15 things we should NOT say to children

Too often we use ready-made phrases that, even if pronounced unintentionally, have a negative effect on our children's self-esteem, autonomy, and development. In this post, you have no less than 15 things that we should not tell them, and yet we say or have been told too often, without being aware of the harm we do to them by speaking like this.

"Do not Cry"

Adults have a tendency to avoid, cancel, or mask negative emotions by considering them embarrassing. Our emotional education in this sense has not been the most appropriate and it is a sociocultural error that, not being firmly anchored in our society, is no longer a mistake.

All emotions must be taken into account, especially when children are young so that they are known so that they know how they identify themselves, what they represent, and what are the reasons that provoke them. In short: it is important to help our children so that they can go, little by little, working on their emotions from early childhood.

The feelings that we consider negative also have their function, just like joy or happiness. Crying is the expression of all those feelings that must be expelled to ease the inner burden. It is the genuine expression of a feeling and when we say "don't cry" we are saying "don't feel".

Sadness, anger, or frustration are intense emotions that boys and girls must learn to manage. And for this, the first step is to express and express them appropriately. Crying is her way of warning us of her presence.

Children's crying is important because it allows us to get to know them better, to know what things they dislike, when they feel bad and how badly they feel, to gauge their sensitivity and teach them to channel emotions to use them in a more constructive way than, for example, tantrum or surrender.

"It was nothing"

This phrase is similar to the "don't cry" above and is used especially when a young child falls and is hurt. In these cases we try to comfort you in the best possible way, saying everything we can think of to achieve it and make it happen. And we distract you or we put you to play quickly as if nothing had happened so that it passes as soon as possible.

But sometimes it has been something, and something has happened. Sometimes it really hurts, they've been scared or scared. It costs us nothing to change the "nothing has been" or "nothing happens" to a: "Are you okay?" or "Have you hurt yourself?", which validates his emotions and shows that we are concerned about what is happening to him. The correct thing afterward is to ask him to tell us what has happened and how he feels if he wants.

"Why can't you be like that boy?"

The comparisons are hateful. As human beings, each boy or girl is a unique and unrepeatable being. Sending them the message that they have to take another girl as an example, imitate her, or do things as she does is harmful to them since we are implying that another person is better than her, that we do not like how she is. We are making them feel inferior.

Positive education must work by enhancing the special abilities and capacities of each girl and boy, the things they know how to do well, their strengths because they are the things that make them unique, special, and different from others.

It is impossible that nobody is good at doing absolutely everything. When our daughter is wrong in her attitude or our son does not know how to do something, we must correct them and teach them to do things differently, giving them the opportunity to do it their way. Because "good" means the best that they can, and not as others do.

"Leave me alone!"

I'm a mother. And yes, sometimes I wish I had the superpower of snapping my fingers and disappearing. There are days when I would go to a desert island ... completely alone! By this, I mean that I fully understand that day-to-day living in a home with children can be exhausting, and it's normal that sometimes we desperately need to take a break ...

But for good and bad, fathers and mothers are 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. And we don't even stop being it while they sleep! There is no vacation for us.

The kids can be very demanding, pounding, and repetitive. In fact, young children achieve things by insisting and insisting ... They are also practically inexhaustible and never tire. Their energy reserves seem infinite, but we must deal with this situation, trying not to send them the message that they are bothering us or that we want to take them away from us.

We are their whole world and these kinds of expressions can undermine their safety and hurt them. The little ones are very impressionable and sensible ... If not even their parents and moms are able to bear them, who else can love them? That is why we must try never to answer them as we would never like our loved ones to answer us.

"Shut up!"

In the line of the above, as much as our head hurts or we are tired of listening to the same song, asking them to be quiet (and even more if it is in a bad way) is not the correct way to treat the people we love.

In the same way that it is not a phrase that we say to our partner, family, friends, or anyone with whom we want to have a good relationship, our children do not deserve this imperative.

Instead, we can bend down, put ourselves at their same height, look them in the eye and put a hand on their shoulders while we tell them that we have already listened to them and that it is not necessary to insist so much because we are not going to change their minds, ask them for the favor to play more quietly to let us rest or to propose another quieter activity to entertain them.

"Well, I don't love you anymore"

This phrase is dire. Can you imagine that your partner did such emotional blackmail to get us to do what he wanted at every moment? And yet it is a common resource that adults employ with boys and girls.

Telling them that we will be sad if they do not want to eat, that we will stop loving them if they disobey us, or that we will leave them alone if they do not listen to us immediately, educates them in anxiety due to conditioned affection. That is: it teaches them that in order to get and keep people's affection, they must be constantly pleasing and pleasing them.

The love of a family towards their children is unconditional and that is how they must feel in order to become healthy and self-confident adults. No matter what they do or how the things they try to come out, they should not worry that their love may one day run out. If we want them to trust us, and themselves, they must be clear that they will always have our support and affection and they must feel free to be able to make their own decisions.

"Are you deaf?", "Are you blind?" or "you look silly!"

In addition to being tremendous capacities, these expressions are intended to be insults that damage self-esteem and undermine the autonomy of the smallest of the house.

Children are more dispersed than adults, have a harder time concentrating, and they also have to work on their motor skills and develop cognitively to act with the precision and coordination that certain activities require.

If instead of scolding, attacking, or getting angry with them because they accidentally spill a glass of water, we tell them not to worry and we teach them to pick it up, it will only be a matter of practice that it no longer happens. If, on the contrary, we are undermining their confidence in their own abilities, they are likely to be afraid to keep trying and stop doing things alone.

Sometimes it also happens that when a child does something to ours, we tend to make a pejorative judgment on that child to show her what is good behavior and what is bad behavior to our children. So we say that this child is an "idiot" or that "he is not right in the head."

Thus, we are teaching our daughters to insult all those children who can do something with which they do not agree at any given time. It is better to substitute this type of expression for a question of curiosity, of the type: "And what do you think I did that?", And from there build possible solutions: "And what do you think you could do?". In this way, boys and girls reflect constructively and draw their own conclusions.

"Because I say so!"

When we jump from authority to authoritarianism, we lose the ability to be fair and deserve to be respected for our ability to educate them.

"Because I said so, period" is not a reasonable way to get a boy or a girl to listen to reason. In the worst case, it will make you a submissive person, incapable of revealing against anything or anyone. At best, in a true rebel, or in a dictator.

Learning is synonymous with explanation, argumentation, and reflection. All of which is necessary for children, whether or not they agree, to have at least a justification of "Yes" or "No".

Reasoning, understanding, and analyzing the circumstance and the why of things allow them to build a critical mind capable of drawing conclusions for themselves.

"This is not done"

It doesn't matter how you do it, the important thing is that you try it. When my son was young he was not good at swinging while sitting, but he never asked for help: he would lie on the board on his stomach and swayed looking at the ground.

To some people, it seemed very strange, to others funny. A few came to his aid believing that he needed them. And the truth is that no: my son wanted to swing by himself, and he did so ... in his own way. That it didn't have to be that of any other!

"Take it away, leave it to me" or "Come on, give it to me, I'll do it already"

Educating autonomously is as important as doing it responsibly. As children, they may not yet be as skilled and independent as adults, but to do so they have to try to do things for themselves, try and practice.

The process can be slow and they will make mistakes from which they will have to learn, all of which are not only necessary but healthy and positive.

If we always interrupt their tasks or activities to finish their work faster and more efficiently, there will come a time when they won't even try to do things for themselves. They will ask us (or worse: they will require us) to do them ourselves, simply because we have accustomed them to do so. Or they will even convince themselves that if they do it, they will do it wrong.

"When your father comes ..." or "I'm getting to tell Mom ..."

A very typical phrase, right? When the little one ignores us, we give up and end up shifting the responsibility of his education to our partner. It is very human behavior, that of "you prove, that he ignores me." This is a typical case of delegation of functions.

The problem with this attitude is that two mistakes are made with it: on the one hand, it turns the other person into the "bad guy" of the film (many children associate punishments only with one of their parents for this reason, and feeling real panic about that person's performance) and, on the other hand; we are undermining ourselves, taking away authority.

By taking on the roles of "good cop and bad cop" the only thing we are going to achieve is to demonstrate to our daughters that we are not able to control the situation. Also, if punishments are considered uneducated methods for acting on the act, but not on the cause, imagine doing it in reference to actions that took place hours ago.

"If you don't eat vegetables, there are no sweets"

Phrases such as "if you finish the meal, I will give you an ice cream" or "if you don't eat the lentils, you will have them for dinner" are negative for the development of children because it does not allow them to establish a healthy relationship with the food.

Food should not be used as a reward or as punishment. If we do so, we will be achieving just the opposite effect to that desired: lentils are bad, sweets are good; when in reality what we want to instill in them are healthy eating habits.

"Go to your room and think about what you have done"

This is one of the phrases that cause the greatest cognitive dissonance, because since when has thinking been a negative act? Thinking should never be associated with punishment.

This is why "educational" elements of negative behavior correction, such as the popular "thinking chair," don't really work.

When we send a boy or a girl to their room, the only thing we will get them to think about is how unfair the situation is or how "bad" we are with them when we remove them from their presence.

Food should not be used as a reward or as punishment. If we do so, we will be achieving just the opposite effect to that desired: lentils are bad, sweets are good; when in reality what we want to instill in them are healthy eating habits.

The only thing really useful in situations of child disobedience or in the face of erroneous behaviors is to talk to them calmly and calmly, to explain to them where they have made a mistake and give them the opportunity to correct the error.

"You're going to fall/hurt yourself!"

It is very common for both moms and dads to be alarmed and run screaming at the top of their lungs when their daughter tries to climb alone on the slide of the older ones or his little one wants to try his luck with his older brother's skateboard.

Expressions like "You're going to open your head!" (I give it as an example because I have actually heard it many times in the park) they alarm the little ones, they scare them and they can even make them lose their balance at a key moment. They can even happen as a self-fulfilling prophecy: "I'm going to fall" (and they fall).

Obviously, we must not allow them to do dangerous things that put their safety or that of others at risk. We must watch his game from a close position and correct his actions when they are wrong, but serenely and without losing his composure, especially when it comes to siblings squabbling.

We must bear in mind that children are great explorers. By nature, they are curious about the things around them and are constantly inquiring and testing to know their own capabilities and limits.

There are many different circumstances that we must assess separately. Our little ones may not be ready to climb the highest slide in the park by themselves, but what is wrong with jumping on the little ones' slide, which they already dominate? The experience can be rewarding. And the clothes can always be washed and will look like new!

"But don't you see you can't?"

Do you know the Pygmalion Effect? It is a theory that states that language has a powerful "predictive" effect on people's behavior (which I have just told you about self-fulfilling prophecy). For example: if you say to a child "be careful, you are going to fall" or "you cannot do that by yourself" as many times as necessary before undertaking a certain activity, it will be so impressed that in time it will believe that there are many things that he is not capable of doing, that he is clumsy, and in the end, he will end up not being able to do them.

In general, children do not usually try to do what they do not feel safe (although there are exceptions and we will always meet boys and girls who are not afraid of the unknown), although sometimes they are not aware when there is danger nearby.

We should not under any circumstances allow a girl who does not yet know how to swim to get into the pool alone, but if a boy wants to try riding a bike without rear wheels, we can teach him the best way to do it, help him and encourage him to do so (even although we think that it is still early for it because each child is a world and the rhythm is set by them).

If finally, you are not able to carry out the activity, we can tell you that when you are a little older you will succeed. You can always try again later and at least you won't get the message that riding a bike is something super dangerous that can hurt you a lot. You will not be afraid or think that she is too clumsy to try. And along the way, you will have found out something fundamental: what you can and cannot do. No need for shouting, prohibitions, or fear.