Understanding Guilt and Shame in Parenting Tactics and Their Impact on Children

The last podcast of The Curiosity Shop With Brené Brown and Adam Grant with Simon Sinek mentioned a study "Children's Proneness to Shame and guilt predict risky and illegal behaviors in young adulthood" by Jeffrey Stuewig, 2015, Child Psychiatry and Human Development. During the podcast, they also mentioned the importance of the parental/caregiver role in the early childhood years on what strategies were used to childrearing and its impact on a guilt vs. shame response. I'd also like to extend this to teachers, as by school age, children spend more time with teachers than at home.

How children are spoken to, including the tone, the words, the attitude and the action, has a direct impact on the development of self imagery. What the study showed, is that a guilt response from the children, will promote a more prosocial response including the desire to repair the mistake, take responsability for it and will reflect upon the action. That process leaves room for accepting the feedback of the action and take necessary actions to avoid repetition. The study showed less aggressive behavior. In other words, "I did something bad"

A shame response, on the other hand, will bring the attention to the self worth and leads to feelings of incompetence, feeling small, of helplessness and wanting to shrink back and put the blame outside of the self since it's so unbearable. The study showed a link towards more aggressive behavior. In other words, "I am bad".

Now that research exists (there are many more studies to check out) to demonstrate the impact of shame on the perception of self and the negative impact on adult behaviors, which leads to negative consequences in relationships (personal and professional), as parents and teachers, isn't time to reflect upon childrearing strategies that allows an understanding of how words, tones, actions and attitudes will shape not only small humans but also adult ones as they grow?

This is not about a method or a script, it's about conscious and accountable parenting, caregiving, and teaching.