I occasionally find myself trapped in a dilemma where I worry that either my own choices or my children’s behavior is “right” or “wrong” in some rigid manner. And that echoes the conventional view of children’s behavior as a binary choice between good or bad, even though the reality is that children’s behavior is full of complexities.
When I get stuck in that way of thinking, I remind myself that a black-and-white view of the world can be narrow minded and even toxic when deployed casually.
As parents, it’s really important that we demonstrate emotional flexibility when dealing with children’s behavioral issues.
When I pride myself that I’m on the one correct path or that I have the only right way, I don’t allow myself to consider other potentially great approaches or my own shortcomings.
But if I’m being honest, I have to recognize that how I deal with my own inner world drives how I parent and how I lead. I owe it to everyone to be open-minded!
There are definitely times when our children have a difficult experience and test my patience. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they’ve done something wrong. It often means they are on a tough but necessary road of learning through their difficult moments.
Because our children face challenges that evolve over time, it’s my responsibility to also change and adapt when our children face difficult life experiences, whether large or small.
Whether you’re the kind of parents who worry about the smallest misstep of your child or who blame themselves for every misadventure, there are things we can all do to avoid falling into the trap of a right-or-wrong mindset.
We all have patterns or tendencies in how we communicate in a tough situation. For example, when children do something they know they shouldn’t or when they put themselves in a dangerous situation, it can feel natural to yell or threaten to punish them.
More than once, I’ve heard parents ask their kids some variation of: “What did I do to deserve this” or “Why do you always mess up?”
While understandably tempting, these kinds of responses aren’t the best way to model respect and love. It’s important to think first about our intent behind our responses.
If the goal is to show compassion and support, then making it about ourselves or blaming a child for “always” doing something is neither helpful nor supportive.
Instead, it’s important to reframe our questions for our children based on our long-term goals. In other words, we need to think about how to frame our responses based on the assumption we want our children to behave well in the long run.
When trying to figure out why our children did something, my go-to question is first to myself: “What can I learn from this about my children?” The other question I ask myself is: “How do I want this situation to be different in the future?”
From there, I like to ask an open-ended question: “Can you tell me why you did that?’’ Sometimes they really don’t know! But it’s a good place to start.
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