Do you want to know how criticism can harm children? Well, I'm Nicholeen Peck and I teach
all about good parenting practices, how to improve communication and family bonding all through the
lens of the principal's self-government. And in this video we're talking about criticism.
In this video, we're going to talk about criticism, the goods and bads of criticism,
and then we're going to talk about how criticism can harm children and what you can do to make sure
that your criticisms hit the mark. What do you mean criticisms hit the mark, Nicholeen? Does that mean
some criticisms can be good? The answer is yes. Some criticisms are good. There are productive
criticisms and non-productive criticisms. There's positive criticisms and negative criticisms,
and not all negative criticisms are bad and not all positive criticisms are good either. So the
positive and negative criticisms are important to understand. There are some people who cannot
accept positive criticisms or negative criticisms, or there are some people who just don't want the
attention associated with positive criticism, but they're fine hearing how bad they are all
the time and getting negative attention. Each person responds differently to criticism,
and it is important that parents teach children the deliberate skill for how to accept criticism.
We're going to be talking about that in just a few minutes. Let's talk a little bit more about
positive and negative criticism. So positive criticism oftentimes looks like praise or
telling someone they did something well, and negative criticism usually looks like telling
somebody that they need to improve in some way or that they made a mistake in some way. Negative
criticism is very beneficial because if no one ever brings to your attention how you can improve,
you might not recognize it yourself until it becomes way too late. So a loving parent
does tell their child some criticisms. They let them know when they're doing things good
by telling them positive criticisms, and then they let them know when they need to improve
on things by sharing with them some negative criticisms. The wise parent, however, teaches
the child how to accept both the positive and negative criticisms and how to discuss problems
if they feel like that a criticism has gone in a way that is not productive. So what does it
mean, the not productive criticism? A not productive criticism is oftentimes like a piece of sarcasm,
a personal attack or a way that you're trying to just tear somebody down or micromanage someone in
a controlling way. If you're trying to control someone physically, emotionally, or in a social
setting. Those types of criticisms could actually be non-productive criticisms and are truly the
negative ones. We want to stay away from those things. One thing that leads a parent to engage in
that type of bad a criticism or negative criticism gone wrong is when the parent is experiencing some
emotion with that criticism. When the parent is having stress, anxiety, overwhelm, they might
start tearing other people apart just because they are not feeling okay on the inside. If
that happens to you, you've got to stop yourself and get calm first. Otherwise, your criticism will
definitely not be the right kind or hit the mark that it needs to hit in order to create a change
of heart. Having a change of heart is definitely the most important part of learning how to accept
criticism. We're going to talk about how to help your criticisms hit the mark and skills that you
can use for success in your family and how to have that heart change that you really want. But first,
do you see that subscribe button? Click that subscribe button now. I mean, here's a piece
of criticism for you. Why haven't you clicked it yet? There's so many great videos on this
channel that are for you to help you. I want you to get what you need out of this channel. That's
why I do it all for you. So click the subscribe button now. Criticism actually can lead to a
change of heart if a person has a soft heart, if they're humble, teachable, and they have a good
relationship with parents. If the relationship with parents is damaged, then the criticism that a
child experiences might feel more like an attack, even if the parent is trying to do it the best way
possible. Obviously, the tone and the structure are both going to be important components to
correcting a child in a way that's going to feel productive and connective, but also teaching a
child a skill that they can use ahead of time is going to be something that will prepare them for
success at accepting criticisms. In my teaching self-government parenting course, which I call the
TSG Parenting course that you can find at teaching selfgovernment.com, I teach many skills,
skills for parents and skills for children. All of these skills relate to self-government. There
are four basic skills that everybody has to learn first. Those four basic skills help to eliminate
99% of behavioral problems and give the family a unified dialogue for understanding what they
are going to be correcting and praising in their interactions. One of those four basic skills is
a skill called accepting "no" answers or criticism because no answers in criticism can kind of feel
like the same thing. Well this here Porter Earns A Quarter, teaches a person the skillset that they
need or the steps that they need for how to accept criticism or a "no" answer. To accept criticism or
a "no" answer, a person looks at the person or the situation keeps a calm face, voice, and body says,
okay, or disagrees appropriately, and then drops the subject. That means they don't talk about it
or think about it anymore. They seriously just let it go. If a person learns how to do that, you
can talk about way more things. If you say to a person, Hey, I've got some criticism for you right
now. Do you remember how to accept criticism? And they say, sure. You look at the person, keep a
calm face, voice and body, say, okay, or disagree appropriately, and then drop the subject. And then
you say, wow, you're really great at accepting criticism. I know this is going to be easier for
easy for you. Here's the criticism for you. Here's my criticism for you. When you were playing with
your friend earlier, you didn't do a good job sharing toys. In fact, you probably could have
handled the situation by using one of your other skills called disagreeing appropriately instead of
pulling the toy away. So now I am at a place where the child can say, okay, or disagree appropriately
with about me about the circumstance. So then they would say, okay, and then I could praise
them. So give more positive criticism for them for accepting that piece of negative criticism. But
it could be that we also need to talk about what they should have done instead. Then I'm going to
do what I call an effective correction. When you correct your children, it gives them the
opportunity to accept consequences, which also sometimes feel a little bit like criticism.
We don't improve if we can't accept that there are negative moments in our days and in our lives, and
that sometimes our choices led to those negative moments. When we finally accept that truth
that seems little but feels huge, then we are on the track to self-government. There's liberation
that occurs because a person recognizes that they can choose to be calm, happy, drop subjects,
and move on so that they can become better versions of themselves. That's what the path
to self-government looks like and criticism or being able to accept criticism is a key piece to
that. So we've talked about how criticism can be good, how beneficial it is, but how can criticism
harm children because it can harm children. If we overload criticism on our children all the time,
then they can start to get a skewed perception of themselves, something that's just not true.
They can start to think of themselves as a person who hasn't done anything right. They can start
to think absolute or drastic thoughts about their progress. They might get obsessed with
perfectionism and think that if they can avoid any criticism that somehow they are perfect.
Being a human involves criticism. But if criticism is not done well, then we get a
negative association with criticism and we don't think of it as healthy and as moving forward in
life. Instead, we think of it as not feeding in, not pleasing people, not measuring up all of these
negative things that actually hurt us in the end. So if a parent unloads unnecessary criticism or
too much criticism on a person in a concentrated period of time, then that person could develop a
negative sense of self-worth and even start to distance themselves in their relationships from
other people, thereby hurting their relationships because they don't have open communication. When
people feel criticized too much, they retreat, especially if the criticism is not done in a
healthy way. So choose your criticism times carefully. Parents have to critique things
all of the time with their children, but those critiques don't have to feel negative. In fact,
there's no need for them to feel negative, even if it's something that the child needs to fix.
Sound hopeful, optimistic, accepting of the problem, help the child see a way forward and
act like this is no big deal. Then hopefully they will not have it feel like a big deal
for them either. If you've liked this video about criticism, you will love my next video,
which is called Helping Children Accept Criticism. I go into much more detail there about productive
criticism and non-productive criticism, as well as how you can set up an environment
so that your child is ready to accept more criticism. Click on the link to that video now.