worthy or not.
It may also bring up the idea of a child's unique
which does
contribute to their lovability.
-
If appropriate, focus on correcting the
subselves' mistaken belief that a child's appearance relates to their
goodness or badness.
-
Use your own creativity and life experience
to add to inviting these core subselves to update their ideas
about the child's intrinsic worth, despite "bad habits" and/or
"failures." Note the powerful tool of "reframing" - giving things new
meanings. For instance, the child may believe that making "mistakes"
makes her or him a "bad (unlovable) person."
Reframe: "Actually,
mistakes are helpful ways of learning how to live right - and everyone
needs to make mistakes and learn from them." Encourage the habit of the
child asking "What can I learn from the mistake I just made?"
-
A common source of shame is often being told
"You're selfish (bad)." Explain the difference between "Self-ish"
(taking loving care of yourself, while staying aware of other people's
needs), and "selfish (little "s"), which is putting your needs ahead of
other people's needs without caring about them. Kids normally have an
Egotistic or Selfish Child (did you?), who needs to be patiently
moderated without scorn.
-
A
useful strategy is to ask the Inner Critic and Perfectionist subselves
to learn how to give their criticisms respectfully, rather
than scornfully. This applies also tho the child learning how to give
constructive criticism to other people. Are you adults consistently
modeling how to do this?
Obviously, each of these suggestions will take time, patience, and
creativity to slowly improve the child's self-image and self-love. Patiently
watch for shifts in the child's beliefs and actions, and affirm them. Note
the powerful relationship between your own self esteem and the child's, as
you do this vital nurturing work!
Recap - Improving Shamed Kids' Self-love and
Respect
The first half of this article offers perspective on personality wounds,
and focuses on co-parents intentionally helping wounded kids begin to
replace excessive shame with healthy self-appreciation and self-love. The
article proposes that to do this, co-parents need to work at several vital preparation
steps, starting with (a) progress on
healing their own wounds and (b) learning key topics before trying
to help their wounded kids "feel better about themselves.".
Basic
premises here are (a) wounded kids
can increase genuine self love and respect with informed, patient adult coaching and
encouragements; and that (b) to help them achieve this, co-parents
need to intentionally adopt a long-term view, grow their
identify and improve shaming aspects of their home and family environments,
and learn how to do effective "parts work" together to retrain the
child's key
personality subselves.
These
ideas are meant to provide a solid general foundation from which to
help shamed kids "feel better about themselves." Much of accomplishing this
depends on your co-parents' own ingenuity, empathy, and compassion for all
of you. Note that
in this site and its related
