One of the groups I run at my job is a social skills group for young children. All of the kids in my group have a mental health diagnosis, mostly ADHD, an anxiety disorder or something on the Autistic spectrum. If you have ever met a child with one of these diagnoses you may be able to understand the difficulties they have making friends and interacting with others in a socially appropriate way. The group can be a little chaotic, but they are very entertaining and definitely the best group I have ever had.
In my group we talk a lot about initiating play with other children. One of the skills we work on is giving compliments. We practice giving compliments to others and then expressing how it feels to give a compliment and how it feels to receive one. Most of the kids get slightly embarrassed, showing shy smiles and a flush of pride. Many of them simply say thank you.
When I started the group, my supervisor suggested one of the grad students work with me to complete her requirements for gaining group experience. I found the task slightly daunting and wanted to refuse, but the student was a friend of a good friend of mine and she seemed generally interested in learning about working with young children, so I accepted the challenge. As her internship is coming to end, she wrote me an amazing letter thanking me for working with her. She remarked that I had taught her more about groups and young children than anyone else, and said that her time in my group was her favorite time of the week. I was thrilled to have been given such a great compliment, but still haven't responded back to her.
As I was thinking of what to say, I realized that most women do not accept compliments well. Why is that? I believe there are a few different tactics that women use when complimented.
1. Flat out denial. Refusing to believe or accept. "You look good today." "I look horrible today!"
2. Minimizing. "You are really good at this." "No I just did good today " or "So and so is so much better than I am."
3. Feeling the responsibility to return the compliment immediately to re-focus the attention.
4. Using humor or joking. I do this one all the time. For example "You are really smart." "Oh I just say things that make me sound smart"
The more I think about this the more I believe that as women it is deemed somewhat undesirable to simply accept a compliment. It is like the scene in Mean Girls where they say "you are so pretty," and the main character responds "thank you," then they say "oh so you admit you're pretty?" Because of course she should have denied it. I think there is some social standard that as women we should be modest and accepting compliments is seen as prideful or, even worse, conceited. Somewhere from being a young child to becoming a woman we develop this attitude that we should never admit that we are good at anything. This goes completely against the new focus of promoting positive self-esteem in young women, which research has shown to be a telling factor in predicting resiliency. Excuse me while I stand on my soapbox, but I believe we will continue to see an alarming growth in things such as eating disorders, drug abuse, teen suicide, and risky sexual behavior as long as young women are not fostered in developing positive self esteem.
To do my part, I vow that after the next compliment I receive I will smile, say thank you, and revel in the fact that I have strengths that are recognized by others and that is OK.

Labels: Just Me, Rant