5 Downsides to Labeling Your Kids
When you were growing up, what messages about your personality and abilities did you receive from your parents?
Were you considered:
Difficult
Smart
Musical
Stubborn
Sensitive
Irresponsible
Capable
Fill in your own word here!
How did these messages affect how you saw yourself?
How did these messages affect your feelings about your parents?
Do any of these messages still affect you today?
Using adjectives, or labels, to describe our children comes from our natural inclination to use categories to simplify the complex world around us.
These descriptors can help us feel that we understand our children better.
It's also helpful to know that using these kinds of labels can have a downside for you and your child.
Here are 5 reasons why.
1) You might unintentionally communicate negative feelings to your child
If our child has a quality that makes us uncomfortable, worried or frustrated, it's common to give that quality a negative label.
Imagine the child who:
has frequent meltdowns and you can't get them to stop.
comes up with original ideas and only wants to do things their way.
keeps losing their belongings.
Isn't is natural that we might use words like difficult, stubborn and irresponsible to describe a child like this?
Continually thinking about our child in these ways can intensify and reinforce our negative feelings. These feelings might then leak out in the ways we interact with our child.
We might be impatient with them when they have yet another meltdown.
We might yell at them for not hurrying up and getting something done.
We might say, "You're so scatterbrained! You can never keep your things organized."
None of these help our child through the challenges they are facing.
Instead, these interactions can leave us feeling sad and bad about ourselves for the way we reacted.
These interactions can also leave us feeling disconnected from our children, not enjoying the close relationship with them that we really want.
In my experience working with parents, these negative labels, feelings and patterns occur most often when parents are uncertain about how to handle their child's challenging behavior.
This is an indication that it could be helpful to get an outside perspective about your child and learn new ways to help them.
2) Labeling can limit your ability to understand your child
As humans we have many facets to our personality and abilities.
Limiting our focus and descriptors of our child to only a few aspects, however, can limit our ability to see and appreciate all of our child's qualities and abilities.
For example, our child may often lose their phone, do well in school, or play the piano beautifully, so we may primarily think about them as irresponsible, smart or musical.
In doing so we may not fully acknowledge our child's other qualities, such as their creativity, determination, easy going nature, spontaneity, or good sense of humor.
Children may also have some days where they are more responsible along with other days they are less so.
They may also be mature in some areas for their age, and less mature in other areas.
All of these things are normal. Children learn and grow at different rates.
More than anything, each of us wants to be seen, heard, loved and understood.
The more you see and accept all aspects your child's personality and abilities, the more your child will feel understand by you.
And the closer you and your child will be.
3) Hearing and feeling your labels may affect your relationship with your child
If your child feels your frustration with them through your actions, or they hear you talking to others about how "difficult" they are, or you tell them they are "too sensitive," your child may feel hurt, annoyed or angry at you.
Your child may also strongly disagree with the way you are describing them.
After all, who wants to be called difficult, stubborn, bossy or too sensitive?
Or maybe they don't want to be described as smart or special, even if you mean well.
Did you ever have this experience as a child?
Our relationship with our child can be bruised when they experience first hand the labels we give them.
4) Hearing and feeling your labels may affect your child's self esteem
Repeatedly being described in a certain way and being treated accordingly can affect how our children feel about themselves.
For example, if you repeatedly tell a child he is irresponsible or treat him that way, he might
Feel bad about himself.
Believe that it's true and that he will always be this way. Therefore, his irresponsibility becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy and his behavior doesn't improve.
5) You can create conflict between siblings
I hear this often. Parents describe their children as:
"the talkative one and the bookworm"
"this is my crazy one and this is my cautious one"
"my oldest is the smart one and my youngest is the athlete"
All of the cautions I've mentioned in the previous sections apply here along with these additional challenges:
Children can use these descriptions against each other.
For example, the "cautious one" could knock over a vase and blame it on her sibling, knowing you'd be more likely to believe that your "crazy one" did it.
Children can sometimes resent each other.
For example, the athlete might resent her older brother for getting all the attention for his grades, because her intelligence was never recognized by her parents.
Both of these challenges can affect siblings' relationships with each other, and their ability to feel close and get along.
No one child has the corner on a particular characteristic, ability or talent.
Can't both children be smart, even if one is also good at sports?
Can't both children love to read, even if one is also more talkative?
Can't both children be musical, even if one is noticeably more talented?
So what can you do differently?
If you realize that you've been using labels and would like to make a change, here are two things you can do.
Find the good in the quality that you see in your child.
For example if you see your child as bossy, a positive way of saying that is:
my child is strong and has natural leadership ability.
If you describe your child as nosy, you could reframe that as curious.
A quiet child could be seen as a good listener and careful observer.
If you'd like more ideas, check out this list of common descriptions for kids and positive words you can use instead.
Ways To Describe Children.png
This approach will help change your thinking about your child.
Ask for help.
If you're uncertain about how to handle your child's challenging behavior and you'd like to learn effective ways of handling it, please reach out to me HERE to schedule a time to talk.
During the call we'll discuss what is current happening, what you're hoping for, and how I can help. You'll have the opportunity to be truly heard and to see what is possible for you and your child. Other parents tell me that they leave our conversation with a great sense of hope. I'd be honored to provide this to you too!
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