The Label Game

By Gwen Moran

Joyce Moskowitz was always "the shy one who lacks confidence." Each year, teachers penned some variation on that label on her report card. As a child in the gifted and talented program, the labels that were applied to Moskowitz were soon adopted by her classmates, who were often in the same classes year after year. It seemed there was no escape.

"I can remember how awful I felt every time I read that," she recalls. "Didn't (they) realize that you don't help a child by affirming that she lacks confidence?"

The effects of labeling stayed with Moskowitz for years. Through self-exploration and study, she eventually overcame their limiting effects, her self-confidence and healing the painful wounds of her childhood labels. Now an author and speaker, Moskowitz helps other people overcome the effects of labeling. But it took years of work to get to that point.

Judith Sherven sees the effects of such labels frequently in her work. She and her husband, Jim Sniechowski founded The Magic of Differences, a relationship training and consulting firm based near Hunter Mountain, NY and authored "Be Loved for Who You Are." The couple works with individuals and couples who have had issues with labeling in their past.

"The bottom line is that they have a great deal of difficulty in believing what other people tell them about their value or how life can be," she says. "I've seen women who are told it's bad to be greedy, and then can't understand why they can't make a living. They've been told that 'You're the greedy one.' They grow up and believe that it's absolutely bad and terrible to try to get a promotion or to be successful."

Sherven says that childhood labeling can be a form of lazy parenting, a way to put the child in a predetermined category based on the parents' experience. Instead of quickly dismissing a young woman who has an interest in insects as odd, Sherven advises parents to become more curious about why your child has that interest.

"Be more curious about who this little person is and recognize that a tendency to label a child may stem from a level of discomfort with the child's interests or actions," she says. "In that case, it is the parent who needs to examine why he or she has that level of discomfort."

Even though Susan Joseph Nielsen was nearly a 4.0 student, cheerleader, athlete and a very popular student at her Walla Walla, Washington high school, her teachers and parents labeled her "not Joseph material." As the youngest of four children from a strict religious family, Nielsen was more relaxed and outgoing than her siblings. As such, she came across as less serious than the older Joseph children, leading to the label. While the label did bother Nielsen a bit, it also motivated her to continue to march to her own beat.

"To this day, I am very different from my siblings," she says. "I believe I've enjoyed life much more, made better decisions and have a broader perspective on life."

According to Sherven, parents need to be careful with so-called "positive" labels, too. By reinforcing an image as "the smart one" or "the pretty one," parents could be undermining other strengths that the child has and creating overblown expectations surrounding the selected strength.

"I've worked with countless clients who were labeled the smart one and now live in terror of not knowing something," she explains. "They live in terror of failing because all that they know they're supposed to be is smart. They can't ask questions, can't be the learner, because they're supposed to already know."

Sherven advises parents to avoid applying positive or negative labels to their children and, instead, to discuss various strengths. If a child has an area that needs improvement, such as study habits, the parent should gently work with the child to make improvements. Most of all, Sherven says, parents should continually reevaluate their impressions of their children.

"As children grow, they change and develop new talents and interests," says Sherven. "It's important to recognize those new strengths as they emerge."

For those who have been labeled in their past, Sherven says that one of the simplest ways to deprogram those messages is to monitor self-talk. When negative self-talk is noticed, it's important to redirect the message to be more positive.

"We learn to put ourselves down from someone else," she says. "So, the wisest thing is to trace back where we learned that negative way to think about ourselves and realize that it belongs to 'them,' whether 'them' is our parents, church, coach, relatives. As adult, it's time to come into our own evaluation of ourselves and to not repeat the pattern with our children."