Why Guilt and Shame Need to Be in Every Parent’s Tool Box
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By Julie Nise
Your kid is out of control, wild and defiant. They don’t listen to you and don’t seem to have any remorse for their actions at all. If this is something you’re seriously struggling with, I suggest you rethink your entire parenting strategy.
Your kid doesn’t have any remorse because you’re not leading them to believe they should.
Without guilt and shame, your child is probably unable to tell right from wrong and bad from good. Their actions don’t have consequences that they genuinely fear and I think this a huge problem. When your child does something bad, there needs to be a punishment that fits the crime. And this punishment needs to be consistent.
They need to be able to expect that if they do something bad, they will not get away with it. They need to feel guilty for their actions. Only then will they actually be able to learn a lesson. It may sound harsh, but it’s true: a child without shame for their poor actions is one that is headed down a path to true adult recklessness.
It’s your job as a parent is to teach your children the lesson they need to learn, in the moment they need to learn it. And guess what? Your own personal feelings about inflicting punishment is something you should’ve dealt with a long time ago. The punishment needs to snip unwanted behavior at the root. It stops it from happening, point blank. It teaches the extremely valuable lesson of predicting the future consequences of your behavior before you act.
We have a serious problem now: Children are wildly defiant, incredibly misbehaved, boldly disrespectful of their parents and out of control at levels that are completely ridiculous.
I hear a lot of people counter my argument for guilt and shame in parenting by saying that it causes the child to develop low self esteem and poor self image.
We do NOT have a crisis in self-esteem happening amongst our kids. We DO have the problem with children whose self-esteem is so high, their arrogances so deeply embedded. They seem to think they can do pretty much whatever they want to whenever they want. And they are expecting few (if any) repercussions for their choices.
Punishment for poor behavior is only given once (and SHOULD only be given once). The best punishment would make a big enough impression so that the particular behavior won’t happen again.
The punishment needs to be annoying or painful enough that the child would CHOOSE to not repeat their actions rather than suffer the consequences of that punishment again.
Many moms and dads make one huge mistake: trying to correct unwanted behavior by giving punishment after punishment after punishment after punishment. This is incredibly ineffective. If you keep having to correct the same behavior in the same way over and over, no one (not you OR your child) are learning any lessons. Nothing is being corrected.
You need to choose to create a punishment that mirrors the guilt and shame the child should feel for their bad behavior.
Repeating punishment sets everybody up for a big hassle, a lot of aggravation and makes it harder for the child. They’re trying to learn the lesson in one thousand unwillingly small ways rather than a single significantly effective one.
Of course, parents should never, ever be acting out of anger or giving more of a punishment than is necessary, but I think for the most part the opposite is true: Parents get very angry and frustrated because they have to repeat the same message, say the same thing and correct the same behavior over and over again.
This is a cycle that creates a lot of drama and hardship in families. It ends up producing adults that are only marginally functional in future relationships and jobs because they don’t understand that behaviors have consequences. They are unable to accurately predict the outcome of their choices.
We do not have a problem with stifling young spirits or damaging little egos. The only thing that holds them truly accountable to learn maturity and self-control is their parents.
When children do not learn how to mind, surrender their position and accept the outcome without getting an “attitude” there are serious repercussions that echo into their adult lives. Guilt and shame need to be a part of your parenting strategy, no exceptions. You’re teaching your child that bad behavior reflects poorly on them, that they are not acting alone in the world and they can create their own consequences.
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