Ashish Kothari argues you can't shield kids from negativity, so teach resilience instead. He shares how his son first heard a harsh inner critic in kindergarten when another child criticized his drawing. Parents should help children understand and work with that internal voice early on.
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Even if by some miracle you said, you know what? I'm never going to do that. I'm going to keep my child away from any negative messaging that makes them develop a sam. Right? My son, I said, when did you meet your Sam? And said, kindergarten. When they were asked to draw something and another kid said to him, oh, my God, that is like, the worst drawing ever. So you can't avoid it, right? Even if you kept the kid at your home fully covered? Everybody spoke nicely. Never. So my point is, we'll all pass and create SAMs for our children. So first of all, if you hear this and you're like, oh, my God, I created it, I'm horrible, just know that. Is your Sam telling you that. Exactly. Exactly. You can't avoid it. And by the way, SAMs play an important role. So I'm not sure protecting children from all of this is good either, if it was even possible. I don't think it's possible. If you don't do it, then somebody else will at some point. But what is important is to actually help them understand the role of it so they can, from an early age, start to work with it.