Guilt

Watching my daughter grow up is always an enthralling experience, and her getting seven means another big step down the road.

Sevens are delightful to be around, I've been told. That's good news. To give but one example: my seven-year-old girl has a growing interest in homonyms. Making up sentences like "The rock music rocks" is fun and that gives us a sense of what growing up means.

Seven-year-old is mature enough to not just ask about semantics. But everything. This means we can talk about many different topics. After reading Brené Brown's Daring Greatly ourselves, my wife and I explained how to tell the distinction between guilt and shame tonight.

Maybe the two words seems quite close to each other - and honestly, I used to think so - but it is not the case. Guilt is an awareness of what we did wrong. Shame is a corrosive label of who we are.

When a kid tells a lie, she can feel guilty and change. When she is a liar ("That's shame, oh no."), she can't change.

As it turns out, she can grasp the big difference. Wow.