We spend a lot of time thinking about the words we use with our children. We remind them that everyone makes mistakes, encourage them when they are struggling, and tell them that one difficult day or disappointing grade does not define who they are. We want our children to develop an inner voice that is kind, resilient, and able to put difficult experiences into perspective.
But there is another way we help create that inner voice, and we may not even realize we are doing it. Our children hear the way we talk about ourselves. They hear negative parental self-talk when we look in the mirror and don’t like what we see. They hear us when we make a mistake, forget something important, struggle with something that seems as though it should be easy, or feel embarrassed by something we have done. They notice whether we accept a compliment or immediately explain why we don’t deserve it.
Those comments may seem insignificant because they aren’t directed at our children. Yet they are showing them something important about how human beings are supposed to treat themselves when life doesn’t go the way they hoped.
How you talk about yourself teaches your tween how to talk about themselves.
TL;DR
Tweens are developing a more complex sense of who they are at the same time that they are becoming increasingly aware of how other people see them. While we often focus on what parents say directly to their children, tweens are also learning from the way the adults around them speak about themselves.
When a parent turns a mistake into “I’m an idiot,” disappointment into “I’m a failure,” or discomfort with their appearance into criticism of their body, a child is hearing more than a passing comment. They are hearing one possible way to interpret their own difficult experiences.
Healthy self-talk does not mean pretending everything is wonderful or replacing every uncomfortable thought with a positive one. It means learning to experience frustration, disappointment, embarrassment, fear, and uncertainty without turning those feelings into judgments about who we are.
Your Tween Is Listening Even When You Aren’t Talking to Them
The tween years bring enormous changes in the way children begin to see themselves. Their awareness of other people’s opinions grows, friendships become increasingly important, and they may begin comparing their appearance, abilities, personalities, and social standing with the people around them.
At the same time, they are developing a more complex understanding of who they are. The child who once simply enjoyed drawing may begin wondering whether they are a good artist. The child who ran around in a bathing suit without giving their body much thought may suddenly become conscious of how they look compared with friends. A mistake that once meant getting an answer wrong can begin to feel like evidence that they are not smart enough.
It can sometimes feel to parents as though their influence is disappearing during these years. Your tween may be more interested in what a friend thinks than what you think, and they may challenge ideas they once accepted without question. Yet parents remain an important part of the emotional environment in which children develop their understanding of themselves. And much of what we teach happens without a lesson.
Think about what your child hears when you make a mistake. Maybe you forgot an appointment and immediately said, “I’m such an idiot.” Perhaps you burned dinner and announced that you can’t do anything right. Maybe you couldn’t figure out something on your phone and complained about how stupid you are with technology.
We often say these things casually. We are frustrated, and the words come out before we have really thought about what they mean. Yet there is an important difference between saying, “I made a mistake,” and saying, “I’m an idiot.” One describes what happened. The other turns what happened into a statement about who you are.
For a tween who is already beginning to decide what their own successes, failures, friendships, appearance, and emotions say about them, that distinction matters.
The Feeling Is Real. The Story Is Optional.
When I talk about emotions, I often talk about the stories we attach to them. Something happens, an emotion arises, and then our mind begins explaining what the experience means. Suppose I make a mistake at work. I may feel embarrassed or frustrated, and there is nothing wrong with either feeling. But if I continue thinking about the mistake, I can easily create an entire story around it:
- I can’t believe I did that.
- I should have known better.
- Everyone probably thinks I’m incompetent.
- Why do I always screw things up?
The original frustration may have lasted only a short time. The story can keep bringing it back for hours, days, or even longer.
Children do this too, particularly as their ability to interpret social experiences becomes more complex. A disappointing grade can become “I’m stupid.” Being excluded from something can become “Nobody likes me.” Losing a game can become “I’m terrible at everything.” A friendship problem can become “There must be something wrong with me.”
The circumstance happened. The feeling it created is real. The conclusion about who they are is a story they tell themselves. This is why I don’t believe the answer to negative self-talk is simply positive self-talk. If I am frustrated, telling myself that everything is wonderful does not help me experience the frustration. It asks me to move away from what I am actually feeling. There is another option.
“I’m frustrated that I made that mistake. I’m going to figure out what happened.”
I haven’t denied the frustration. I may still need to correct the mistake, apologize, change something, or simply allow myself to feel disappointed. What I haven’t done is use the experience as evidence to indict myself. The feeling remains. The self-attack disappears.
This is something our tweens can learn from watching us. If I say, “I’m nervous about this presentation,” my child sees that nervousness can exist without becoming “I can’t do this.”
If I say, “I wish I had handled that conversation differently,” regret does not have to become “I ruin everything.”
If I look in the mirror and say, “I don’t feel comfortable in these clothes today,” discomfort does not have to become “My body is disgusting.”
There is room to feel the emotion fully without making it mean something about who we are.
What I Have Learned About Self-Worth
I used to think building self-worth was largely about what we told children about themselves. Tell them they are capable. Remind them of their strengths. Encourage them when they doubt themselves. Make sure they know they are loved. Those things matter, but I have come to believe children also learn self-worth by watching what we do with our own.
We can tell a child that mistakes are part of learning, but if they watch us attack ourselves every time we make one, they receive two different messages. We can tell them their body is beautiful exactly as it is while criticizing ours every morning in the mirror. We can encourage them to try something difficult while refusing to give ourselves grace when we struggle.
Children are remarkably good at noticing the gap between what adults teach and what adults live.
Imagine your tween comes home with a disappointing grade and says, “I’m so stupid.” Most of us would immediately separate the child from the experience. We might say that the test was difficult, ask whether they understood the material, or ask what they could do differently next time. We would probably tell them that one grade does not determine their intelligence. We understand instinctively that the experience and the child’s identity are two different things.
Then the next morning we drop a glass and say, “God, I’m such an idiot.” This is where awareness becomes more valuable than perfection. We do not need to police every sentence that comes out of our mouths or become frightened that one frustrated comment will become our child’s inner voice. That creates another kind of pressure, and parenting already contains enough of that.
We can simply begin listening. What do I say about myself when I am disappointed? How do I speak about my body? What do I call myself when I get something wrong? What happens when someone compliments me? How do I talk about aging, learning, changing, uncertainty, or failure? And when I hear myself turn an experience into an identity, can I choose again?
Sometimes that might happen right in front of our child. “I’m such an idiot. Actually, no. I made a mistake, and I’m frustrated with myself.”
There is something valuable in allowing a tween to witness that correction. They get to see that emotional growth does not mean we reach a point where every thought is healthy and every response is perfect. Sometimes growth is simply noticing what we are doing sooner and choosing whether we want to continue doing it.
That is a much more realistic skill to give a child.
What Research Tells Us About Parental Self-Talk
Research cannot tell us that a particular sentence spoken by a parent will become part of a child’s inner voice. Human development is far more complex than that. What research can show us is that parental self-criticism, family communication, and the quality of the parent-child relationship are connected with how adolescents relate to themselves.
A 2016 study involving 284 adolescents between the ages of 12 and 16 and their parents examined similarities in self-criticism across generations. Researchers found that maternal self-criticism was directly related to adolescent self-criticism. The study also found that achievement-oriented psychological control by both parents played a role in the relationship between parental and adolescent self-criticism.
Body talk offers another window into what children may absorb from the adults around them. In a study of 218 mothers and adolescent daughters, mothers who talked more frequently about their own weight, shape, or size had daughters who reported lower self-worth and greater depressive symptoms. The same study also found associations between parents commenting on their daughters’ weight and several poorer outcomes among the girls.
There is also encouraging research about what can support children during this developmental period. A 2024 study of 14,776 adolescents ages 10 through 18 found that positive parent-adolescent relationships were associated with greater self-compassion. Interestingly, the association between the parent-adolescent relationship and self-compassion was strongest during early adolescence, right in the years when many parents begin to feel that their influence is fading.
Another study examining supportive parent-adolescent relationships found connections between parental openness, acceptance, and emotional responsiveness and adolescent emotion regulation and adjustment.
Taken together, this research does not tell us that parents must speak perfectly. It points toward something more useful: the emotional environment surrounding a child matters, and our everyday ways of relating to ourselves are part of that environment.
Modeling Healthy Parental Self-Talk: What Your Tween Needs to Hear
Perhaps the most important shift is recognizing that healthy self-talk is not the same thing as constantly feeling good about yourself. Your tween does not need to watch you be confident all the time. They need to see what happens when your confidence disappears.
They need to see that you can be disappointed in yourself without deciding you are a disappointment. They can hear you acknowledge that you are nervous without concluding you are incapable. They can watch you make a mistake, take responsibility for it, repair what needs to be repaired, and continue treating yourself with respect.
That might sound like
- “I’m disappointed that didn’t work out. I need to decide what I want to do next.”
- “I’m embarrassed about what happened, and I need a little time to process it.”
- “I wish I had handled that differently. I’m going to apologize.”
- “I’m nervous about doing this. I can be nervous and still try.”
- “I made a mistake. Let me see what I can do to fix it.”
None of these statements erase the emotion. They allow it. And that may be one of the most important lessons we can model for our children. Feelings are experiences we move through. They do not have to become identities we carry.
As our children move toward adolescence, we cannot control all the voices they will hear. Friends will have opinions about them. Teachers and coaches will evaluate them. Social media will give them an endless stream of people with whom to compare themselves. There will be moments when someone says something unkind, when they fail at something that matters to them, or when they look at themselves and wish something were different. We cannot prevent all of that.
What we can help shape is the voice they bring into those moments. A voice that can acknowledge, “This hurts,” without automatically adding, “because there is something wrong with me.” And some of the language for that voice begins at home.
Where Bella Santini Fits Into This Conversation
One of the reasons I write emotional growth into fantasy is that children often understand something more easily when they can first see it happening to someone else.
Throughout The Bella Santini Chronicles, Bella encounters circumstances that challenge what she believes about herself. She experiences uncertainty, fear, mistakes, difficult relationships, and moments when she has to decide what an experience means about who she is.
That distinction between what happened to me and who I am because it happened is an important part of emotional resilience.
Stories give children enough distance to explore those questions without feeling as though an adult is giving them another lesson. They can watch Bella struggle, make choices, experience emotions, and continue discovering who she is. Then, sometimes without even realizing it, they begin thinking about their own experiences differently.
The Bella Santini books were created for children ages 8 to 14 to explore emotional resilience, self-worth, empathy, and emotional awareness through fantasy and adventure. You can learn more about the series and the emotional resources that accompany the books on my Bella Santini middle-grade book series page.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can negative self-talk from parents affect a tween’s self-esteem?
Research suggests that parental self-criticism and some forms of parental self-talk are associated with how adolescents see and treat themselves. For example, maternal self-criticism has been associated with adolescent self-criticism, while mothers’ frequent talk about their own weight and shape has been associated with lower self-worth among adolescent daughters. This does not mean an occasional negative comment will determine your child’s self-esteem. It does suggest that repeated patterns within the emotional environment of the home are worth noticing.
What should I say instead of criticizing myself in front of my child?
Try describing the experience or emotion rather than turning it into a statement about your identity. Instead of “I’m an idiot,” you might say, “I made a mistake, and I’m frustrated about it.” Instead of “I’m terrible at this,” you might say, “I haven’t figured this out yet.” The goal is not to replace every uncomfortable thought with a positive one. It is to tell the truth about what you are experiencing without using the experience to attack yourself.
Should I hide my insecurities from my tween?
You do not need to pretend you are confident all the time. In fact, allowing your tween to see you experience uncertainty, embarrassment, disappointment, or nervousness can give them a realistic example of emotional resilience. What matters is what you do with the feeling. Your child can see that you are nervous and also see that nervousness does not determine what you are capable of doing.
What if my tween already uses negative self-talk?
Rather than immediately arguing with the statement, become curious about what happened underneath it. If your child says, “I’m stupid,” there is probably an experience and an emotion behind those words. Perhaps they struggled on a test, misunderstood an assignment, or compared themselves with someone else. Helping them identify what happened and what they are feeling can begin separating the experience from the conclusion they have drawn about themselves.
How can I model healthy parental self-talk without sounding fake?
Don’t try to sound positive. Try to sound truthful. “I’m disappointed,” “I’m frustrated,” “I’m nervous,” and “I wish I had done that differently” are all honest statements. Healthy self-talk allows the feeling while removing the attack on your worth. Your tween does not need to hear you pretend everything is wonderful. They benefit from seeing that difficult emotions can be felt without becoming definitions of who you are.
Recommended Reading
If this conversation has you thinking about the emotional messages your tween is absorbing, these related articles explore what is happening beneath their behavior and how the environment around them shapes their emotional development.
Middle School Emotional Development: What Students Face explores the developmental changes taking place as tweens become more aware of identity, belonging, relationships, and how other people see them.
Parenting Styles and the Emotional Climate of a Home looks at how the everyday emotional environment parents create influences the way children experience and express emotions.
Understanding Generational Trauma in Families explores how emotional patterns can travel through families and what can happen when we begin becoming conscious of what we have inherited.
Why Emotional Safety Matters for Children and Teens takes a deeper look at the role emotional safety plays in helping children express feelings, learn from mistakes, and develop resilience.
