Human beings learn by experience - things going well and things going not so well. It’s tempting to feel as though we need to say something to drive the message home, to speed up the learning…
“No wonder you didn’t do well on the spelling test - you refused to practice all week”
“I told you you’d be cold without a coat”
“See, I told you if you ate sweets before dinner you wouldn’t be hungry”
“If you kept your room tidy you’d be able to find your school shoes”
…but often it’s better to step back and say nothing - at the time at least.
Let them have the experience without interruption. Let them learn what they’re going to learn without the added pressure of being evaluated by somebody else - and maybe being made to feel a bit stupid.
Pay attention to the experience instead and meet them there with kindness.
“Disappointed with the spelling test?”
“You want to borrow my coat?”
“Maybe leave your dinner and see if you feel hungry later”
“Take your time looking for your school shoes, I’m sure there’ll turn up, let me know if you need help”
If we can’t do that - and let’s be honest sometimes we won’t be able to - then it’s best to say very little. Breathe deeply, pay attention to our own experience, and try not to say too much.
It might feel a bit challenging (that’s not my intention) but sometimes it can be helpful to think - “What would I say to a colleague, a visitor to our home, somebody else’s child, and how would I say it?” This can be especially helpful if we didn’t have great experiences of being parented and we don’t have a useful blueprint.
It doesn’t mean that we can’t have a conversation with our child at some point - help them connect up the dots. We just don’t want to do it impulsively, before we’ve had time to think about why we’re bothered, to regulate ourselves, to decide if we have a role in scaffolding or challenging in some way, to think about what we’re going to say and how we’re going to say it.
The good news is we don’t need to get it right all the time. There’s evidence that even the best parents maybe get it right about half of the time - and that’s being generous. And even the best parents sometimes really lose it. Our children need imperfect parents to grow up into well-rounded individuals.
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