No Bad Boys

What is my biggest parenting Pet Peeve?  Parents -- or teachers -- telling children they are bad.  


Once I saw a toddler visiting her grandmother, who told her, when she climbed onto a chair, that she was a "good" girl.  I cringed.  It seemed that according to this grandmother, a child's moral worth is a function of her ability to climb onto a chair.  Then the little girl tried climbing onto the table, and suddenly she was pronounced a "bad" girl.  Does that mean children who can climb are good, but children who climb are bad?  That made no sense to me, and I told the old woman as much in no uncertain terms.  

If Timmy dunks Mary O'Shaunessy's braid in his inkwell, should we tell Timmy that he's bad, a terrible person?  No, we should tell him he did the wrong thing.  We can ask him how he would feel in Mary's place. We should make him understand how it hurts or offends people when we put ink in their hair or how it violates their dignity, which we ought to respect.  We can demand that he apologize to Mary and make some appropriate restitution.  But if we pass judgement on him, then he may begin to believe he is existentially evil and grow up loathing himself.  Or he may imagine he must persist in his bad behavior, because he knows that's what the world expects of him.     


We may disagree on religious grounds, but whatever one may believe about human nature and sin, one can do serious psychological damage to a child by confusing that child's specific behavior with the child's innate value.  We can hate the sin, but we must still love the sinner, especially if we are the sinner's parents.