There have been times, uncountable I’ve no doubt, where I have disappointed myself, by disappointing someone I loved or respected. There have been many, many times as a child, as a teenager, as an adult, where the memory of these indiscretions and let downs planted a tiny seed of shame in me that stopped me, immediately, from becoming a version of myself that I truly did not want to be. I think of these times often, as shaping, as foundational, as vital, and then I grow weary and apprehensive imagining what would have happened if I didn’t feel that little seed get planted, if I didn’t have that barometer to check in on.
With a few exceptions, I don’t feel as though I usually offer too many highly controversial opinions on this here Signal Fire. Ok, maybe I do and maybe you will all remind me of them, but today, that might change. Maybe.
Today, I offer this:
“Positive Parenting” and lessons being passed down from our highest institutions, are coalescing to teach an entire generation that they should never, not for a moment, feel a single ounce of shame.
Shame, a hot-button topic, a hair-trigger of a dinner table conversation, a polarizing subject that I believe has been so largely electrified, we all fear wandering anywhere near it lest we get shocked.
I’ll risk it, I suppose, as if I can survive a lightning strike at 17, I can hopefully survive the static fire from this. I ask, in response to this debate, two simple questions, given the times we’re all living through enduring, the nonsense we’re being bombarded with on a daily basis:
If not now, when, if not this, what?
Now, a time of unbelievable divide championed by leaders who are inarguably the worst we’ve ever had. Even the most faithful of the red-hat contingency are jumping ship, shoving women and children aside like rich businessmen on deck of the Titanic, moments before Rose let Jack slide off the door into that icy water. Approval ratings at historic lows, atrocities coming swifter than impotent news cycles can even begin to keep up with, fascism spreading and planting its disgusting rotting seeds into the soil of democracy and decency. Every day a new headline, and every day the response from those committing them is a staggering lack of accountability, a stunning void where a drop of shame is so much more than warranted.
It doesn’t stop there, however, and it’s not isolated to only wannabe dictators and their blindly obedient minions, as I’ve seen such a shift in parenting from those in and amongst my own circles, my own communities.
I should add, before I completely lose some of you, that when I speak of shame, when I speak of the consequences of its eradication, I’m speaking very clearly to a certain idea around it. I do not believe that we use shame properly all the time, and I do not believe it warranted in all situations. I think we have a lot of work to do when it comes to its implementation, and I think we can improve in a thousand ways in the ways we administer it, but I do think there are a great deal of highly constructive elements to shame, as a principle.
When I speak of shame, I think of it more as a compass, not a whip. A tool to guide, not a weapon to control. I think of it as an inner baseline, a whisper, not a shout. I just needed to make sure none of you actually think (and I so hopefully doubt you would after all these years of Signal Fire essays you’ve read from me!) that I was a proponent of some form of bullying shame as punishment.
While I will never put an intrinsically high value on shame, as a concept, I do find that my thoughts on it are mostly shaped by my studies into Buddhism. In Buddhism, shame is handled in a much different way, and I believe that it does so with more grace and actionable energy than most would realize. In Buddhism, there is an understanding of shame in two ways, a healthy recognition or “skillful shame” or an unhealthy, “unskilled” shame.
Unskillful shame, is the shame that roots you to where you are, that locks you, stalemates you to a debilitating sense of self that renders you incapable of change. It leaves you feeling hopeless, that there’s no point in trying to improve if improving is impossible. This form of shame has no place in this world, I believe, nor should it ever in the way we parent or teach our children.
Skillful shame, however, healthy recognition, is different. This is where we look at ourselves with clear eyes, and we understand where we have been unskillful, where we have been wrong. This is where we are honest with our own behaviors, we see their effects on our own karmic balances, and we pass healthy judgement not on ourselves, but on the actions we committed. This is where we judge, once again, the intentions over all things, as the intent is the source.
I understand the proponents of Positive Parenting and their desire to insulate their children from shame, from distress. I get it, I do, having helped raise two kids that are now basically little adults. I understand the source of the fear in seeing our kids upset, seeing them sad, seeing them face the big hard scary emotions that will inevitably find them later in life. I also understand the drastic and heartbreaking sense of unpreparedness should they be immune to it before then, should they be virgins the first time shame comes knocking, because knock it shall.
Healthy shame, skillful shame, is not about humiliation, it’s not about abuse, nor cruelty. Skillful shame is about setting an internal alarm, it’s about a trusty inner-compass that points to a True North of kindness and compassion, of empathy, of grace. It’s a little voice that whispers, not shouts, that this is not who I wish to be, not this version, not this time. I don’t see Positive Parenting and its shame sterilization as evil or wrong, I see it as incomplete, I see it as naive, I see it as blindly avoidant.
I don’t think it hit the mark when it campaigned against shame, I don’t think it even effectively removed it at all. I think it aimed there but hit true guidance instead, I think it targeted shame, but instead left children with undeveloped brains incapable of true control, completely alone with their own impulses. I think there is a massive gulf between our children feeling safe and feeling provided the tools to their own proper formation. Yes, children need safety and some insulation from things they are unprepared, or ill-equipped to handle, yes, but, but, they also need correction, they also need to be prepared for disappointment (both delivered to them, and handed out by them), and they need some actual mental boundaries that don’t acquiesce to every hard emotion. Without this healthy shame, without this line in the sand, how will they ever recognize when they have leapt across that little mark in the earth that morality drew?
This skillfull shame can be a teacher, and can be used as a tool, not a weapon. It can help learn empathy after hurting someone, as it hurts you, too. It can help teach the heartbreaking lesson that sometimes even when your intentions are pure, your words still carry venom, and we don’t get to decide who succumbs to that poison. When done in healthy ways with healthy doses, it can help teach true accountability, in a time where it is so largely absent, but the kind that comes with motivation to change, not be crushed beneath it.
Am I saying, would I EVER say that kids need to, or deserve to feel bad? No.
I’m saying, kids needs to know when they do something, act in some way, that is misaligned with the people they are becoming, they people they should become, in the end.
Glance around, and examples of those who have never learned these lessons are plentiful. So many adults we’re surrounded by are incapable of apology, so many treat criticism like violence, and so many even misconstrue simple and honest truths as insensitive and hateful rhetoric. I think of the public response after Charlie Kirk’s death, and I think of people re-quoting him exactly, sharing his words precisely as he spoke them, and the outrageous response that it was inhumane and cruel to share something so shameful after his death. Why? Did he not say things that were horrifically cruel? Did he not push forth ideals that were aimed at the subjugation of groups he found inferior, be they women, people of color, or those of sexualities or gender attributions he found abhorrent?
I think a society that is so allergic to shame becomes completely incapable of change. I think that without healthy shame, without this internal compass, all we seek is external validation, and all we become is lost. Without shame, we are an echo chamber, and all the words are Yes, Yes, Yes, when sometimes, the kindest thing in the world, is a No.
Perhaps, and I’d love ALL your feedback, every drop of it even from those that might, or will, disagree, but perhaps, I’ll ask you this:
What if the goal should never be to raise our children that never, ever, feel bad, but to raise fully formed human beings that know precisely how to react when they do?
I see true trauma, not as temporary and vital discomfort from a child learning the unspoken but important truths about navigating a life on this planet, but as sending them out into the world unequipped to feel the very real and very healthy weight of their own indiscretions.
I see shame not as an enemy combatant of love, but as the bodyguard sent to protect it.
Maybe you do too.
Let me know, tell me where you stand, tell me what you believe. I’m all ears.
I Love you all.
Be good.
