“I’m annoying, bad, stupid, not good at anything. I hate myself.” It can be disconcerting to hear our kids say such unkind things about themselves, using harsh words that we’ve made a point not to use with them. Is this perfectionism? Low self-esteem? Passing feelings of vulnerability? What can we do to encourage our kids to stop bagging on themselves like this? How can we build up their self-image and self-confidence? Janet responds to notes from two concerned families, weighing in with encouraging advice and a point of view that can make all the difference.
Transcript of “I’m Bad, I’m Stupid — Kids Being Harsh on Themselves”
Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.
Today I’m going to talk about an issue that a lot of parents have been asking me about lately. It’s when our children are saying unkind things about themselves, they’re getting harsh on themselves. And these parents want to respond in a way that’s going to help their children feel better, of course, but the responses they’re giving just don’t seem to be doing that, so they’re getting concerned. The feedback I’m going to offer actually also applies to children saying unkind things to us or generally acting out in that way, even behaving in unkind ways. So I really hope that this might help parents dealing with those kinds of issues as well.
Here’s the first note I received:
Hi, Janet-
My daughter’s seven years old and is extremely hard on herself. She’s constantly saying things like she deserves to get hurt, she’s annoying, nobody loves her, she’s stupid, she’s not good at anything. Every time she says things like this, it breaks mine and my husband’s heart. We do our best to stop and talk to her about it, but she shuts down, cries, runs away, or yells at us every time.
I’m not sure if I’m making a big deal out of something that is normal and typical for this age range. I’ve asked her in the past if she wants to talk to somebody about her feelings, and she’s adamant that she doesn’t want to and that would mean that she has failed even more. I don’t want her to feel that she’s in even more trouble than she already feels she constantly is.
She’s in first grade and does very well, but has been having a lot of issues with her friends. Her teacher says she just has a very cliquey group of friends who can be hard to mesh with, but she always seems to be left out at lunch and recess and doesn’t get asked over for playdates. I can’t figure out what came first, the lack of self-confidence and self-esteem or the friendship issues.
My husband and I follow a lot of your parenting style and she doesn’t get punished, she doesn’t get sent to her room, and she is an overall amazing, well-rounded, respectful, and kind kid. I don’t know what to do and I’m at a loss as to where to go from here. I would love any advice you could provide me.
As I often do, I wrote back to her, just to get a little more information. I said:
Can you tell me a bit more about the context for these comments she makes about herself? When do these statements usually come up? What’s going on at that time? I’d also love to hear more about how you set boundaries with her. And do you have other children? Has anything else been going on with your family besides her dealing with first grade and these clique-ish friends? Also, one more thing: when you talk to her about it, what kinds of things do you say?
Just so you know, you’re not alone. I have another note on this issue from a parent and I’m thinking I’d like to respond to them and to you in a podcast episode.
She wrote back, and I’ve edited this down because it’s quite long:
As far as context for the comments, it is usually after she makes a mistake or does something she perceives as wrong or hurtful. For example, if she tells her younger sister she doesn’t want to share a toy and then her sister cries, she’ll say, “I’m so annoying” or “I’m the worst person in the world,” sometimes even before my husband or I come into the room. If she’s writing and writes a letter backward, I know that if I point it out, she will immediately cry and say she’s stupid.
Other times, if she’s having a hard time and crying or yelling at me or my husband and we push back and remind her of the rules in our house, she will start by telling us the typical (I think!) hurtful things like, “I hate you” or “I wish I wasn’t part of this family.” Then when she calms down, it turns into, “I’m the worst. No one loves me. I wish I could bang my head open.” She apologizes when she’s calm whenever she’s said mean things or done something hurtful. At times she will try to physically hurt my husband or me, but never her sister. And we connect and talk things through, but she never says she doesn’t believe the things she said about herself.
She also will say things in moments of calm, though, and that’s what’s harder for me to understand. During our bedtime routine, sometimes I’ll ask her to name two or three things she loves about herself or things she did that she was proud of that day. Or in the morning, to look at herself in the mirror and tell me what she sees, etc. She always goes negative and will say, “I’m not proud of anything. I see an ugly girl. I don’t love myself. I’m the worst.” If I push her, she will bury her head under her covers or look away from me, seeming ashamed. At most, she will say she thinks she’s a good artist or is good at making friends.
As I said in the original email, I do not send her to a room or take things away from her when she’s struggling. I try to connect with her and talk it through. Her shame is so overwhelming, though, that even once she’s calm hours later, she cannot look me in the eye and talk to me about what happened or how to change things the next time it happens.
This parent went on to talk about the friends and the social situation. She said:
Unfortunately, no one really asks her for playdates unless I initiate. She’s so perceptive that I think she’s taking in every little thing from other kids. Unfortunately, she takes it in and turns it negatively towards herself. She has perfectionist tendencies and takes critiques to heart.
I know some of this is normal and typical for children of her age, but the complete lack of self-confidence and love is something I can’t figure out. Is this something I can continue to talk through and work out with her and build her confidence through my own strategies and techniques (though I don’t know what else I haven’t tried yet) or is this something bigger?
I’ve tried talking to her about it. By this I mean I will wait for her to be calm and ask her why she did that, what makes her feel this way? Did anything happen that makes her think this? Did I say anything that hurt your feelings? And she will turn away from me, cry, run out of the room, yell at me. “I’m just stupid! No one likes me, that’s why. I deserve to be hurt. I should be out of this house, alone.” I’ve tried simply telling her we don’t say mean things about anyone in this house, ourselves included, and I’ve tried ignoring it completely. I struggle with these, though. I worry she cannot feel the love we’re giving her and it breaks my heart.
That’s a lot of helpful information, right? And I said:
One more question, if you have time. Can you give me an example of how you talk things through?
Then she wrote back:
Sure. She’s a very picky eater, so dinners can easily be a source of big emotions. If she doesn’t like some or all of the dinner, she might tell us she hates us and we are the worst. Then we will remind her that our family doesn’t talk like that and to please try again. Sometimes it works; sometimes she spirals and will stick her tongue out, scream more, say more hurtful things.
She will eventually calm down and I will sit with her in a quiet space or she will just come straight to us and apologize. I’ll ask her, “What happened?” or say something like, “I understand you didn’t like dinner. You wished we had mac and cheese.” And she’ll say, “Yeah, I was so hungry today and I couldn’t wait to eat, and then I saw a gross dinner and I got angry.” Sometimes it ends there. I’ll say, “I get it. Dinners can be hard. Thanks for talking to me,” and give her a hug and move on. Sometimes I’ll ask her, “What would you have done differently?” Or say something like, “Do you know why you can’t say things you said or do things you did?” When it’s just about words, she can think of other things to say or articulate herself well. When it comes to her behavior, she usually can’t think of anything else she could have done, despite multiple suggestions from me in the past. This is when she will cover her head, run away, or ask me to stop talking about it, which I usually do.
So many thoughts come up for me with this parent, who’s obviously very considerate, very loving, making every effort she can think of to help her daughter feel better. And I can feel this parent just kind of wringing her hands as to what’s the right way to go, the right thing to do. And in the meantime, her and her husband’s hearts are broken, she says. That right there makes everything very hard. Because we’re doing what we do as parents, which is taking it very seriously as something that we’re deeply doing wrong. Maybe there’s something seriously wrong with their child. It all feels very heavy, right?
Here’s the pattern I see here, that I feel is getting in the way of what this parent is trying so valiantly to do. She’s doing the normal thing that most of us want to do, which is we want to do something to make this better. We want to say the right thing, do the right thing, we want to fix it. And this is so well-meaning on our part, it’s so loving, but it gets in our way. Because when we’re doing, we’re not going to see as clearly. And when we’re doing it with broken hearts, that’s going to get in our way too. Not that we can change that part, but what we can change is to stop trying to do so much. Because what happens when we’re in doing mode and fix-it mode is that we end up kind of pushing back on what our child is saying, instead of hearing them, and that gets in the way of our connection.
In this case, this child is taking it out on herself most of the time. But children going through stuff can also lash out at us in different ways, physically or with words. As this girl sometimes does when she says “I hate you” and “I don’t want to be in this family.” What’s happening there is that they are hurting in some way and they are unable to ask for the actual fix that they need, which is just more acceptance from the parent and to be—we talk a lot about this—but to be seen, to be accepted, to feel like they can share with us without us trying to put a spin on what they say or make it somehow better. That we can actually say all the things and feel all the things. I mean, it doesn’t mean we always love their behavior or the things that they say, but we can allow them to share those.
So what’s going to always work better than doing or saying the right things? And I know social media parenting advice probably encourages this, right? Because it’s so much about, Here’s this one thing you can say or do that will change something! And I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that, but it’s limited. And it’s especially limited in situations like these, where the doing is what’s misconnecting or not connecting and getting us stuck. Instead of doing, what we want is being. Being open, being curious, being comfortable enough with ourselves in the situation and accepting enough of our child that we don’t let this small, momentary stuff get in the way. Because that’s when we miss the forest for the trees.
And in this case, the forest is that yes, she’s feeling sensitive. And it really sounds like it’s to do with the first-grade social stuff. That can be a tough year. It’s challenging for all kids academically, and then the social part is even more challenging. She has this cliquey group at her school and she’s on the outside of it. So yes, she’s feeling sensitive about that, I’m sure. She’s taking that very hard, and the way that’s coming out is her being hard on herself.
This parent asks several times if she really means this or if it’s just something she’s saying, if this is some deep-seated thing she’s feeling. My take on that is that yes, she means it. Not in some pervasive, deep-seated way, but in the way that young children feel things, which is in a passing way. She’s kind of self-shaming with it, which of course we don’t want her to do if possible. But the first thing we have to do is see that and accept that that’s what’s going on, and see the hurt that’s there. And the hardest part of all for us as parents is not feeling threatened by that. Not taking this to heart ourselves, but hearing it as a need to be more open to why she’s saying this, to what’s really going on.
One of my thoughts about this is to be kind of a shame detective on ourselves, just to notice there are things that we’re correcting that maybe we don’t really need to correct. Because a lot of what we want to correct is unnecessary small stuff, like the backwards letter. She’s writing a letter and it’s backwards. So the doer in us, maybe there’s even some perfectionistic tendencies in us that lead us to want to tell her about that, right? It’s a struggle to let that kind of stuff go or to let the language at the table go or to let the way she’s talking about herself go. But really this is getting in our way. She’s going to learn about the direction of the letters eventually. She doesn’t need us to be on her with that, and we don’t need to be the person who does this.
Instead, there could be more room for her to feel accepted in her discomforts right now. Which do sound like they’re about these social challenges, and we have no control over that part as parents, none. But what we can do, and this is what I’m suggesting, is nourish her self-acceptance and confidence at home.
Now, the way to do that unfortunately isn’t asking her about what she likes about herself or what she sees in the mirror. The problem with that is that kids, they feel us working there and that does the opposite of build their confidence. It feels like we’re trying to make this better, we’re trying to get her to stop doing what she’s doing, instead of really understanding it and accepting it and being able to connect with her where she is.
“What could you do differently?” I would let go of that idea of talking to her about what she could do differently, because generally she knows and you know what she could do differently. And what that’s doing—without this parent meaning to—is shaming. It feels shaming when you know that you’ve had a blowup at dinner and now you have to talk about why you shouldn’t have done that and what you should do instead. And that doesn’t mean that kids don’t need to learn these things, but this isn’t the way for her to learn them, in my opinion. At this time, when she’s going through this, we want to be shame detectives on ourselves and not be shaming her in ways that are unnecessary, because she needs us more to lean on the side of acceptance and being open to her.
So instead of trying to build her confidence with these kinds of strategies and bringing up these certain things, just be interested. Not in what you could do differently, but, Ah, you’re really having a hard time. I see that. And it’s coming through in these places, like with dinner today, and then that other time with your sister, and most of all in these feelings about yourself. You feel so bad. I’m so glad you’re sharing this with me. It’s hurtful to feel that about yourself, isn’t it? It must feel terrible to feel like no one loves you and that you even want to hurt yourself. You feel so bad. And then silence.
This is the most challenging thing for a lot of us. I have a post about it called “Braving the Silence.” This is where, first of all, we’re not afraid to say all the things that our child’s been saying about themselves, these scary words that we would rather they weren’t saying. And we want to say, “Say something different! What else could you say?” or “Let’s hear some good things about you.” Being able to openly share in an accepting way, to bring up these scary, inappropriate-seeming words our child’s using, even. Like, “You hated that dinner. You felt so bad about it.” And, most importantly, “You don’t like yourself. You feel like you can’t do anything right and that no one likes you.” And to leave those alone and not be trying to spin them or fix them or say anything about them, just letting those feelings have a life.
This is one of the most challenging things, and yet it’s so simple. We can go there without any complicated scripts or anything. It’s just reflecting on what your child actually is saying they’re feeling and not saying anything more. Letting that be. And this is what will give us the strength as a parent to be able to do this. This parent said it, this is the part I would focus on: “She is an overall amazing, well-rounded, respectful, and kind kid.” There she is. None of these things she’s saying or doing in a moment of venting change that or could ever change that. This is also reflected in her relationship with her sister, which this parent says is mostly great. There you go, that’s the her that we want to support, in all her ups and downs.
And right now the downer is the shame she’s wallowing in. Less fixing and correcting and doing, more openness to her. That’s how we can support her, and that’s what she wants more than anything. I know this is challenging, but it opens up so many things that we want with our kids: that connection, them to feel better about themselves, because they know that we accept all of these things going on with them. There’s already been flashes where this child shows she has a very trusting relationship with her mother and feels accepted. This will open up more of that.
This little girl apologizes. That’s great. She sounds like she apologizes without even being asked to apologize or anything. There’s so many positive things going on here. I would just like to encourage this parent, and any parent going through anything like this, to focus on that and make room for the rest to be shared. Where there’s no pushback, no judgment, no shaming, no I want answers, no Try it this way instead. Shouldn’t you do it another way? Just letting those be.
And here’s another note on this topic:
Hi, Janet-
I’m wondering if you could help me find an old episode of your podcast. I know I’ve listened to one or more where you touched on shame in kids, making comments like, I’m bad, stupid and how to respond. I’ve searched and I’m not finding it, but this has been coming up recently with my older daughter and I don’t know how to help her. Thanks so much for what you do. She’ll be six next month.
I wrote back:
What is the context in which your child says these things? How do you respond? How old is she? I’d love to try to help.
She said:
It depends. She has said something along the lines of “I feel like I’m bad” after I’ve corrected behavior, asked her not to do something, or gotten onto her in some way. When that happens, I respond with, “No, you’re a good kid who just made a bad choice.” She has also a couple of times called herself stupid. That’s less frequent, but it’s happened a couple times.
She’s learning to read and write and, depending on the time of day, she can be easily frustrated in the evenings. And I’ve told her, “Oops, that letter is backwards.” Not making a big deal about it, but lightly letting her know so she practices it in the correct way. (We’re not forcing her to practice, she does this for fun and writes books, etc.) And she will say she’s stupid. My response to that is usually lighthearted, “Be nice to my girl. And no, you’re not stupid at all. You’re still learning.”
She’s in a challenging phase right now and I understand she has a lot going on. She’s a kindergartner, so that’s big and brand new, even though the year is wrapping up. She is a pretty sensitive kiddo. And we also have an 18-month-old. So I try and cut her a lot of slack with her feelings, but I’m feeling like maybe the way I respond to her is not producing the desired effects, especially now that I’ve heard her negative self-talk lately. I appreciate any advice you have.
This one is probably easier to see, because it’s less involved. She’s concerned her child is doing these things, she’s trying to respond in the right way that helps make her feel better, but it’s still a doing mode that she’s in.
And these are sweet things to say. As adults, if someone said that to you, a friend or whatever, “Oh, come on, you’re just learning. Be nice to my girl,” that would feel good, right? But with young children, they’re just exploring all these different feelings in themselves and she’s finding herself in this self-shaming mode. The most healing thing would be to have her parent be able to meet her there, just like with this other parent, to be able to meet her there and embrace that girl.
We make these very well-intentioned comments like, “No, you’re a good kid who just made a bad choice.” It’s really hard, first of all, for kids to separate that they did something bad from they are bad. So I probably wouldn’t necessarily use that word on my end, “made a bad choice.” But I could still open up to her saying that she’s bad, and this is how that might look. Whatever she did, the parent corrected it and then she said, “I feel like I’m bad.” So there’s an opener right there. Our child is giving us these beautiful missives: Here I am. See me. I’m putting it out to you, the ugly things, the uncomfortable things. What will help us is to see these as precious overtures that our child is making. Even when they’re things that make us uncomfortable to hear, I don’t want her to be saying that about herself.
So I would be careful about how you’re correcting her. That’s all in my book No Bad Kids and in my master course. Because there’s ways to do it that aren’t getting on her case so much, that are just like, Ooh, that’s not cool, honey, can’t let you do that. Maybe acknowledging that she wanted to do that. That non-judgmental correction is the most helpful kind.
And how bizarre is this, that this parent actually had the same thing where she’s told her, “Oops, that letter is backwards.” How interesting is that, that this exact same detail both these parents had with their kids? Here again, it’s kind of unnecessary to tell her the letter is backwards. I know people would argue, Why not just tell her? But why? I mean, sometimes that’s coming from us more than it’s really coming from helping our child, that we are afraid that she’s going to get it in her head that that’s right or something. But eventually she will learn. The fact that she wants to do all this on her own, she’s very self-motivated and she will notice that herself. And that’s always the most powerful way to learn something too, when we notice it ourselves and we discover, Oh wow, look what I’ve been doing all this time. And then we take that in, without any shame or anything from our parent.
Remember, kids are so vulnerable to us. We’ll never have someone else like this in our life, that cares so much what we think. And even if they’re a teenager and they’re not saying that anymore, they care so much what we think about them. So we do want to take care in the way that we correct them, in the kinds of things that we feel like we need to point out to them. And this is one that I would totally let go of.
But anyway, now she’s saying she feels really stupid. And that’s where I would be like, “Ugh, you’re tough on you when you make mistakes, aren’t you? That makes you feel stupid, because you did something wrong? Because you did a letter the wrong way? I’m sorry to hear that.” So we’re showing her through our tone, be nice to my girl and that we don’t think she’s stupid at all, but we’re not saying it. We’re just open to the feelings she’s having. Letting go of the doing and instead being. Being accepting, being open, being receptive. We have to be accepting to be open and receptive, all of those things go together. This one adjustment can make all the difference.
And we want to know, right? We want to know what’s going on with our child and why they’re feeling that way. And unfortunately we’re not going to find out by probing and asking. We’re going to find out when we allow them the emotional space, filled with acceptance and safety, to get to that point where they can say more and understand more about themselves. When they’re responding to our well-intentioned pushback, they can’t do that. Kids take more time to figure these things out, to even know why they’re saying what they’re saying, or even know what they could have done differently in that situation. They have a slower processing time, so give them that time and so much more that they need, give them that acceptance, give them that feeling of self-confidence, because a lot of that is based on our responses.
But also know that self-confidence and self-esteem aren’t some fixed thing in children. They aren’t even fixed in us as adults, but especially not in children. They are always growing and changing and developing. So there’s so much we can do here and so much that we don’t need to worry about, just be aware of. We have a lot of power, and it starts with accepting ourselves so we can accept our child and then they can accept themselves.
I hope some of this is helpful. Thank you so much for listening. We can do this.