Telling son he is a bad boy

[Cantthinkofausername1]

My 4 yr old snatched a snack from my 2 yr old and made him cry. My husband said to him ‘you are a bad boy’.

I told him that I don’t think you should ever get personal like that. To say it wasn’t a nice thing to do to his brother or that wasn’t a nice thing to do is fine but to say ‘you are bad’ is a direct attack on a child which could negatively impact him.

My husband thinks that this is complete nonsense and I’ve made it up or got it from some ‘hippy parenting ‘ website.

AIBU or is he?

You are spot on. The child's behaviour is naughty, telling a child they are naughty is damaging.

Label the behaviour not the child. If you label the behaviour then the child can not repeat the behaviour and so they are no longer doing bad things.

Label the child and how do they change that label?

Yanbu.
It's their behaviour that is unacceptable.

YANBU, the action was unkind (but he's 4 and siblings do wind each other up). However, you shouldn't tell a child they are bad. No child is bad in themselves, they just need to learn that the things they do may not always be ok and what alternatives are there to choose from. It sounds like I'm advocating a long discussion all the time, not at all. No is a very useful word.

"label the behaviour and not the child" has been around as a child rearing mantra for decades.

It used to be "give a dog a bad nane" and the ethos changed the way borstals were set up and the youth justice system.

It's about giving your children good self esteem and the ability to change.

It's easy to Google enough evidence on this for your DP.

Exactly as PP said - it's the whole "love the sinner, hate the sin" ethos. Your son is not universally bad, that's ridiculous and can lead to "black sheep" vs "golden child" problems.

The behaviour is naughty or unacceptable (and can be modified), not the child.

I agree. You’re husband is wrong
It’s the behaviour that’s bad. Not the child

The thing about 'you're a bad boy" is it might not be that obvious to him why so he might just decide he is bad. You def need to say what it is he has done wrong even not a nice thing to do is vague. Dont take other peoples things is more specific

And behaviour is a choice. "You are a kind boy, so why did you choose to do that?"

You if tell a child he is a bad boy then he might start to believe it and act like a 'bad boy'. Tell your hubby to read some basic parenting books.

I'm on the fence about this. You can be all kinds of different people in the same day, and it's a choice - I think it creates a different type of tension to label yourself or others as just one kind of person. After much therapy, I realise there is just as much danger in labelling yourself a kind person and being ashamed for having bad feelings. I prefer to tell my kids now that I'm all kinds of people/feelings at once and I get to choose which one to act as. I still label the behaviour rather than the child, but I'll avoid saying "you're a kind person" as the truth is that you don't feel kind at all in that moment and it brings a particular type of shame and insecurity.

I’ve always thought this distinction is a bit lame. If, for instance, I steal something then I’m a thief rather than someone who has exhibited stealing behaviour.

Has your DH lived under a rock for the past few decades? It is quite well known that morally negative character labelling is appropriated by young children, who then come to see themselves as inevitably morally bad. You always call out the negative action and offer ways of making up for it (apology, restitution, etc.) as well as techniques for managing such behaviour in the future ("If you want the toy, ask me to help your brother share").

@recrudessence have you ever stolen anything? Im sure as a child at some stage I took a biscuit from the barrel without asking. I don't consider myself a theif. It doesn't define who I am.

So a 4 year old snatches of their younger sibbling, do we call it theft and label them a theif too? When does it kick in? How does anyone move beyond that one split second action, so it doesn't become the very definition of them?

I have this great characature in my head of how it could be if we had to wear all our labels maybe emoji's for behaviours that we wear as a giant hat or each exhibited behaviour being a badge.

Taking it to an extreme and looking at our social justice system and the theories being how prisons work is really interesting.

Without opportunity to reform there is no hope. Without hope there is anarchy.

Liable the behaviour not the child.

I saw an article about negativity and it’s effects on plants. Basically plants on one side of the room were insulted and put down, while the other side were routinely praised and encouraged. Guess which ones flourished, grew more and were more disease resistance. So if it’s like that with plants, what’s it going to be like with humans?

Thank you for all of your votes and comments. My husband has read them as well and he is starting to agree with me and 70% of the voters!

Gentleness - your post gave me food for thought. You make an interesting point. Thank you.

Doing something naughty makes you naughty, all this mollycoddling shite hasn’t helped, look at the state of teens now compared to 10/20/30 years ago.

Ohyesiam, unfortunately that experiment has been completely discredited. Tiny sample size, no control sample, lots of confounding factors, not to mention the whole thing was a publicity trick designed to be a teaching aid for children and learning about bullying so had a pre-determined outcome. But I do believe it to be true for human children!

I really can’t get worked up about this, I don’t see it as a big deal.

I sit somewhere between the two. If someone tells me on 99 out of 100 days that I am good, and on one day that I am bad, I will infer only that I was bad on that one day.

However, if you say something like this to a child regularly or frequently, they will start to believe it is innate, and that they ‘are’ bad rather than that they ‘were’ bad.

Having said that, if someone frequently steals, then they are a thief. If they frequently disobey a parent then they are naughty. If they frequently do unkind and selfish things then they are unkind and selfish. At some point a ‘label’ is just a descriptor of how you tend to behave and I see no benefit in pretending it is some abstract ‘behaviour’.

I get the whole labelling issue and when mine were growing up always addressed behaviour rather than the child. And I know a lot of research has been done about self fulfilling prophecies with regards to negative behaviour but I haven't really seen much about whether the reverse is true. If we tell someone often enough they are a nice, kind person do they become one?

@sweenytoddsrazor carrot only behaviour rewarding has been experimented with. Extreme praise and reward for positive behaviour, ignoring all the rest. It works in some instances. Wouldn't have worked for me as Id have weighed up the consequences to revenge as a child, seen none and gone for it in a big way (thinking of sibbling rivalry as I type).

My eldest DS (now 15) is autistic and ive been on lots of courses and read lots of articles, forums and books on behaviour, the more I read the more fascinating and complex I find it to be. DS is a devil for weighing up consequence. When he was about 7 he was told he had to do PE. He asked what the consequence was. The punishment was a loss of 5 minutes golden time. He weighed it up. 1 hour of PE or five minutes quiet time waiting for the remaining 25 minutes golden time. No brainer - miss 5 minutes golden time. Poor head teacher was rather dumbstruck by his logic.

How you shape behaviour in a child is quite different to how you judge behaviour in an adult.

A child will, inevitably, make mistakes. You label the mistake rather than the person, otherwise the child comes to see themselves in this negative manner which then leads to more negative behaviour.

If an adult consistently behaves in an unkind, or unjust manner will be judged to be unkind or unjust. Here the behaviour is evidence of a person’s values and commitments, which is not the case for a young child who is still learning about morality. And even here, bad behaviour has to be consistent and reliable before we can make a character inference. One instance of unkindness or injustice may have been a mistake, an accident, the result of the person being very tired, or highly tempted or distracted, etc.