Learning the right attitude from my son...

I am quite finicky about letting my kids handle food, juice or anything for the matter. I always think that they don't pay attention and so more often than not end up spilling it all over the place. Hence, whenever they take a can of juice from fridge I will be giving them a running commentary on how they should concentrate and what they should do. And if they spill it when I am not around I would raise my voice and say "Who asked you to take it? You could have asked me", "Didn't I tell you so many times not to take the juice yourself?", "It is fine if you want to take it but pay attention".  Argh! I hate myself for being such a bad father. I know I should not be saying all of those things while all my kids are doing is being independent. Sure I would have also spilled my share of stuff while I grew up.  Anyway, it was not until my son gave me a shocker that I realized I need to stop myself doing that. And what did my son do?...

One day I spilt a whole glass of juice on the kitchen floor, along with some chips. Yeah, the tray just slipped out of my hand. Hearing the sound my son came running in, looked at the mess on the floor and said : "It is alright papa, we will just clean it".

Shame on me!

Be ready to act it out for kids

Many a times I have to give a clear message to my kids, like, not to play with electric gadgets. I have found that acting it out works better than telling them.

So rather than telling them that playing with electric gadgets is dangerous, I would do a dramatic acting of getting an electric shock. I would go to the extend of talking to the doctor over phone regarding it, and telling my kids that doctor scolded me for not being careful. That works much better than any long lectures.

In cases where I can't really act it out, like when explaining them the dangers of crossing road without paying attention, I rely on youtube! I first tell them, then show couple of youtube videos of silly road accidents and then reinforce it by telling what went wrong. With kids, it seems, seeing is believing!

It is ok to fall!

I was visiting my in-laws. My son, 2 years old, slipped and fell down while playing. He started crying and nothing seem to console him. Then my Mother-in-law pulled the age old trick that worked like magic!

She said to my son, "Oh my dear, who hurt you? Was that the floor? Here we will punish the floor". Having said that, she hit lightly on the floor where my son had fallen. Having seen the "person" that hurt him being punished, my son stopped crying! Further he was encouraged, to hit the floor himself so that it is all over.

I call this technique "Blame on others for your mistakes". This is BAD, never use this technique or teach any child to do it. It sure is going to work for the short term, but what we are essentially teaching the child is: It is perfectly fine to put blame on others, and punish them, for a mistake that happened to you.

What should we rather do? To begin with, don't try to blame anyone. Tell the child that it is Ok to fall. Kids might not understand or listen and may not stop crying, but then we are teaching them the right thing. Keep telling the child: It is ok to fall. It is ok to feel the pain. Everyone falls once in a while, we just need to get up and get going. Slowly, but surely he will get the message.

Let me warn you; Children most likely won't understand this message fully. My son didn't seem to. So what I did was, at a later point I just enacted the whole thing for him. Couple of times I acted as if I slipped and fell down. Couple of times I laughed about it and other times I just got up and went ahead. If he asked, I tell him, it hurt a little but it was real fun. That worked like magic, err... even though this magic took a little longer and was lot more harder. My son rarely cried after falling, but even when he did, he never tries to take it on someone else.

PS.

There are variations of this "Blame on others for your mistakes" technique. Be aware and avoid all of them. "Taking the pain and giving it to someone else" is one of the variants. In this technique, the "parent" will make an action as if they are literrally taking the pain from the child and giving it to someone else. Like the ceiling fan or the poor crow which till then was merrily flying outside.