Have you ever seen a dunce hat? It is a pointed hat that was used in schools in the 18th-20th centuries. Students who were labeled “slow” or “disruptive” or “disobedient” were forced to wear it and sit alone in the corner of the class.
Picture the child sitting on a stool in the corner with the dunce hat on as his or her classmates look over and laugh and poke fun at him or her. Picture the embarrassment of the child as he or she was singled out for his or her behavior.
I have never been in a classroom where the dunce hat was used but I’ll bet if we went back in history and asked the teachers who used them, they used it with good intentions. The idea was that embarrassment would pressure the student to “do better.”
Now today the dunce hat is a symbol of outdated, harmful discipline. Can you imagine what would happen if a teacher made a student wear a dunce hat and sit in a corner in a school classroom today? The video would go viral and probably make the evening news!
But why is that? What do we believe differently today than we did a hundred years ago to make the dunce hat go from a respected form of discipline by a teacher to something very offensive?
The reason we don’t believe in the dunce hat is we no longer believe in shaming a child into obedience. Or do we?
What if sometimes as parents we are putting a figurative dunce hat on our kids in our discipline actions toward them? What if we sometimes are unknowingly – or worse, knowingly – shaming them so they will get in line?
Shame means “a painful emotion from feeling deeply inadequate, believing something is fundamentally wrong with you, leading to disgrace and a desire to hide.”
How does your child feel after you discipline them? Do they feel like amazing kids who make mistakes as they are learning about life or do they feel “deeply inadequate” and that something is “fundamentally wrong with them.”
Here is what is so cool about this conversation: As parents we have a ton of control as to how our kids will feel after we correct them.
And the question is not whether we should instruct and correct our children. The answer to that questions is a resounding “Yes!” The real issues leading to shame and humiliation are how we discipline and how often we do it.
We don’t want our kids to feel shame. Shame goes into their heart and takes away their confidence. Shame makes it hard for a child to believe in themselves.
What we want is conviction. Conviction is “a firmly held belief or opinion.” With discipline, we are working on their convictions, but we often end up shaming our kids instead which produces the opposite effect for us. Most often the parent is doing it unintentionally – we would never intentionally put the dunce hat on our child – but the effect is the same:
- Our child wants to hide from us instead of talk with us.
- Our child questions themselves instead of having confidence in their decisions.
- Our child wants to argue with us so they can try to recover their sense of worth.
There is a difference between shame and conviction. Shame is getting someone to obey out of humiliation. Conviction is obedience because we believe in a standard and want to hold to that standard. We want our kids to have conviction. We don’t want them to be shamed.
So how do we bring conviction to our kids instead of shaming them?
Less lectures — When your kids are not doing things right, talk to them about it. Explain your standards and ask them about the why of their disobedience.
Be firm without being angry — Discipline with the right consequences is good but anger usually brings shame.
Call out who they are instead of telling them who they are not — Don’t associate the behavior with their worth. In fact, tell them you want different behavior because their current behavior is not who they are.
Just a few suggestions but the main point is this: The goal of discipline is conviction, not shame. Don’t make your kids wear the dunce hat!
