Beware the results of a child shamed FINAL Edition

• Published in: The Sun (Baltimore, Md. : 1837)
• Main Author: Thomas J. Cottle and Daniel Frank
• Format: Newspaper Article
• Language: English
• Published: Baltimore, Md Tribune Publishing Company, LLC 14.09.2000
• Subjects: BOSTON
• ISSN: 1930-8965

A child punished by his parents and feeling shame hides under his bed demanding that people go away and not look at him. A boy cuts school when his acne becomes so severe he cannot show his face without feeling humiliated. Embarrassed by her clothes, her hair, or her weight, a girl refuses to leave home. While healthy shame gives the child permission to be human, toxic shame renders one's sense of self as worthlessness, defective. Shame can cause a child to feel despair to the point of feeling immobilized. It can also cause a child to experience murderous or suicidal rage. The ideal classroom is not only a magical arena of learning, it must be a safe container. For learning to take place and moral character to develop in this container, shame along with humiliation, ridicule and inappropriate condemnation must remain strangers. Children need to know where they stand. They need evidence that they are worthy, competent, good, or instruction on or models of how to become worthy, competent and good.