When it comes to parenting, are you relationship-building or mess-making? If you’re like most of us, the answer is “both,” depending on the time of day. But you and your child are writing a story together. It’s a story about your relationship, full of challenging circumstances, unlikely heroes and surprise endings. As you write the story, wouldn’t you prefer fixing your mistakes along the way? Create safe space for mistakes to become lessons and fix this major relationship mistake with your child.
Making this major relationship mistake with your little minor?
We’ve been talking about turning mistakes into masterpieces of all kinds. We addressed a focus problem in parenting. If you fix it, it leads to a major upgrade in your relationship with your child. But there’s another parenting mistake we can make and it’s a major one. Are you creating a safe space for mistakes to become lessons?
Everybody makes mistakes.
No one is perfect.
Smart people learn from their mistakes.
Teachers say that to their classes all the time. TV shows emphasize this in episode after episode. We, as parents, say these things to our kids more than anyone else. And it’s true!
But then we go and mess it all up when we forget that we can only learn from mistakes when there’s a safe space to make them!
Is your child so secure in their relationship with you that they can come to you with their mistakes?
When your focus is on understanding them, they’ll know you are there to help.
Are you the one that helps them think about the circumstances in a constructive way?
If you follow their design-driven type of intelligence, they’ll connect cause and effect quickly.
Do you help them fix mistakes in a way from which they can learn? Or are you forcing a path that’s familiar to you but unfamiliar to them?
Rather than opposing the drives and preferences their inner design compels them to use, you can work with those drives and teach your child how to do the same.
Lead your child to a path they can follow for life by allowing mistakes to be learning opportunities. It all starts with understanding them from the inside out.
Use the erasable marker, not the sharpie!
Let your kids make mistakes with their choices. Then, you can teach them how to go back, put it right, and try it again. You can teach them the right way to make the choice. We were all given the gift of neuroplastic brains. This truly is a gift! And it means the last neural pathway your child traveled in their thinking (the path that led to their negative behavior) can be re-written. If you have created a safe place in your relationship that allows them to go back, make the better choice, and travel that path to the right outcome. . . BOOM! Good lesson learned.
HALLELUJAH! We can actually make mistakes with a proverbial dry erase marker, rather than a permanent sharpie!
Learning Lessons vs. Fixing Mistakes
If you want to shift your focus from modifying behavior to building relationship with your child, start in the area of making mistakes. Here’s how to create an environment where the best lessons come from YOU:
STEP 1: UNDERSTAND YOUR INNERKINETICS – Yours and Theirs
The Real You is designed to turn mistakes into a set of important lessons. These lessons can help you and your kids choose a fulfilling life and create healthy relationships.
STEP 2: MEET YOUR CHILD’S CORE EMOTIONAL NEEDS
Depending on their inner design, each of your children has significantly different needs for their emotional well-being. Position each of them for successful learning by first meeting those core needs. I’m a Keeper is a ground-breaking guidebook on exactly how to understand your child in a way most parents only dream of.
STEP 3: CREATE A RELATIONSHIP WHERE MISTAKES ARE ONLY A MINOR BUMP, NOT A MAJOR ROADBLOCK.
The Understanding Your Child online course provides a great way to accelerate your understanding and guide you in discovering how wonderful parenting can be when you truly understand your child.