When our kids are little, we can pretty much do no wrong as parents. We’re given a get-out-of-jail-free card, which for many parents is a bit of a relief, especially since raising a small child—we’re talking infancy through around seven years—is pretty tough, and we makes lots of mistakes. We’re often painfully aware of our shortcomings while our kid thinks we’re great. Don’t worry, this usually fades over time, starting at around eight or nine when kids start seeing the world not in black and white but multiple shades of grey. (And of course there’s adolescence when the wrecking ball swings the other way and all they want to do is find fault with us.)
But for now, little kids can’t see their world with much complexity. Things are either generally good or bad, and this applies to parents. However, no kid wants to see their parent as bad. They need parents to be competent and in control.
Someone’s got to be flying the plane they’re on, and if the pilot is bad or failing, then flying through the world becomes terrifying. To see a parent as flawed would mean that the world is broken and unsafe and unmanageable—a plane without a pilot!
Young kids twist themselves into knots trying to maintain us as good. Here’s an example told to me by a single mom about her four-year-old son.
“It’s been a terrible day, and finally I get dinner on the table and my kid starts playing with his food. I ask him to stop. But he doesn’t. And I ask again, and again, and then once more… That bubble that’s been growing in my belly all day finally bursts and I scream and smack the table so that the dishes jump. He freezes. That look on his face—the fear!—but then he’s crying and climbing onto my lap for a hug. I feel like the world’s worst mom, and if I was furious, now I’m just relieved that he still loves me.”
So, what happened? The mom lost her cool, and for a moment her kid was scared, but then ran to her, needing to be comforted. Where did his fear go? Why his sudden need for a hug? It may seem contradictory, but it’s actually not.
Because he’s four, he can’t really manage contradictory feelings in his head. He has to choose: is his mom scary and bad, or is she comforting and good? He needs her to be a good, loving mom, so he climbs onto her lap to reassure himself.
But, how does he then explain to himself what just happened? If his mom blows up but is still a good mom, why did she blow up? This is a universal question all kids ask, and all kids come up with the same answer:
If my parent isn’t bad, then I must be the bad one.
With this in mind, his seeking out a hug despite being scared makes more sense. If he’s the bad one, he will wonder if he’s still loveable. A hug not only reassures him that he might still be loveable, it also reconnects him to his mom. He especially needs this reconnection because when parents get intensely angry, kids experience the anger as a serious rupture in the connection with their parent.
Here’s another example, so common that it’s become a stereotype: when parents split up, young kids often think they have caused the breakup. There are other feelings contributing to this reaction (see the posts on egocentrism for more on this), but it’s again an attempt to see parents as good, even at the child’s own expense.
What does this mean for you as a parent?
It means that kids are more susceptible to taking on a sense of badness than you might imagine. And their taking on this badness happens without your encouragement or knowledge. It means that starting at the youngest of ages, it will be helpful to acknowledge to your child the times when you make mistakes.
This is not a time to beat yourself up but to normalize making mistakes. As your child matures, she will develop the skills to recognize and manage contradictory feelings—i.e. my mom can be good but also bad sometimes, and that’s okay. And this extends to your child as well: she can make mistakes and still be a good kid. This becomes part of the foundation of your child’s self-esteem, and it will influence every aspect of her life.
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