Papa, mumma shouted at me.
Oh, is it?
What did you do?
What did you do wrong?
I didn't do anything wrong.
Are, you must have done something wrong now.
Mumma will never shout at you otherwise.
This was a conversation between a father and a four-year-old son.
It was evening and the son was jumping on the bed.
And the mother shouted on the son and the son came running to the father.
This is a simple conversation and one could say there is nothing much to see or do here. But subtly we have made a child responsible for an adult's feelings.
We have made a child think that they made the mother angry.
We made a child feel bad about jumping on the bed.
And this could have easily gone otherwise.
The father could have told the mother: why are you shouting at the child for jumping on the bed? And the mother would have felt bad.
Is the mother wrong? No.
Is the child wrong? No.
The child is just in a playful mood.
The idea is not to teach our kids about right and wrong.
The idea is to help our child understand that they are not the only and most important person in the world, that we live together in a family and there are boundaries we must respect without making the child feel bad about it.
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It doesn’t take much to understand our child: https://bit.ly/uoclinpost
#thecuriousparent #understandingourchild #parenting