The Significance of Humiliation for Children’s Development

When a Child Loses the Gaze That Was Meant to Carry Them

Some texts are written with the mind. Others are written with one’s whole life.

This is such a text.

There are themes that cannot be treated as theory alone. They must be approached with care, with experience, with a language that knows words can only go so far. Humiliation and emotional violation are among those themes. For humiliation is not only about actions. It is about human dignity. About what happens when a child gradually begins to doubt their own worth because those who were meant to protect, affirm, and carry them instead wound, ignore, or reject them.

Through many years of working with children and families, I have encountered many forms of pain. Some visible. Others almost invisible. I have met children who carried no bruises, yet carried something far harder to detect: a damaged sense of self. Children who, early in life, had already begun to believe they were wrong somehow. Too much. Too little. A burden. Unlovable.

Meeting such children leaves a mark. It changes something in you. Perhaps that is why this theme still lives strongly within me.

For when a child is humiliated, it is not only the moment that is harmed. The future is touched.

Dignity: Every child deserves to be seen and every heart deserves to belong

Humiliation Often Happens Quietly

When we hear the word humiliation, many think of obvious abuse: violence, severe degradation, sexual violation, terror within the home. All of that is true, and all of it is grave.

But many children are wounded by something far more ordinary.

A sigh when they enter the room.
A gaze that turns away.
Laughter when the child shows joy.
Silence when the child needs comfort.
Coldness where warmth was needed.
Irritation where patience was needed.
Indifference where presence was needed.

It is these small repeated experiences that can shape a child’s inner world.

Adults often forget that children do not interpret situations as adults do. Children do not think: “Mother is exhausted,” “Father is struggling,” “There is stress at work,” “The adults are having a difficult time.”

Children are more likely to think:

It is me.

And when this experience is repeated often enough, humiliation continues to live inside the child—as shame, insecurity, and self-contempt.

The Quiet Language of Shame

In Greek mythology we find Aidōs, the goddess of modesty, respect, and the reverence that restrains human beings from violating others. It is a profound image. For where respect disappears, shame often enters.

Shame is one of the most painful human emotions. Guilt says: I did something wrong.
Shame says: I am wrong.

That is a decisive difference.

Finn Skårderud has written powerfully about shame as the experience of not deserving love.

When a child carries such a feeling, life becomes heavy long before life has truly begun.

The child may smile, play, go to school, answer politely. Yet inside there may already live a sentence no one hears:

If they really knew me, they would not love me.

The First Mirror

A child is not born with a finished image of self. It emerges in relationship.

The first mirror is not glass. It is the face of the person leaning over the child. The eyes that meet the child’s eyes. The voice that answers. The arms that lift. The body that soothes.

When the infant seeks contact and is met, something fundamental happens:

The world responds.
I exist.
I can reach others.
I am worth turning toward.

This is how what developmental psychology calls secure attachment begins to form. In earlier teaching, I described it as an interpersonal bridge.

A bridge of trust between the child and the other.

Children do not need perfect parents. No such parents exist. But children do need adults who return. Adults who repair ruptures. Adults who can bear emotion. Adults who show that the relationship still stands, even when the day is difficult.

When the Bridge Is Damaged

Shame and humiliation often arise when this bridge is threatened.

When the child senses that the bond with the significant other is unstable, alarm is activated in body and mind. For the child, relationship is not an addition to life. It is life.

Three forms of humiliating interaction are especially serious:

Being Frozen Out

The child is ignored, excluded, treated as invisible. This is often more painful than adults realize. For a child, not being seen can feel like existential coldness.

Being Met with Contempt

Mockery, ridicule, eye-rolling, threatening body language, disgust. Children often remember such moments for years.

Love Being Withdrawn

When love becomes conditional: “I only like you when you behave,” “I do not want anything to do with you now,” “Go away.”

The child then learns that love must be earned. That relationships rest on performance, not worth.

Why Rejection Hurts in the Body

Many humiliated children develop bodily symptoms:

Stomach pain.
Headaches.
Restlessness.
Sleep problems.
Breathing difficulties.
Diffuse pain.

Some still say: “It is only in the mind.”

But modern research suggests that social pain and physical pain partly activate overlapping systems in the brain. Rejection is not “imaginary.” It is experienced as real pain.

John Bowlby showed early on how threats to attachment trigger deep distress in the child.

The body often knows before language knows.

The Child Who Is Misunderstood

I have met children described as difficult.

But if one sat with them long enough, another story often appeared.

The child who hit was the child expecting to be hit.
The child who lied was the child afraid of the truth.
The child who shut everyone out was the child betrayed too many times.
The child who screamed had long gone unheard.

Behind much problematic behaviour lies not evil, but pain.

This does not mean everything should be excused. But it does mean understanding must come before condemnation.

When Systems Humiliate

It is not only families that can humiliate. Institutions can as well.

Schools. Child welfare services. Health care. Helping systems.

A child can be humiliated when constantly spoken about as a case, diagnosis, or problem. When no one asks how life feels from within. When the child is sent from office to office without meeting one human being who remains.

Systems may be efficient and still be cold.

That is why professionalism is never enough without humanity.

Dignity – The Counterforce to Humiliation

In my teaching, I placed humiliation opposite dignity. It still feels right:

Humiliation	Dignity
Contempt	Respect
Exclusion	Inclusion
Negative self-image	Recognition
Shame	Worth
Silence	Feelings given language
Objectification	Subjecthood
Insecurity	Trust

This matters deeply: it is not enough to stop what harms. What heals must also be built.

A child needs more than the absence of violence. The child needs the presence of care.
More than the absence of mockery. The child needs the experience of respect.
More than the absence of fear. The child needs safety.

What Helps a Wounded Child?

There is no miracle cure. But I have seen what matters.

An Adult Who Sees Beyond Behaviour

Not only asks: “What is wrong with you?”
But: “What has happened to you?”

Predictability

A calm presence. Rhythm. Someone who keeps their word.

Feelings Given Language

Children who have lived in humiliation need help understanding what they feel.

Repair

When adults say: “What I did was not good. I am sorry.”

Such words can open rooms long closed.

New Experiences

Trust is not learned through theory, but through encounters.

Practical Philosophy in Living Form

Some believe philosophy belongs only in books.

I have often thought the opposite.

Practical philosophy happens when an adult chooses to listen rather than humiliate.
When power is used gently.
When a teacher protects the vulnerable.
When a father apologises.
When a caseworker meets the child as a subject, not an object.

Aristotle called this phronesis—wise judgment in concrete situations.

We need more of it.

A Personal Afterword

Part of why this theme never leaves me is the knowledge of how little it sometimes would have taken.

A different gaze.
A kinder word.
A hand that remained.
An adult who saw beyond the noise.
A person who did not turn away.

So little.
So decisive.

I have also seen the opposite: how one good encounter can begin to repair years of damage. How a child expecting coldness met warmth. How shoulders slowly lowered. How a voice returned.

That is why I do not write this in hopelessness.

I write it in hope.

For what has been wounded in relationships can also be healed in relationships.

And perhaps it all begins with the simplest and hardest thing of all:

To meet a child in such a way that they may slowly come to believe:

I am not wrong.
I am not a burden.
I am worthy of love.
There is a place for me in the world.

References

Bowlby, J. (1969). Attachment and loss: Vol. 1. Attachment. Penguin.

Eisenberger, N. I., & Lieberman, M. D. (2004). Why rejection hurts: A common neural alarm system for physical and social pain. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 8(7), 294–300.

Gilbert, P. (1998). What is shame? In P. Gilbert & B. Andrews (Eds.), Shame: Interpersonal behavior, psychopathology and culture (pp. 3–38). Oxford University Press.

Kaufman, G. (1989). The psychology of shame. Springer.

Kaufman, G. (1996). The psychology of shame (Rev. ed.). Springer.

Nathanson, D. L. (1994). Shame and pride: Affect, sex, and the birth of the self. Norton.

Skårderud, F. (2001). Lost faces: An introduction to the psychology of shame [Original work published in Norwegian as Tapte ansikter]. Aschehoug.

Tangney, J. P., & Fisher, K. W. (1995). Self-conscious emotions: The psychology of shame, guilt, embarrassment and pride. Guilford Press.