Building Strong Kids: Watching children make choices
Watching children make choices can be hard. As adults, our lived experiences can often predict the outcome of our children’s decisions. Watching a child make a mistake can be heartbreaking. As parents, we are hard-wired to intervene and rescue our children from feeling discomfort. When we rescue our children, we prevent them from growing through failure. Failure promotes resilience and confidence for the future.
What to do when a choice results in a negative outcome?
Stay calm. Sharing your feelings of concern, angst, or anger amplifies a child’s emotions.
Be reflective. Ask questions:
What happened? Who was affected?
What did you want to happen?
What would you like to see happen now?
Create space for dialogue. When asking questions, give time for a child to process and share their own thinking. Asking questions in rapid-fire leads to defensiveness and shut-down. Creating space leads to a better understanding of a child’s thought process and creates opportunities for validation.
Separate the child from the choice. You can admonish the choice but validate the child. “That was a poor choice, but you are my precious child, and I love you.”
Allow for logical consequences. Connect a consequence to the choice. For example, forgetting homework can result in speaking to a teacher or getting a poor grade.
In our next blog, we will discuss how to reflect on consequences and repair relationships.
