Children need recognition, not praise

The mother of a seven-year-old daughter is very worried. Lisa started school six months ago. Since then, she has not been communicative. Although the mother understands the great effort her daughter is making to cope with the transition from kindergarten to school, she is becoming increasingly worried. She sees all the new demands and expectations that are being placed on her daughter and feels the great pressure of competition among the girls - be it in terms of school, sport or popularity.

The mother is afraid that her daughter will not have the opportunity to experience school and learning in a positive way. When the mother tries to talk to her daughter about sensitive topics, the daughter blocks it out and covers her ears.

The mother is insecure because her daughter used to be very open and felt safe and secure. Now she is suddenly introverted and aggressive.

Lisa wants to spend her birthday alone

When she was still in kindergarten, she sang a lot in front of her family and friends and took part in children's theatre. Since going to school, she has suddenly become afraid of this and no longer takes part in such activities where she is the centre of attention.

She avoids any praise from her grandparents, thinks she is not hardworking and does not feel popular. However, her mother perceives this differently.

She believes that it is more an expression of the fact that her daughter neither wants to be praised nor be the centre of attention. Lisa doesn't want anyone to be invited to her birthday because she doesn't want to be the centre of attention.

The mother asks Jesper Juul: «Is it perhaps just a phase we have to go through, or have we done something wrong? What should we do to regain her confidence and strengthen her sense of self?»

Answer from Jesper Juul:

I think it's far too early to say anything about whether your daughter's sense of self is damaged or not. But it is clear that her self-image has collapsed at the moment. The story reminds me a bit of the stories that many 17 to 20-year-old women tell professionals when they talk about their symptoms ranging from melancholy to eating disorders.

It is often the story of the gifted girl who was the favourite centre of the family and at the top of her class and never gave her parents cause for concern or caused problems. This girl was usually a «princess» at home and was overwhelmed when she moved to the big city to study.

Suddenly she was surrounded by many other princesses and therefore lost her bearings and her old self-image. For many, this reality check and the correction of their self-image becomes an insurmountable obstacle.

It was not at all necessary for them to look inwards in order to define themselves.

For a 7-year-old girl who has grown up in a safe environment, who has received a lot of positive attention and certainly a lot of praise from her parents and grandparents, starting school can be a very tough experience.

Your daughter was used to receiving the positive goodwill, commitment, care and energy of her family and environment, and was able to rely on loving and positive external guidance. To put it simply, she has received so much of the «good» that it was not necessary for her to look inwards in order to define herself.

You should simply take note of that. She now has to find a new path for herself more or less from one day to the next. Her strategy seems to be to do this alone.

Her message to her family is clear: «I don't want to perform and show myself off. Your praise is pointless because it doesn't help me where it really matters, namely at school and with my friends.»

Even if you as a mother perceive your daughter as hard-working and popular, but your daughter doesn't see herself that way, this is the reality for your daughter. This is exactly how she experiences herself in her new environment - it doesn't matter whether it is objectively wrong or right.

Like many other children today, your daughter has been too much the centre of attention.

We all need recognition - especially in critical phases of life when we have to change our self-image and self-image. We all want our subjective experiences and feelings to be taken seriously by those around us. Only then can we integrate them or let them go.

I have now also answered what you can do for your daughter. I think that loneliness in the new situation with your daughter is what frightens and unsettles you the most. Here I mean both your daughter's loneliness at school and your own loneliness at the moment, when there is not the intimacy between you and your daughter that there used to be.

It would be good if you could find room for the loneliness on both sides of you. Loneliness has always been present - it's just been on the back of your beautiful community. Like so many other children these days, your daughter has been the centre of attention far too much - and it can be quite lonely there!

Your daughter is going through a difficult time at the moment, but she doesn't have a «problem» in that sense. We shouldn't make her a «client» either. Rather, it is important that her immediate environment is prepared to give her recognition, empathy and support when she asks for it, without violating her dignity and integrity.

This also includes the right to come to terms with it yourself. And: please stay calm! Sooner or later, the pendulum will swing back to community and intimacy. Your daughter will come back as a different person with a new vulnerability.

Don't waste time with reproaches about what you could have done differently

We can also symbolise the situation: She has come to a new world in which social life takes place in Chinese. But she only speaks German! She manages to keep up for the first year by developing the ability to read the body language of others and by slowly teaching herself Chinese.

She doesn't run home to her mum - because her mum doesn't speak Chinese either! Instead, she pulls herself together and does her very best to learn how to develop and function in the new reality. Her efforts deserve a lot of respect and recognition, which she is unable or unwilling to accept at the moment.

Be there for your daughter, be happy about her existence.

In the meantime, you can prepare yourself to be a mum to a changed and more mature daughter and perhaps also come to the realisation that life has a downside that requires completely different skills to those your daughter had at her disposal. But please don't waste your time reproaching yourself for everything you could have done differently.

Firstly, because you couldn't do it any other way and secondly, because your daughter would only feel wrong. Be there for your daughter, rejoice in her existence, cry with her and welcome loneliness as a new, additional quality of your relationship!

Jesper Juul's columns are written in collaboration with familylab.ch