How Labels Shape a Child’s Identity — and How to Create Positive Ones

When it comes to helping our kids grow up as healthy and happy individuals, nothing is more important than their personal identity; how they see themselves. The way a child sees themselves determines the actions they take or don’t take, which, ultimately, determines the direction of their life. 

How are personal identities created?

A person’s identity is created by the thoughts they have about themselves. These thoughts can be either positive or negative and generally are based on external forces that create labels and lump people into certain categories. 

Think about what happens when you meet someone for the first time. You subconsciously create labels for them without knowing much about them. Based on your initial conversation, you may create labels for their political affiliation, their socio-economic status, their fashion sense, or their knowledge about a certain subject. This, often latent, and perpetual labeling shapes the way a person sees the world as well as the way they see themselves.

Labels for children are powerful because they create identities that can change a child’s world. These identity-defining labels are created by the words they hear in the home, at school, and with friends, as well as the words they read and hear on TV. 

More often than not, the words a child hears about themselves may be incongruent with the person they are and, importantly, the person they want to be. 

Consequences of Labeling

The inevitable consequence of labeling is that when you see yourself as a certain type of person, you will subconsciously look for evidence that supports this belief. 

It is like you are giving your mind instructions on what to look for. 

If a child has been labeled “lazy,” their brain receives instructions to automatically filter out all of the information thrown at it and find evidence to support their laziness. This is all accomplished thanks to our brain's Reticular Activating System (“RAS”), which is basically a bundle of nerves that filters out unnecessary information so we can focus on the stuff we want. 

I like to think of your RAS as a Google search. You tell your brain what to search for like you put a word or phrase in the search bar. Just as Google shows you all the results, your brain does the same thing. 

Do you ever notice that when you search for something on Google, you then see that very thing, or something similar, pop up in an ad while you are reading something entirely different? That is Google saying “Hey, I know you are looking for this and here it is.”  Your brain does the same thing. 

When you are focused on something, you tend to see it everywhere. For instance, if you just bought a BMW, you will notice BMWs everywhere when you are driving. It is why we can hear our name being called in a noisy room. That is your brain filtering out unuseful information and showing you what you want. 

So what will a child who has been labeled “lazy” do with this information? Their RAS will scan for evidence that they are lazy. And then, once they find that evidence, they will live up to their label of a lazy person and be less active, because a label tells a person who they “are,” not just what they do. 

Another consequence of labeling a child is that you are giving them an excuse to act in a way that is consistent with this label. The “lazy” child may intuitively fail to take certain actions and justify their inaction because they are “lazy.” In other words, they live into the label unapologetically. They wear their label like a name tag, letting the world know that they should excuse certain behaviors due to what they may see as their seemingly immutable characteristic.         

In an attempt to pre-empt criticism or rebuke, they may even announce their label at the outset, letting people know what to expect from them and why. “Just so you know, I am terrible at math, so I won’t be much help in figuring out the cost.”

On the other end of the spectrum, you have a child who has heard themselves called a name multiple times, subconsciously created a label for themselves, but keeps it hidden, masking the anguish the label has caused with a smile. 

When we label children we run the risk of lumping them into ill-fitting and damaging categories. They may look at other people with the same label and think “I must be like that too,” notwithstanding many obvious differences, ultimately making their identities revolve around this one characteristic.

Polarized Thinking May Contribute to Negative Personal Identities

Even an off-the-cuff comment about a personality trait can become a core part of a child’s identity. Children tend to be black-and-white thinkers, as they typically view things as absolutes with no in-between. If there is no gray area, then you are either good or bad, right or wrong, perfect or a failure. If they do something bad, then they are a “bad” person. 

They do not yet realize that there is a possibility for existence along the spectrum between good and bad. That is why labels are potentially more damaging to a child than an adult who understands the complexities and nuances of life. A child will take comments and lump them into “all good” or “all bad” categories and then create a personal identity for themselves based on that polarizing viewpoint. 

The goal is to help them realize that they are a good person who may have done something bad, an active person who may be acting lazy at the moment, or a good student who may need to work a little harder in math. 

Creating Positive Personal Identities 

The good news is that since children have not lived that long, their identities are not as rooted and are more malleable than an adult who has lived with a certain identity for many years.  This means that we have the opportunity to shape our children’s identities; to help them believe in a better version of themselves, which they hopefully will live into. 

Labeling a child in a positive way, or in a way that they haven’t previously thought of, provides an avenue for creating what has been coined their “possible selves,” which is the ability to see yourself in a certain way. Many times, a child just needs the idea planted in their head and then their imagination can run wild, as only a child’s mind can do, envisioning extraordinary and fulfilling worlds for themselves.

The notion that you can control and ultimately change your identity is empowering. 

The first step is awareness - being cognizant of the label itself. This can be difficult to ascertain as it is the child who holds the self-image and their self-perception can be covered up by smiles and laughs in an effort to hide their true feelings. Of course, if they are the child who wears their label on their sleeve, your job is much easier.

The second step is activating your child’s RAS. You do this by planting the idea that the child has the attributes of their “possible self.” 

The tricky part of this task is that you must make sure that the label you are creating is believable. You cannot tell a child who is failing math that they are a math genius. Rather, you plant the seed by pointing out little wins, creating evidence that they are, indeed, not bad at math. 

Maybe they received a good grade in math in the past. You can point to that as evidence that they have done it in the past and can do it again. Maybe they figured out how many points they need to win to get ranked at a certain level in a game or sport. They may not even realize that they just used their math skills to figure it out. 

If they accumulate enough “wins,” they will start to see themselves as good at math. Then you can bestow upon them the label -  “Wow, you are really good at math!” Once you give them the label, as long as it's backed by a certain amount of evidence, just watch how they live into it. Watch as their RAS finds information to validate this label over and over. 

Importantly, you do not have to wait for a negative label to rear its ugly head in order to change/create a new one. We can proactively seek and identify positive qualities in our children to help them establish positive and healthy personal identities. For example, if your child helps you figure something out you can tell them that they are a good problem solver. If you point this out a number of times, you will activate their RAS and they will seek out opportunities to problem solve.

Unintentional labeling is shaping our children’s lives, but we have the power to help them create positive and healthy personal identities. Being mindful of the external factors that may be contributing to a negative personal identity and using positive and productive language when speaking with them will help them create a purposeful and confident personal identity.

This week, find something good that your child has done and give them a positive label (e.g., you are a good helper, you are a kind person, etc).  

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