This Morning viewers slam claim common habit harms kids psychologically
A parenting debate has erupted on social media after This Morning hosts addressed TV presenter and child therapist Kate Silverton's recent claims that calling children "naughty" can be psychologically damaging, and some viewers are not having it.
Silverton, who is a former BBC newsreader and a qualified counsellor, sparked controversy after saying parents should stop using the word altogether. While on the Netmums podcast, she said: "It's just a fallacy to call children naughty. They're not making conscious choices for the majority of the time. They are driven by a very, very immature brain and a nervous system that very often is being triggered."
Silverton argued that when children are regularly labelled "naughty", they can begin to believe that label defines who they are. When Ben Shephard brought the topic up on This Morning, TV personality Trisha Goddard defended Silverton's ideology, affirming that the words you use to children can have a huge effect on them.
She told the ITV show hosts: "I always believe in labelling the behaviour and not the person.
"Naughty is probably the light end, but if you keep telling a child they're stupid or they don't know what they're doing or 'gosh you're always clumsy', it absolutely does sit in their head and set a trend. If you talk about the behaviour rather than labelling the child it's a much better way to go."
But many viewers didn't agree with the softer parenting approach, and took to social media to voice their frustrations. One person wrote: "If you don't tell a child off then they will think that their behaviour is acceptable."
Another went even further, saying: "Stop calling kids 'naughty'? This is why kids carry knives and commit crimes we see today. Soft parenting. The kids parenting the parents because the parents start to become scared of their own kids."
Others questioned how the advice would apply to real life tragedies, asking: "What would Trisha say about the actions of the killers of Bhim Kholi?" Bhim Kholi is a man who was murdered while walking his dog in Leicestershire by two teens who have been convicted of manslaughter.
During her appearance on Netmums, Silverton also said: "Our children internalise every day. They're taking in messages from us, from their friends, from their teachers. And words carry such weight of meaning. 'Oh, stop being silly. Oh, you are so naughty. Oh, he's the naughty one'.
"We all fall into that trap, but our children are paying very close attention to how we think of them. And we might dismiss it as a comment – 'oh, he's so untidy. Oh, she's always late. She's a bit of a scatterbrain'.
"They are internalising. And what they're internalising, because, again, they don't have that fully formed rational brain. 'I'm bad. I'm naughty.' And then it becomes: 'That's me. That's who I am'."
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