Good Guys vs. Bad Guys

This evening my oldest was watching an episode of Thomas the Tank Engine where Thomas meets another engine who is "even more fun" than him. The rest of the episode shows him trying desperately to prove himself. It reminds me how much the labels that are put on people affect their self-image.

When I was a kid I liked singing and playing musical instruments, which meant I earned the label "the musical one". My brother liked music too (still does) but having a go at it for fun was sort of like treading in someone else's patch, so it took till he was an adult for him to finally get around to really making his own music. Faber and Mazlish describe this sort of thing in the book Siblings Without Rivalry. Labels have a painful level of permanence to them. Once a child is the "bad kid", "weird kid" or "loud kid" they have an image to live up to (or down to). They know that others have an opinion of them and they may even gain a level of power from their infamy. Bart Simpson would never see the point to trading in his image for his mother's respect.

It's not just negative labels. Once a kid is the "smart kid" they get a lot of status from that. It seems that they tend to become less likely to put themselves in the position of losing that esteem. Kids who are labelled "smart" or "intelligent" like to keep doing stuff that they know are good at so they can convince others (and themselves) that they are worthy. They are less likely to try new things or persist at things that are challenging because it puts them, and their self-image, at risk.

Carol Dweck talks about this in her book Mindset: The new psychology of Success (which I have reviewed). She calls this kind of thinking the "Fixed Mindset". The cure to this sort of thinking, she proposes, is to use a "Growth Mindset". The plan is to cultivate a way of thinking that acknowledges that, all things are perpetually changing, everything you try is only a reflection of where you are at now, and that even if you have a wonderful success today you don't stay capable unless you keep working at it. As a parent, how do I convince my children that this is the case?

"He's a good guy... he's a bad guy... Oh no! Run away! I'm going to get you!"

I roll my eyes. Where did my three-year-old son get THAT from? Well okay, my son doesn't live in a bubble. He has influences other than his parents and that's awesome and the way it should be. We have tried to avoid them, but these labels are useful to him. They help him have some power in his world. They help him make sense of things. There is something comfortable in a good old fashioned battle of good versus evil.

I told my son that I don't really believe there are "good guys" and "bad guys", just good decisions and bad decisions. He told me in no uncertain terms that he didn't care what I thought because he was busy playing his game. I would never have butted-into his game to tell him that dragons don't really exist, or sharks can't swim out of water, or birds don't fly upside down... so I don't know why I thought it was important to tell him that his use of labels was imprecise.

At one point in my parenting journey I fancied that I could shelter my children from the idea of pigeon-holing people, but my kids can't see the difference between calling a triangle "red" and calling a person "bad". How could I possibly avoid the tools of our culture? All our stories, literature, media and language are peppered with "good guys" and "bad guys", "evil dragons", "naughty boys", "greedy emperors", "lazy rabbits" and "steady tortoises". My boy likes to watch his father play video games, and we have been careful with the language we use. Daddy doesn't go up against the "bad guys", he competes against "opponents", "adversaries", "the other team", "the [red/green/blue] ones". Only recently has my boy's play started to incorporate battling "good guys" and "bad guys".

I have just started reading a book by Gerard Jones called Killing Monsters: Why children need fantasy, super heroes, and make-believe violence and right near the start of the book he brings up a point that helped me understand a lot more about outside influences on our children. Basically paraphrased, he says that many parents blame the influence of comics, TV, music, video games, peers etc. for adversely affecting their children. He points out that to do so denies that the child is an active participant in the meaning-making in their world, and that they had a need or appetite for that stimulation in the first place. Right now my child needs labels as tools to simplify his world and to play with ideas of moral value. His view is simplistic. All labels are a simplistic interpretation; one viewpoint of what is real. For me to expect for him to comprehend the world in adult levels of complexity at the age of three, would be like asking a beginning artist to draw a photo-realistic picture from the get-go.

So I honour his needs, but I don't have to use these labels myself. I shy from describing my kids as "clever", "cheeky", "monsters", "good", "naughty", "wilful", "a handful", "little [expletive deleted]"; my focus is instead on describing the action, rather than the person. If my son pulls the cat's tail that was "an unkind thing to do" not "a mean boy". If my son collects the dishes and takes them to the kitchen that was "a helpful thing to do" not "a wonderful boy". Things that we do are done and gone and could be different next time around, but the things that we are are a different matter.

The language we use lets kids know what we think of them, and what we value, but hang on - what happens when a child doesn't agree with our assessment or observation? What happens when we start praising a child for painting a beautiful picture when the she thinks it's ugly? Over time children learn whether or not a person's opinion is worthwhile, which is why I think it's really important for me to be compassionate but above all honest with my children. They are not always successful, socially appropriate, or considerate of others. I'll tend to focus on the positive observations and offer strategies for my children to take realistic next steps, but I'm not going to tell them that I think something is awesome, when it's not. If I only label or judge my child's actions, at least I only run the risk of being at odds with his assessment of how he has acted, rather than who he is as a person.

As time goes on I am learning how my kids react to my judgements, and I attempt to only offer my opinions when they are asked for or needed, which involves a heck of a lot of self-discipline for me, with my tendency to be opinionated!! If my son wants to know what I like about something I will tell him about the best bits, but if he is just asking me to look at his efforts I will just look. I may let him know I am interested and ask him to tell me what HE thinks about it, what he likes, what he doesn't like, and what he might change if he did it next time. This approach validates his efforts, gets him used to self assessment, and encourages him to think of it as one step along a learning journey (and it's probably one of the most practical tools I have got from reading the works of Alfie Kohn, who sometimes seems to fall so in love with ideas that he forgets the practicalities).

I'll probably be able to share my ideas about this sort of thing with my kids when they are a bit older. They will be able to decide for themselves if it's important to them then, but for now moral labels are just another descriptive tool, like size or colour. My children are young and impressionable but they are capable people, so I have confidence that by listening to them, and being there for them, they will keep me close enough to help them make sense of their world and overcome the labels, preconceptions and pigeon-holes they find themselves bumbling into.