“I’m so stupid”

How to respond to your child when they say things like this.

“Nobody likes me.”

“I can’t do this.”

Sometimes when children get frustrated they can say very negative things about themselves. As parents this may feel quite shocking to you and you want to help your child to change their view of themselves as quickly as possible.

You might say things like:

“Don’t say things like this about yourself.”

“That’s not true!”

“You can do it!”

Often children react with resistance or defensively and they just repeat what they said over and over again. As if they want to make sure that we have really heard and understood what they said and empathise with their feelings.

At the end of the day isn’t this what we want as adults too? If you’ve had a bad day at work and you come home you want to tell your partner about it and you want them to listen. If they were to say, “Really? Are sure about this?”, “Come on, don’t exaggerate.” “I’m sure it wasn’t that bad.” that would not meet your need of feeling heard and understood. Maybe you want your partner to give you a hug in this moment.

And that’s usually what I child needs in such a situation.

The neuroscience behind this is as follows:

When we are in an emotional state, the amygdala starts firing. When the amygdala is active our frontal lobe functionality reduces. The frontal lobe computes logical and rational thought. This means when we are in an emotional state it is difficult (for children even more so) to take in “logical” problem-solving attempts.

Therefore, try and meet the child where they are at in terms of their feelings. Acknowledge and name the feeling for them.

For example:

Child, “I’m so stupid, I will never get it.”

Parent, “You are feeling quite overwhelmed by this.”

Child, “They didn’t let me play with them. Everybody hates me.”

Parent, “You seem really disappointed/upset that you couldn’t play with them.”

Try to show understanding and normalise feelings:

“I understand you’re feeling overwhelmed. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed too, if something is too difficult.”

Or

“I’d be disappointed too, if I really wanted to see a friend and then I couldn’t.”

This often helps to reduce the intensity of the feelings. It provides a relief for the child.

When they have noticed that you understand their feelings, that you have experienced something similar, the amygdala will have calmed down and they can attempt to problem-solve with you together.

This ties in with one of my previous posts: The Iceberg of Behaviour. Try and guess which need(s) you are responding to in the example above.

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