Punch me in the face before you tell me you're disappointed in me
“You’ve got to show me that you’re actually trying.” (The Jones family - Deseronto Archives)
The weapon that can inflict the most pain, as we know, is words.
Even in a world where parents and teachers still hit kids, a remark can sting more deeply.
When a child’s primary motivation in life is to please the adults, to disappoint them is crushing.
Some adults make it difficult or impossible for kids to hit the mark — or to know whether they have. I hear it all the time: “I feel like I never do anything right. She’s always mad at me,” or “No matter what, she’ll still be disappointed.” Eventually, kids will give up on trying to figure out what elicits praise or disappointment, but the voice of the disapproving adult may become the voice in their head.
As a friend put it, “My parents were both teachers, and expressing disappointment and praise seemed so common in their world. I think they truly believed it helped kids achieve. But as a kid who excelled in school, what it felt like was, ‘You’re never good enough, ever.’ Because you can always be ‘better’ and are never doing your ‘best.’ So you can always disappoint.”
If you never feel like you’re good enough, you’ll feel the need to always keep striving; no matter how well you do, your mental bar will just keep getting higher. Even if someone comes along and tells you that you’re doing great, you won’t believe them. You won’t be able to trust their feedback because it doesn’t match the story in your head.
I’m not just talking about adults here — this dynamic can be firmly entrenched by adolescence. By the time they enter sixth grade, some students don’t believe me when I say that they have what it takes to succeed and they aren’t a permanent failure. They don’t want to hear me say that learning doesn’t have to be painful. All of my words just feel like more pressure to them, yet more evidence that they are doing it wrong and disappointing me.
Over time, we can work to ease this pressure by creating learning experiences that feel unfamiliar enough that they don’t trigger the same patterns. Not everyone is willing — we all like to hang on to our beliefs, even when they aren’t serving us. But I have seen some truly amazing transformations in which people are able to find different metrics for measuring their success. Instead of assuming that they will disappoint themselves and others, they look for moments of engagement and enjoyment in their work and build upon those.
Is it possible to shift the culture of our families and classrooms so that we prevent the “you’re never good enough” message in the first place? To do so, we have to look at ourselves holistically. Instead of measuring our worth by our success, we have to begin to believe that we are valuable simply for who we are. If we can accept that for ourselves, it will come through in our messages to the children we are connected to.
It is not an easy task to make this shift if you grew up with a constant fear of disappointing the adults in your life. It helps to have a tiny baby handy: Looking at that person, full of love and potential, you can see that they don’t have to be or do anything to be worthy of love. They are complete, just as they are. So were you — so are you.