GENTLE LESSONS FOR YOUR CHILD

Gentle lessons
Children come into the world with innate knowledge, intuition and instincts. Children are not born understanding how their new world works. It is our job as parents to guide them and teach them the ways of the world they have entered. This can be done through gentle lessons.
What is a gentle lesson? Example: Your child wakes up on his 12th birthday and asks for his gifts right away. He is excited and nothing else matters. It feels like total self-centeredness and give me give me. He rips through his presents and just as he’s gotten through the last one, the phone rings and its his grandmother with a very special message. He puts it on speaker phone and then runs out of the room before she can finish her song. You as a parent have to cover for him at the end of the song because he is no where to be found, he is trying out his new Nano in the 5 minutes he has before he goes to school. You feel sick inside wondering what kind of kid you have raised. He doesn’t seem to care in the least about the care his grandmother has taken to wish him a happy birthday, all he cares about is the stuff.
You don’t want to spoil his birthday, but you are embarrassed, humiliated and angry that your son has acted in such a selfish way. You start blowing up the incident in your head, and asking yourself what does this mean, have I blown it as a parent, what should I do, I don’t care if he’s a kid, he should know better? In that moment you might do 1 of a couple things. You might decide I can’t let this go by, this is unacceptable, how dare he, and then confront him and tell him how selfish he’s been and let him know that you’re afraid he is growing up to be disrespectful and insensitive of others feelings. The other possible option is to let it go and wait until after his big day when you’ve had time to cool down and revisit what happened with grandmother.
If you take the first option, your child could be getting the brunt of your anger and your fear about not being a good enough parent. It will interrupt his special day and leave him feeling bad about himself and you may be projecting future fears on him such as I’m afraid you are going to turn out to be an insensitive and disrespectful person. Now you’re in danger of manifesting a self full filling prophecy because you have gone overboard and projected your fear onto your son.
If you take the second option, you can let your child know a day or 2 later that you have something you want to discuss with him. Let him know that it really hurt you that he seemed so insensitive to his grandmother for her efforts on his birthday. Let him know that you know he is not that kind of person, but you just wanted to bring it to his attention because you know how easy it is to get caught up in the excitement of the moment. In spite of that he may not want to forget the people who do something nice because it may hurt their feelings and make it clear you know that he would never do that intentionally. Let him know you love him and thanks for listening and then let it go.
If you choose option one, it’s probably because you are getting your buttons pushed. Maybe you weren’t allowed to act as self-centered as your son was acting when you were a child. Or maybe you were put off by his give me give me attitude because you had to go overboard to show your family how much you appreciated them, rather than getting lost in your own joy on your special day. Maybe you were humiliated in front of your mother and afraid she would judge you as a bad parent because your son appeared to be rude. It could be any of the above or something else, but by acting on your anger and humiliation, you may not teach your child the lesson you want to teach. Your child may walk away from the encounter feeling like a bad kid and then proceed to do more bad kid behavior.
If you take option 2, it doesn’t mean that you didn’t feel some embarrassment or anger in the moment, but you gave yourself time to let go of the anger and get back to the lesson. Letting your kid know that you know he is a good and sensitive child, will instill your trust and adoration in him. It will cause him to want to act in a respectful manner because he will feel loved and encouraged instead of shamed and made to feel bad.