What have you done? The way shame shapes your child’s development
“Shame is a soul eating emotion.” — Carl Jung
What I come across in my daily work as a psychologist is the use of shame by parents to extinguish a behavior that the parents themselves are not in acceptance of.
From stopping young children from perusing the laundry room and accidentally eating toxic chemicals, to adolescents getting caught watching porn, to, horribly at times, using it to change a person’s sexual orientation.
It’s a powerful tool because it works quickly. Your child gets the message immediately. And with any luck, the behavior, preference, or curiosity stops.
When parents use shame, they neglect the more powerful lesson that tends to stay with children for a long time. There is a right.
And there is a wrong.
I am not in any way trying to start a philosophical argument here. I get bewildered by reading 3 lines of Nietzche’s work. I am no expert here.
What I do see and experience is that children begin to inherently categorize the world and their interactions with it as right or wrong, mostly shaped by the use of shame.
When a child learns about fire, especially the potential hazards that come with it, it becomes a learning experience. A classic example is when a child becomes big enough to start touching things on a stove. Their curiosity draws them close to an open flame and a pan sitting on top of it. They reach out to touch the pan and they experience a searing that they’ve (hopefully) never experienced before.
Lesson learned.
Many parents, out of (understandable) fear and anxiety, react demonstrably to make a point that fire is dangerous and you should be cautious around it.
There isn’t an inherent moral value to what the child did or what drove them to do so. They do not know any better. They were simply curious and interacting with the world.
The child codes that into their memory bank and moves on with their lives. There is no inherent right or wrong, simply, don’t or do.
No reasonable parent would shame their child (well, I hope not) about this experience.
The child continues to grow. Hormones are entering the scene and your child’s behavior becomes erratic. Their becoming more autonomous, and developing a self-identity.
They’re becoming… human?
Their curiosities are no longer bound by the safe and familiar structure you provided for them. They interact with the world outside of your home and with the advent of the internet, the world at large.
Information, any kind, from the best food for their pet hamster to finding that the best cure for a hangover (any kind of broth for me, by the way) is at their fingertips.
It’s an information overload. The end to their curiosity has no bounds.
But that’s what most parents miss. It’s curiosity.
When a child is caught watching porn on their computer, tablet, or phone for the first time, it’s often an awkward experience that no one has really signed up for or will ever be ready for.
A parent’s response in that moment is crucial beyond the behavior of watching porn or one’s natural sexual curiosity.
You become a huge contributor to how a child organizes their world. It could become a larger, educational conversation about one’s body, physical attraction, sexuality, pursuit of desire, use of porn, the porn industry, or whatever you want it to be.
What it often becomes is a conversation about right or wrong. Not is watching porn right or wrong, but many times, is what I’m naturally curious about right or wrong?
Whatever your stance on porn and sexuality, guns, video games, the bible, whatever. This is not the way to shape a person’s view on any of those things. But parents continue to use shame to extinguish the behavior because they are not morally aligned with it.
Parents extinguish the behavior (momentarily).
But not the curiosity.
What happened was something that happened naturally, became a big conversation about right or wrong. And more importantly, many of the interactions children have with the world get judged in the same manner.
My self-harm behaviors are wrong.
My curiosity about BDSM is wrong.
My attraction to the same sex is wrong.
I. am. wrong.
This is where shame creeps in. This is where self-identity becomes engrossed and overwhelmed by feelings of shame. This is where the conversations of redeemable vs non-redeemable get entrenched.
What was once a world of wonder and curiosity has become reduced to “am I doing something wrong”, or worse, “am I wrong?”.
I’ve spent many hours breaking kids (and adults) away from this mindset. Every thought, every emotion, every behavior has been placed value and judgment, when in reality, they’re just, well, there.
I generally see progress in my clients when they start steering away from the conversation about their behaviors being right and wrong, to, objectively gauging whether this behavior serves a purpose for them.
And take it from me, this step takes a long time.
Parents. Your job is to teach your kids about right and wrong.
But shame is not the way to do it.
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Steve is a program director at a residential facility in Southern California. He is aspiring to become a fighter of stigma in mental health, by sharing personal stories, stories of others, and what he (believes) he has learned through his work.
