Often kids with the biggest behaviours are experiencing shame.

Shame is a painful core emotion. When someone feels shame, they believe they are bad, unworthy of love, unworthy of belonging. 

Shame is a strong sense of feeling “less than”, of feeling inferior. And it’s different from guilt (feeling bad that you’ve done something wrong), shame is a deep sense that you ARE bad. It can feel deeper than embarrassment or humiliation. 

Shame is often triggered by a child feeling that have made a mistake, or are finding something hard, that they’re incapable of a skill or are incapable of meeting the standard expected of them. 

We all experience shame at times and neurodivergent kids often feel it deeply. They may miss instructions, not remember something, have trouble organising themself to start a task, and then not want to ask for help for fear of singling themself out from their peers. They may say yes to things they don’t want to do or don’t understand and then underperform. Their shame may tell them: “Everyone else can do this. Why can’t I?”

When kids experience shame they can become quiet and withdraw, deny they did anything, rage and become angry, blame others. All of these behaviours are attempts to reduce that feeling of shame, and they’re often misinterpreted as bad behaviour. 

The hidden cost of shame

Kids who feel shame may:

• Avoid help-seeking
• Underperform academically
• Internalise failure
• Develop anxiety around learning
• Find themselves in trouble at school for pushing boundaries and externalising their feelings (rage, frustration, blaming)
• Blaming and minimising can impact friendships 

When shame continues to go unrecognised and behaviours are responded to without relational focus and repair, then kids may develop a “shield of shame” to protect themselves.

They may start to minimise or blame others: “it wasn’t me, it was their fault”, deny that anything happened “I didn’t do it!” or pretend they don’t care. And frequently a child may demonstrate their intense emotions through externalising behaviours like anger and rage. This protective shield that goes up actually stops the child being able to consider someone else’s perspective or experience and limits a child’s capacity to learn or grow from an experience.

What actually helps reduce shame?

1. Connection first: validation of feelings. Words are unlikely to help a child who is escalated. In that moment  we focus on helping the child feel calm, seen, heard and loved. Kids may feel scared by their big emotions, particularly if an adult reacts negatively, which can make a child feel that their feelings are annoying, inconvenient or wrong. We should try to allow space for all emotions: screaming, whinging, rage (but we keep everyone safe by enforcing boundaries). Use neutral body language, get physically down on their level. This messages “I am here with you and I’m not afraid, your big feelings don’t worry me”

2. Maintain boundaries: the adult continues to set and enforce firm boundaries (reduce the expectation that the child maintain the boundary eg rather than saying "stop hurting him" we change it and say “you cannot throw things. I will not let you throw things at other people” (and intervene to maintain the boundary).

 3. Repair- this is the most essential aspect in reducing a child's sense of shame. Kids will continue to experience shame if repair doesn’t occur.

The learning point for the child around the behaviour is in helping the child understand that THEY are not the problem, the behaviour is the problem. 

It is ok to apologise if adult behaviour was part of the escalation “I’m sorry I yelled at you, I know that can make you feel scared and upset. I’m still learning to be a parent too and I also need to learn as a parent”

Repair includes clearly letting the child know that you love them, find something positive “I know you wanted to throw something and I’m so proud that you didn’t” or “I think you were trying to let me know you were upset and I’m sorry I didn’t see that sooner”

4. Continue to grow as a family: set aside some 1:1 time to do something you both enjoy. This helps the nervous system to unwind and might include dancing or movement or art or singing or cooking.

Then later, when we are all calm, we gently work together to start building skills, to practice naming emotions, how those emotions feel, how we might try to communicate another way next time

5. Find the good stuff: find a way to notice the good, the positive in the child eg 'shout out boards' (where family members post notes about each other's positive attributes or actions), a 'happy book' where we document positive and genuine things about the child, and read it back together at times.

6. Build skills:  kids often struggle to use words or readily identify what skill it is that they are finding tricky. This can be part of growing metacognition skills (ie their self monitoring of their own learning skills - they might not yet recognise an area of weakness as a weakness and perceive that a particular skill is a strength rather than a difficulty).

For these kids using other strategies such as play, stories or drawing can help start conversations when words are hard or self-reflection is still growing.

 

In summary;

Shame is a protective response of an overwhelmed child. 

When we respond early and support kids, by staying playful, curious and connected, we support kids to develop self belief, and a deep understanding they are worthy, safe and loved. 

This is how kids thrive.

 

Dr Claire

Paediatrician and Founder, Base Kids