Therapist and mum says calling children 'naughty' is 'dated' just like smacking

A cognitive behavioural therapist and mum-of-one has joined the ranks of people who have sworn off ever calling their children ‘naughty’.

Navit Schechter, 43, has concerns that harshly berating kids will result in a generation of people-pleasing sycophants.

Navit said that referring to your child as ‘naughty’ or even ‘good’ can have a big impact on their self-worth, and it might result in them becoming anxious and self-critical as adults.

The businesswoman who runs Conscious and Calm, which offers parenting courses, tries to steer people away from a good/bad binary.

Instead, she tries to instil an ‘innate understanding of the infallibility of being human and not being able to live up to high standards all the time’ in her six-year-old daughter.

She said: ‘In the world that I am in, among my friends and in my work world, most people that I’m surrounded by would see the word “naughty” as quite a dated parenting style, much in the same way as smacking.

‘We’re choosing not to smack our own children because we would see it as physically abusive, so we choose not to do it.

‘Similarly, there’s that same kind of idea around using the word “naughty”.’

Navit worries that reinforcing the idea that a kid is ‘naughty’ can lead them to them seeking validation at the cost of their own self-worth and best interests.

She said: ‘We want to bring our children up to be compliant, because, of course, it makes our lives easier – but we don’t actually want our children to be compliant people.

‘If you’re saying, “don’t do that, that’s naughty” because you don’t like their actions – there’s this kind of implicit assumption that you have to do things the way that we want them done.

‘You then see the pattern that we see in adults, appeasing people and not being able to say no in case their actions upset people.’

On the other side of that coin, Navit is also not a fan of referring to her daughter as ‘good.’

She said: ‘I also feel really uncomfortable when family members call my daughter a “good girl”.

‘So many adults today feel the need to be good, to be liked and for other people to accept them.

‘It’s that black-and-white way of thinking and not looking at the context around it, because we’re inherently kind of good, but sometimes we’re not.

‘If we hold ourselves to standards of thinking we can never make mistakes, we can never let other people down, we can never do things that other people don’t want us to do – that can keep us stuck in really unhelpful patterns that create a lot of anxiety and low self-esteem.’

And Navit isn’t the only one who feels this way.

Just this month, Sarah Whiteley wrote for Metro.co.uk, saying that she doesn’t ever call her children naughty, and Jo Mitchell-Hill, a parenting coach from Maidstone, Kent, also thinks the word ‘impacts on kids’ self-esteem and shames them’.

Jo, 46, said: ‘I don’t use the word naughty because it has such a negative connotation.

‘The word is used to describe the child and not their behaviour. If you want the best out of your children the more positive and encouraging you are, you’re going to build that self-esteem.

‘You’re going to build that positivity and build up how they feel about themselves.’

Foster carer and former teacher Jo added: ‘With my daughter, my pupils and the kids that lived with us, the expectation is you’re going to try your best, and if you’re not, you’re struggling – so come and speak to me.

‘Kids aren’t born wanting to be naughty or wanting to misbehave, their misbehaviour is a communication.

‘Kids don’t understand the difference between positive and negative attention.

‘Children live in a very traumatic world, we’ve got to be aware as parents that we are the biggest influence in our children’s lives and what we say and do matters.’

However, not everyone shares this view.

 Dr Samantha Madohsingh, 54, said it’s ‘madness’ to suggest calling a child ‘naughty’ is akin to smacking.

Dr Samantha, who has a 16-year-old daughter, agrees that words can have a significant impact, but is unnerved by certain parenting styles she’s seeing today.

She said: ‘Words have power – when we use words like “good” and “bad”, “right” and “wrong”, that is binary thinking.

‘People will think to themselves, “no one can be perfect, and I’m not pure and angelic and always good” – so the only other option is to be bad.

‘So what we need to focus on is the behaviour – the child isn’t naughty, that behaviour is naughty and naughty behaviour is not acceptable or appropriate.

‘The word “naughty” is not abusive – it just struck me as extreme, honestly.

‘I feel sometimes that we’re going in the completely wrong direction.

‘As a parent of a teenager in this country, what I’m seeing with kids is terrifying.

‘We have two extremes – we have people who are either so strict and bordering on abusive, and then we have the fully permissive “let’s just let them be wild and do whatever they want” crew.

‘I think somewhere in the middle is where it’s at.’

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