New Study: Children Become What You Call Them

Be careful what you call your child; they may become exactly what you are calling them.

There’s a fine line between describing your children’s negative actions and calling them names. “You’re can’t do anything right!” or “You’re a loser!” OUCH! But did you know that labeling your child as a problem actually increases the chances that he or she will grow up to be the very essence of that problem? A new UCLA study found that girls who were called fat by family, friends, classmates or teachers before age 10 (who does that?) are almost twice as likely to become obese by age 19.

According to one of the study’s co-authors, Jeffrey Hunger, “the negative association may have caused the girls to anticipate the effects of weight stigma. Then, they began to unconsciously exhibit behaviors that would lead them to experience those effects.” Hello…ring ring clue phone, it’s for you, thoughtless adults…

Children define themselves based on comments they hear from their family and friends, but they don’t yet have the wherewithal to defend themselves against mental and emotional abuse. They wholeheartedly believe criticisms that they hear like “You’re going to forget it, like always,” “You’re just a loser,” or “You’re so fat!” And, they become exactly what their parents warned them about in the first place. This self-fulfilling prophecy is clearly unhealthy.

Luckily, kids eventually learn how to fight back. In spite of all of the negative abuse they have endured, they pride themselves on reversing the trend. They rise above the stigma. But sadly, those negative comments often come back to haunt them later in life.

Neurolinguistic programmers (NLP) have effective means of permanently ridding one’s self-doubt and criticism by changing the structure of the message in the unconscious mind. This probably sounds like smoke and mirror magic, but many effective therapists use NLP to rebuild stronger self images. 

The bottom line: DON’T CALL YOUR CHILDREN NAMES and DON’T LABEL THEM WITH NEGATIVE BEHAVIORS.  This makes perfect sense. Instead, ask them how they feel about the situation or tell them how you feel as a result of something they did. Say, “I’m, sure you didn’t intentionally mean to hurt Kaden. Tell me what happened?” Or, “It made me angry when you left the house without doing your chores.” This way, they aren’t blamed as the permanent problem and they can easily choose to change their behavior in the future.

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