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How many times have we heard parents talking with their kids, trying to assert a feeling of guilt? For example, “You should be ashamed of yourselves; you’ve done nothing of value all summer, all you do is lay around watching television, eating junk food, and leaving a mess in the family room”. Furthermore, parents may tell the kids how their poor mother works her fingers to the bone cleaning up after them. How they don’t have any respect or level of feeling for their mother, and if they do, they do not show it. How their mother is a good woman, and does not deserve to be treated the way they treat her.
Many parents stage this little performance in order to manipulate their children into behaving in a desired fashion. They dispense a huge dose of guilt hoping this might help improve communication.
Parents who use shame and guilt as a motivator do so because they believe that this technique encourages their children to change. The idea is that if children can be shamed into feeling guilty, they will change their behavior. Off course, this should lead do doing what the parents desire. We all know there are times when shaming works and produces the behavior we want from out children. However, we must consider the price that this entails.
Children who are shamed regularly usually come to believe that their shame is justified, that they must have earned it and they deserve it. They develop core beliefs of being not good enough, wrong, not worthwhile. Children who have these core beliefs see themselves as shameful, and act in accordance with their beliefs. We definitely do not want this to happen. This negative belief system tends to attract increased shaming from significant adults later in their lives. This reinforces their negative core beliefs later in life. These children often get caught up in a self-depreciating cycle of behavior and parental response that is difficult to exit. Shame and guilt often backfire, because their use produces resistance and resentment. Children realize on some level that parents manipulated, pushed, and controlled them by this talk. That is why manipulation nd control breed resentment, and pushing calls forth pushing back.