NOT SETTING HIGH STANDARDS OR TAKING RISKS
When children get shaming messages regarding their mistakes, they are often afraid of making more mistakes. To protect themselves from the painful consequences of making a mistake, failing, or disappointing their parents, they play it safe. Instead of setting high standards that they may not achieve, they do what is predictable and secure. Living in a comfort zone, they not only sell themselves short, but also become bored because they are not being challenged.
Living in a comfort zone, children not only sell themselves short, but also become bored.
Other children react to shaming messages by being high achievers. They can’t bear the pain of being less than expected or disappointing their parents, so they try harder than they need to. They may produce results, but they are never happy. What they do is never good enough for them, and they are never good enough. It is not uncommon for these children to make all As and one B in school and to come home and hear this wounding response, “Why did you make this B?”
A father might say to his high-achieving son, who missed a football pass, “If you had caught that last pass, your team would have won.” Parents often ignore the positive and focus on the negative behavior. These kinds of negative messages from childhood are commonly heard in a counselor’s office when helping adults to deal with anxiety and depression. In most cases, it is not that their parents didn’t love them; they simply didn’t know a better way of showing their love. They didn’t know what they were doing to their kids. Many mistakenly thought they were motivating their children to try harder in a healthy way.
Parents mistakenly think they are helping when they give shaming messages.
When children don’t feel safe to make mistakes, they will tend to back off from taking natural and healthy risks. Children need to take risks to develop who they are. Without the safety to make mistakes, they hold back and often don’t know why. They need a safety net. Even high achievers will feel unsafe to take risks in other areas of their lives.
Without this inner security, they may say, “I don’t like parties,” but under the dislike is the fear of being rejected. Rather than risking the pain of feeling inadequate, they would rather not come out and share themselves. Underlying their thinking is a fear of losing what they have if they were to make a mistake or to fail.
Fear and insecurity are not always the cause of resistance. Some children are naturally shy and take longer to form relationships or don’t readily take risks. Receptive children tend to be shy and resist change. Sensitive children have a greater fear of being rejected and naturally take more time to open up to potential friends. Certainly, these tendencies to hold back are magnified when children get the message that it is not okay to make mistakes.
Natural tendencies to hold back are magnified when children get unforgiving messages.
To avoid the pain of disapproval, some children will just stop caring what their parents think. This is often the case of the teenager who shares nothing with her parents. She is used to being corrected and criticized her whole life. Now that she is freer and doesn’t need her parents as much, she goes to her friends to find acceptance. She rebels and makes a point of not needing her parents’ approval anymore. Behind this tendency is years of having to hide herself or to hold back in order to be accepted.
Regardless of what the wounding parents have done in the past, they can make up for it at any age by using the five skills of positive parenting and applying the five positive messages. Parents need to remember that it is okay that they make mistakes, too. All parents do the best they can with the resources they have.