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Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled. Today I'm going to talk about an issue that a lot of parents have been asking me about lately. It's when our children are saying unkind things about themselves.

They're getting harsh on themselves.

And these parents want to respond in a way that's going to help their children feel better,

of course.

But the responses they're giving just don't seem to be doing that, so they're getting concerned.

The feedback I'm going to offer actually also applies to

children saying unkind things to us, or generally acting out in that way, even behaving in

unkind ways. So I really hope that this might help parents dealing with those kinds of issues as well.

Okay, so here's the first note I received. Hi Janet, my daughter's

seven years old and is extremely hard on herself. She's constantly saying things like she deserves

to get hurt. She's annoying. Nobody loves her. She's stupid. She's not good at anything.

Every time she says things like this, it breaks mine and my husband's heart.

We do our best to stop and talk to her about it.

But she shuts down, cries, runs away, or yells at us every time.

I'm not sure if I'm making a big deal out of something that is normal and typical for

the sage range?

I've asked her in the past if she wants to talk to somebody about

her feelings and she's adamant that she doesn't want to, and that would mean that she has

failed even more. I don't want her to feel that she's in even more trouble than she already

feels she constantly is. She's in first grade and does very well, but has been having a lot of

issues with her friends. Her teacher says

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