5 Things Never to Say to Your Kid

It was a tense moment.  A student in my Human Growth and Development class said that the way he motivated and toughened up his boys was to yell, "Move your lazy butt!  You're crying like a little girl!"  
Let's discuss things you never want to say to a child, and how to focus on the good.  We'll also look at the difference between good, better and best compliments.

Transcript

This is Dr. Tracy Hogan and this is The Happiness Ladder.  Connection is one of the Six strengths of happiness so Today we’re going to discuss.  5 Things Never to Say to Your Kid 

 When Jeffrey R. Hollands gave his talk “The Tongue of Angels” in April of 2007 it was the best of spirituality. Why?  Well it was one of those talks that if everyone would listen and implement the suggestions, this world would create something like The City of Enoch, a holy place in our families .   The only thing it was missing was practical examples. Today I’m going to share some real life examples, and the best of psychology to help you find a little bit of Zion in your home   .  (Holland, J.R.,The Tongue of Angels. General Conference, April 2007.)

There is a continuum in speaking from evil to good.  It goes like this:  

Criticism…….... Comparing…….... Compliments…….... Charity

 I hope to  help you make the Journey from Criticism to Charity.     I taught a college human growth and development class for many years.  This class was a prereq for the nursing program and these dedicated students were not just highly motivated to get an A so they could secure a spot on the waiting list, but they were parents themselves.  I’ll never forget a discussion on the best ways to discipline children. 

There was this 37 year old man, who always wore his military camo to class because he came straight from work.  He explained his great technique to  motivate his three boys to clean their rooms

 : 

“Move your lazy butt, 

this is just not up to standards”

“I want that toilet seat so clean I can make a sandwich on it.” 

In the process of him yelling at the boys, Inevitably, The youngest would start to cry.

He’d say, “Stop that! Your are crying like a little woosie girl.”

He felt these statements helped “toughen up” his boys.  Get them ready for the realities of life.

 This was so harsh, so critical and offensive that I stood at the whiteboard speechless. Luckily my students, who were a little further along in their journey of looking for the good in their children and motivating their children and they jumped into the fray with  5 Things Never Say to Your Child.

#1 on the list of things never  to say: Move your Lazy Butt! calling a child  lazy, of stupid or slow or by any negative label is name calling and  shapes the way a child thinks about themselves.  The students in my class told this man instead of toughening up his kids, he was actually damaging them.  

I asked my students, primarily women, what they thought of “Crying like a little woosie girl ” and oh my goodness one student just let him have it.  That particular labeling is  terribly demeaning of females and gave his boys the idea that  women were overly emotional weaklings. 

But even if parents are just trying to be funny, labeling them is bad.  One student told about how her  mom called her young children “ “My little snot noses' or “My beautiful little boogers”.  It always left her wondering, even though I’m trying my best, does mom only think of me as nasal mucous?

#2 on the list of things never  to say: “Stop crying!” Or another version is: Calm down.  or , You’re too sensitive.    Commanding a child to calm down or stop crying is an order.  It’s selfish.  It's a demand for the child to shove their feelings down inside.  You just can’t be bothered because you don't have to deal with emotions or endure the emotional display.   This gives the child the idea that having emotions and displaying them is somehow shameful and weak.   Children need not be shamed because they are crying.  Children need to express their emotions.  Actually one of a parent’s main jobs is to help a child talk through their feelings in order to learn to  regulate their emotions.  Regulate simply means to learn to settle, to soothe oneself, to think through a problem and find peace. If adults provide this emotionally supportive, appropriate attention on a consistent basis a child becomes emotionally self-reliant. That means they can think through their feelings and calm themselves down.  Far better to give the child some of your precious time and say.  “It’s okay to be sad. And give them a hug.  When they are ready to say, “Let’s use our words.  What are you thinking?  And then be sure to summarize.  Summarize even if it throws a negative light on you.  “What I hear you saying is when I yell it scares you.  And, you are feeling frustrated because your older brothers can clean their rooms so much faster than you can and you don’t know where to put things.”

This is not up to my standards, or this isn’t good enough.   Is what you might say, but what the child hears is  “You are not up to standards, You are not good enough” and that would lower their self-esteem and make them less likely to venture out, take risks for fear of failing. 

We all know that comparing and criticizing our children tears them down.  We all know that compliments and looking for the good in our loved ones builds them up.  So why is it so hard to speak with the tongue of angels and  be positive with our children?   One reason might be that our natural man or woman inside is engineered to think negatively and critically.

Researchers Poppenk and Tseng estimated that we have  6,200 thought “worms” or thinking chains a day.  (Tseng, J., Poppenk, J. Brain meta-state transitions demarcate thoughts across task contexts exposing the mental noise of trait neuroticism. Nat Commun 11, 3480 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-17255-9) And According to the National Science Foundation, (2005) 80% of our thoughts are negative and 95% of our thoughts are repetitive.  When the brain is left to itself, without direction, the most natural thing to do is think negative repetitive thoughts and say negative things. 

If the researchers are right, changing our thoughts from negative to positive might be  the most important battle we fight each and every day.  

This podcast is to attack one of the worst types of negative thinking.  Criticism.  I’ve done several podcasts on self criticism, today let's examine disapproval and condemnation in two stages of life.

Child:  

Starting about age 8 we naturally start to compare ourselves to other children. If we have criticism in our environment, we may withdraw or the opposite; attack and even bully.  Erickson called middle childhood the stage of industry vs inferiority where children can feel inferior and inadequate when they don’t measure up. Teen: 

When it comes to comparing. A person's worst years of life  might be junior high school.  Low self-esteem is all around you and everyone seems willing to attack, bully, mock, disparage or gossip in order to be on top.  With all this competition for attention and respect, John Bytheway calls jr. High school the stage of the emotional Hunger Games.  Recently the games amped up to new levels in Comparison and competing with.  Facebook. Now the many types of  Social media causes teens to evaluate themselves next to older, physically developed and photoshopped idols.  No one can compete with that because it’s not even real. 

How would our lives be better if we could  bridle our minds and steer our thoughts from the negative side to the positive side.(Alma 38:12)  The epitome of overcoming the natural man or woman is speaking the way Christ spoke and loving the way Christ loves.  He is always looking for the good in people.  Whatsoever is good cometh from God (Alma 5:40)

How can I do this?  How can I look for the good in my children?  And speak that good?

One way is to take our compliments and gratitude to a whole new level.  I’d like to suggest there are three levels of compliments  good….better… best….

#3 of things never  to say: Your such a good kid.  Now I know this sounds like a good compliment, and sometimes it is, but it can backfire.  For example: Your 15 year old comes in from doing the weekly job of mowing the lawn. If you say, “You’re such a good kid” he might think, “No I’m not a good kid. Mom doesn't really know what I’m doing, she doesn’t know I’m getting a C in world history, She doesn’t know when I’m with my friends, I swear.”  It’s natural to  discount ourselves and think of all the exceptions to this compliment.  It’s just too general.  A better compliment is a specific compliment. 

  Imagine this on a set of 3 stairs.   On the bottom level are the Good compliments.:

Good job. 

Ok, so what does taking one step up look like?  A better compliment describes the behavior and how it affected you. For example, “When you got the lawn mowed before 10 this morning  it was such a relief.  Now we can be on time to the matinee movie”.

OK and does the best compliments sound like?  One of the ways to reach that top level is to add gratitude to the better level.  Example: “I’m so grateful we have your help.” 

And the best compliments add more ways this affects mom or day and how they felt about it.  

As you are driving the family to the movie, you might say:  “I’ve been thinking about how nice it is to have a son who gets up at 8:00 am on a Saturday when he could sleep in so we can all get out the door and have fun.  It’s such a relief to see the work is done so we can go enjoy ourselves.”

In order to steer our minds from criticism and comparison, we need to focus on 1) specific compliments and  2) looking for  the good in people. 

Let’s examine Alma 5 through the “stamp out comparing and criticism” lens and “looking for the good in others.”.

Alma 5 | Apply it to myself
v19 … …can you look up, having the image of God engraven upon your countenances? | v 19 Will I look like the Savior Jesus Christ because I love like Jesus Christ loves?  Speaks to others how he speaks?  Acts how he acts?



v20 … can ye think of being saved when you have yielded yourselves to become subjects to the devil? | V20  Do I get angry and let my natural man (woman) and continue to criticize others, make a mock, compare?
 v 21 .. they are cleansed from all stain, through the blood of him of whom it has been spoken by our fathers, who should come to redeem his people from their sins. | v21 I must truly repent, stop, change and so the blood of atonement of the Savior Jesus Christ can redeem me.
Repentance might sound something like this:  I am sorry I called you lazy this morning..What I should have said was an I message:  “When I see you playing video games before our Saturday chores are done I feel discouraged. We have a family rule about no video games before chores.   There are so many things we need to get done today.”

I have a client I’ll call David and you know to protect his identity,  just the important bits of this story are true.  When he was young he fell and hurt himself at his older brother’s birthday party and had to be taken to the insta care. After the stitches, on the way home his mother unleashed a torrent of criticism.  She called him selfish, clumsy and hogging up the attention on his brother's big day. He started to sob, but that didn’t hinder his angry mother. The denigration went on for 25 minutes and ended with 

#4 of things never  to say: “Nobody will ever love you, nobody will ever want you”. Can you believe how cruel a parent can be? If I had dentures they’d be in the dirt.  Talk about poisoning a child’s future.  Another version of this is, “You’re just a piece of crap.”    And a softer version is, “I just don’t think you’re up to this.”   What horrible effects will come of this in the future?  And this is a mother who’s trying to follow the Savior?  

Jeffery R. Holland said, We must be so careful in speaking to a child. What we say or don’t say, how we say it and when is so very, very important in shaping a child’s view of himself or herself. But it is even more important in shaping that child’s faith in us and their faith in God. Be constructive in your comments to a child—always.. Praise each child individually for what that child is, and help him or her escape our culture’s obsession with comparing, competing, and never feeling we are “enough.”(The Tongue of Angels, 2007)

David gained extra weight in Jr. High and the bullying started.    He’d come home needing an escape from the ugliness and he got more anguish.  He needed a rest from the trials and heartache, but his mother relentlessly unleashed condemnation and and compare him to others.  

#5 Of things never to say to your kid, Why can’t you be like your brother?  In the David example his mom said, “He’s careful and  never waste’s my time going to the doctor.   I’ve had to take you to the doctor three times this year.  

Wow, can you believe she said “Waste my time taking you to the Doctor?” ouch  How does that make a child think about himself.   I’m a waste.  Holland calls this a “Chilling Indictment.”

Holland also said, Never tell them, even in whimsy, that they are fat or dumb or lazy or homely. You would never do that maliciously, but they remember and may struggle for years trying to forget—and to forgive. And try not to compare your children, even if you think you are skillful at it. You may say most positively that “Susan is pretty and Sandra is bright,” but all Susan will remember is that she isn’t bright and Sandra that she isn’t pretty.(The Tongue of Angels, 2007)

David’s father seemed to have his hands too full of an angry, negative critical wife to take steps to protect the children..  His dad spent his family time trying to soothe his mother and calm her down and keep the marriage together because she frequently threatened to divorce.  His dad knew mom was hard on the kids but he seemed helpless to control her.  It could be argued that the marriage was such a trainwreck that dad was not doing his part to safeguard their self esteem.

Unfortunately my client David married a young woman who was a lot like his mother. In addition to the wave of negativity, she had to be in control.  If anything was wrong he was to blame. He endured the criticism for two years before she mercifully left him.  . This is what we refer to as “Mommy Issues' ' He can’t trust  women, any woman to look for the good in him, to appreciate that he’s intelligent and hard working and kind.   He couldn’t trust any woman to give him appropriate attention. He had a hard time loving his parental unit, so he has a hard time loving God. And just like Holland warned, He no longer believes in God or attends church.  Now that he's 27 he has a college degree and a great job,  but he has trouble believing anyone could love him. He lives in his father’s basement.  He doesn’t date, he spends most of his free time playing video games.

How could a mother emotionally abuse her children?  David’s mother appeared to be good in so many ways, she was educated and she kept the house clean and organized, kept herself in shape, she played the organ for church services. But, she had a big weakness.  Her temper. She’d mad and then get critical and as James says, her tongue was an abusive fire.(James 3:6)

 The Apostle Paul said, If we let corrupt communication come from our mouths, it grieves the holy Spirit of God.  We need to push away bitterness, wrath, anger and evil speaking and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving like our Savior Jesus Christ. (Ephesians 4:29-32)

 Elder Orson F. Whitney once said: “The spirit of the gospel is optimistic; it trusts in God and looks on the bright side of things. The opposite or pessimistic spirit drags men down and away from God, looks on the dark side…(Whitney, O.F., Conference Report, Apr. 1917, 43).

Ok, in this podcast you don’t just get to sit there, I need you to participate with me and fix this.   If one of your children was injured at another child’s birthday party and one parent had to leave to run to the insta care, what would be the appropriate thing to say?

To make this a correction instead of criticism,  use a format of an “I message” This is a kinder way to share angry or disappointed emotions with a tender child.  It goes like this

When you (describe the behavior)  I feel (describe the feeling) because (tell how this affects you)  

“David, when you were climbing and jumping and got hurt at your brother’s birthday party and I had to take you to get stitches, I felt frustrated.  I wanted to pay special attention to your brother on his special day”  

It’s better to share your feelings in this firm but gentle way. David gets the message that he should be more careful about jumping and taking risks and consider the needs and feelings of others, not that he’s an awful person,  he’s not hopeless, not beyond change and not beyond repentance.

Now you try one:  Your 10 year old son Jayden was supposed to rinse and  load the dishes into the dishwasher but his friends came over and he ran off with them.  You just got home from work and need to make the next meal and clean it up before a 7pm appointment, but you can’t because there’s a big mess in the kitchen.

Jayden, when you (describe the behavior)  I feel (describe the feeling) because (tell how this affects you) 

OK, one more practice.  Saturday is a chore day for your family.  13 year old Charlotte was supposed to get the lawn mowed before the family leaves for river rafting.  But she’s been in her bedroom all morning watching you tube videos.  There’s only 15 minutes before it’s time to leave.

Charlotte , when you (describe the behavior)  because_____ (tell how this affects you) 

 Let's move on from correction to complimenting.  How do we praise each child individually? Complimenting is so important. Remember, better compliments are the same format as correcting.  Let's try a common situation.  Your child’s soccer team  just lost. Not a single goal.  You could say, “Kinda tough to get something positive out of this game. Better luck next time”.    But if you are going to make a habit of looking for the good 

 When you __________  because____________

OK stop the podcast and say it out loud.

Here’s an example of what you could have said.

Good compliment:   “good job on the game today”

Better compliment: I saw when you did that clean tackle, you stripped the ball away from one of their best players.   You’ve been practicing that skill.  I think your practicing has really helped.

Best compliment.  Adding more-gratitude and “whys” so maybe add something like this: 

I’m so grateful you’ve been really consistent at riding your bike to practice on days I can’t drive you.  It requires lots of practice and considerable skill to get the ball away without holding, pushing, tripping, elbowing, or hip-checking.

 I’m going to give you the same assignment I give my Human Growth and Development students.  Take a moment and recall the good that people did for you and your family for the past week. Who do you need to thank? The other night I was the only one riding the shuttle to my pickup at the Jacksonville airport.  My husband had sent me a picture but I just couldn't find the truck in the dark.  The shuttle driver got off the shuttle and walked around with me to help me.  I just kept saying, Oh thank you.  Oh thank you so much.  Then I realized I wrote a podcast on gratitude.  Why didn’t I think about that?.  what I should have said was …. When you got off the shuttle to walk around with me and help me.   It’s really late and I didn’t have to be alone in a rather scary place, I really appreciate your help.  I was a lot safer.

Think of those people especially your children  who’ve helped you that deserve a level two, better compliment.  Wouldn’t it be good to text those out.  Wouldn’t that feel good?

 Come’on you moms and dads, Get rid of the criticism. Let’s speak with the tongue of angels.  Focus on the good.  Give your children sincere, specific compliments,   That’s loving like Christ would love, that’s charity the pure love of Christ.

Giving your kids the gift of charity will be the best thing they could ever receive from you..

Until next time:  Live like his son, help others on their way.