Why Do Kids Conclude They are Stupid or a Failure?
Many clients I see have some version of the deep-seated belief that they are stupid or a failure, a conclusion they came to as children. This affects them in profound and often unseen ways in the present. Recently I was working with a client whose father tried to tutor him in math when he was young. The father was someone my client looked up to. He was a busy, stressed professional who had little patience for helping his son with math and often expressed his frustration at his son not catching on quick enough, which resulted in the ongoing anxiety for the son. One time the father broke a pencil in frustration. Being a child whose experience of the world was limited and having no other idea of what a father should be like, he concluded that he must be the problem, that he was stupid and a failure. Such a conclusion gives some hope of changing that: “If I try hard enough, I’ll get it, I’ll win my father’s respect”. Only another adult observing would be able to see the larger picture: the father’s impatience is the problem and is impeding the child’s learning. In the process of therapy the client came to realize how this script belief about himself still came up in any learning situation where he quickly became impatient with himself when he didn’t learn as fast as he thought he should. He slowly came to give up the perspective of his child self and see that the problem had been his father and that he himself was not stupid or a failure.