Parenting Tip: Avoiding Labels

It's tempting when you are with your child to explain their behavior to the other people that you're with, “Oh, she's shy… She's pretty bossy.”

We really want to know our babies and understand who they are, so we're trying to figure that out by using these labels. And it can be embarrassing when our child isn't answering someone else's questions. So then we say, “oh, she's shy.”

The problem with this is that you're labeling them, giving them a character trait, which then they live up to, and it doesn't leave them the flexibility or the fluidity to experience these feelings.

We all feel shy sometimes. You can normalize that and talk to your baby about it, “Mama feels shy sometimes when she walks into a room of people she doesn't know.”

You could feel shy right now and then not feel shy in 40 minutes or in a year. So instead of saying, “This is Sarah, she's X”, you could say... “You're feeling this right now. Okay, that's okay. Your feelings are okay.”

Think about the labels that your parents ascribed to you when you were growing up and if you feel like they fit your personality or not. Or if they pigeonholed you into a personality that maybe wasn't totally authentic to you as you grew older.