Parenting the petal-wayrdhdsnippetSeptember 10 2008, 16:00:49 UTC
So far my strategy has been to acknowledge the validity of his desire without minimizing it, but also without necessarily giving in to it. "Wow, that IS a really neat thing, you're right!".
It's amazing how often just acknowledging is all a child wants or needs - sometimes as adults we assume that a kid is going to demand something and we try to preempt it. If I rush into, "We can't buy/have/do that", I may well be causing a problem that wouldn't have been there had I taken a more relaxed approach. It may have never occurred to him that we would bring something home, so why borrow trouble?
I also find that comforting and acknowledging the disappointment or anger a child might have at not getting their way helps a lot too. "You're very sad/angry, I understand that." That whole explaining a child's emotions to them (and sometimes you do get it wrong) is really awkward in the beginning, and to someone without kids of the right age I know it looks ridiculous and overindulgent a lot of the time, but it really does work.
It's when you get into justifying things over and over a million different ways that I think children move into expecting that justification, and that's what I try to avoid. Disappointment is a fact of life - I don't have to manufacture it for my kid, and there is no reason I can't be sympathetic about it.
It's amazing how often just acknowledging is all a child wants or needs - sometimes as adults we assume that a kid is going to demand something and we try to preempt it. If I rush into, "We can't buy/have/do that", I may well be causing a problem that wouldn't have been there had I taken a more relaxed approach. It may have never occurred to him that we would bring something home, so why borrow trouble?
I also find that comforting and acknowledging the disappointment or anger a child might have at not getting their way helps a lot too. "You're very sad/angry, I understand that." That whole explaining a child's emotions to them (and sometimes you do get it wrong) is really awkward in the beginning, and to someone without kids of the right age I know it looks ridiculous and overindulgent a lot of the time, but it really does work.
It's when you get into justifying things over and over a million different ways that I think children move into expecting that justification, and that's what I try to avoid. Disappointment is a fact of life - I don't have to manufacture it for my kid, and there is no reason I can't be sympathetic about it.
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