Is criticism damaging our kids? Author slams parents who criticise their children

When Baby Boomers were growing up, parents didn’t think so hard about what they said to their children, if they said anything at all. And some things your parents or grandparents said to you as a kid are probably still seared into your memory.

Now Australian author Dannielle Miller has slammed parents who criticise their children, especially those who fat-shame their kids. “Parents, please do not tell your child they are fat,” she wrote in The Daily Telegraph.

In fact, overweight kids who were fat shamed about their weight increased their body mass by 33 per cent and their fat mass by 91 per cent more per year than those who weren’t teased, according to a recent National Institutes of Health (NIH) study appearing in Pediatric Obesity.

Meanwhile, previous studies show as many as 91 per cent of overweight people experience weight-related stigma and it’s more common in younger adults and women. Stigma can be experienced from loved ones, in professional settings, through the media and even by healthcare professionals.

This can result in a series of serious health problems including eating disorders, decreased motivation to exercise, mood and anxiety issues, reduced quality of life, loneliness and social isolation. People are also known to limit participation in social and leisure activities to cope with it.

“As parents, we should be our child’s safe, reassuring space,” Miller continued. “We should focus on raising our daughters (and sons) to be a somebody, not just a conventionally attractive body.”

Meanwhile, writing in Psychology Today, psychologist Kenneth Barish from the US commented on what parental criticism will do to children. He wrote: “If I were asked to identify the most common problem presented to me in three decades of therapeutic work with children and families, my answer would be unequivocal: ‘As parents, we are, unwittingly, too critical of our children’.

“We all know, from our own lives, how criticism feels. We may have experienced the demoralising effect of frequent criticism in the workplace or in our love relationships. It is surprising, then, how often we fail to consider this in relation to our children.”

Barish then added that while much of our criticism is well-intentioned, persistent criticism is destructive, saying: “When frequent criticism persists, all other efforts to improve our family relationships are likely to fail.”

Meanwhile, it comes after research published in the Australian Psychologist Journal investigated the impact of weight-based stigma — which involves the devaluation of overweight people based on negative stereotypes – on obese people. This could include anything from overt criticism to subtle or indirect stigma such as ridiculing, as well as threatening environmental cues such as a lack of adequate-sized seating or clothing available.

Researchers set out to prove that individuals who experience greater stigma related to their weight are more likely to then be less self-compassionate and potentially experience psychological distress, as well as body shame, loneliness and life satisfaction. They did so by surveying 147 overweight Australian adult females, who were asked to complete a series of questionnaires measuring their own experiences, with 97.96 per cent found to have experienced weight stigma at least once in their life.