Children Are from Heaven: Positive Parenting Skills for Raising Cooperative, Confident, and Compassionate Children

FROM INNOCENCE TO RESPONSIBILITY

Young children, up to nine years old, are not capable of dealing with shaming messages without assuming too much blame. Any kind of punishment, disapproval, or emotional upset in reaction to your child’s mistakes ultimately gives a shaming message. When there is a problem, unless someone else assumes responsibility, the child will assume too much blame.

Before the age of nine, a child cannot discern the difference between I did something bad and I am bad. Children younger than nine are not capable of logical thinking. A child reacts in this way: “If I did something bad, then I am bad,” or “If what I did was not good enough, then I am not good enough.”

Without a sense of self, when a child makes a mistake she has nothing to fall back on. If she makes a mistake, she is a mistake. When a child assumes too much responsibility, a parent can correct this tendency by assuming responsibility themselves. When parents assume responsibility for what happens to their children, children don’t take it on.

Many adults suffer from low self-esteem and feelings of unworthiness, because they still cannot discern this difference. When they make mistakes, they conclude that they are not good enough. Although these adults are capable of logical thinking, when they were younger than nine, they were not nurtured to experience their inner innocence. They may even reason that they are not bad, but inside they still feel bad or unworthy.

An adult with healthy self-esteem reacts to his or her mistakes with acceptance and a willingness to learn from those mistakes. These are some examples of the ways a healthy adult reacts logically to mistakes:

If I did something bad, I’m not bad, because I did not know better.

If I did something bad, I am not bad, because I do a lot of good things as well.

If I did something bad, I am not bad, because I can now learn from my mistake and do it better.

If I did something bad, I am not bad, because I can make amends or make it up.

If I did something bad, I am not bad, because I was doing my best. Others make mistakes, and they are not bad.

If I did something bad, I am not bad, because I didn’t mean to do it.

If I did something bad, I am not bad, because it was an accident.

If what I did was not good enough, I am still good enough, because I am learning, and soon I will be good enough.

If what I did was not good enough, I am still good enough, because I am not expected to be perfect.

If what I did was not good enough, I am still good enough, because today I was sick, not feeling well, or having a hard day.

If what I did was not good enough, I am still good enough, because today’s challenge was more difficult than usual.

If what I did was not good enough, I am still good enough, because nobody wins every time.

If what I did was not good enough, I am still good enough, because I recognize my mistake, and can correct it in the future.

If what I did was not good enough, I am still good enough, because others can’t do it either.

In each of these examples, one is able to use logical thinking to discern the difference between “I did something bad” and “I am bad.” Research on child development clearly shows that children younger than nine do not have this capacity for logical thinking. By focusing on your child’s mistakes, the child comes to feel that he or she is bad or inadequate. Instead of focusing on the problem, positive parenting focuses more attention on the solution. By learning that they are good, children stay open to your direction with a willingness to cooperate; children who are shamed close down.

Shaming messages are always counterproductive. After the age of nine, it is appropriate to ask children to take responsibility and make up for their mistakes in some way.

The first nine years are a time to develop innocence, then, during the following nine years, children learn to become responsible. When a child turns nine, he or she is ready to begin taking more responsibility for mistakes by making amends. When a child is younger than nine, a parent should ignore, overlook, or have a neutral attitude about the child’s mistakes.

When children are made to feel responsible for mistakes too soon, they begin to feel bad and unworthy in various ways. Without a strong foundation of innocence, children’s natural ability to self-correct doesn’t have a chance to develop.

Instead of shaming or punishing to correct your children’s behavior, apply the five new skills of positive parenting. Instead of focusing on the problem, just ask for what you want in the future. Don’t dwell on the problem — move ahead to the solution.

When a child knocks over a vase, it does no good at all to focus on the mistake. Instead, just say something loving and warm like this, “Oh, this pretty vase is broken. We must be careful around vases; they are delicate and break easily. Let’s stop everything and clean up this mess.”

Getting upset with the child does not increase his ability to learn from a mistake. It only confuses the child more and interferes with his or her development. When a child breaks a vase, the mother may feel, “I need to make sure he knows this is not okay and he needs to listen to me.” The new skills of positive parenting make this shaming message unnecessary. The outcome the mother is really looking for is increased cooperation. The five skills will accomplish that.

It is not even important for the child to acknowledge that he knocked over the vase. Some children, because they fear punishment or disapproval, will deny their involvement.

The real problem in this instance is the child’s fear of the parent not his denial. Particularly for a child younger than nine years old, it is of no value to put the child on the stand and cross-examine him to prove his guilt. This focuses too much attention on the problem and not the solution. The solution is finding a way to motivate greater cooperation.

The child doesn’t need to be punished or lectured to recognize how expensive or precious the vase was. Before age six or seven, children can’t even comprehend monetary value. To children, five dollars, five hundred dollars, or five thousand dollars is the same. If the parent applies the five skills of positive parenting, the child will automatically be more careful and considerate in the future, not just regarding the vase, but with everything else as well. Instead of weakening children’s willingness to cooperate by shaming or punishing, a wise parent overlooks the mistake with a neutral or bored attitude and focuses on cleaning up after the mistake.

Even with a preteen (ages nine to thirteen) or teenager, it does little good to focus attention on the mistake if she denies it. Preteens and teenagers commonly believe that if you can’t prove that they did something, then it is as if they didn’t do it. Rather than attempting to prove their guilt, the wise parent recognizes the bigger problem: The teen doesn’t feel it’s safe to be held accountable.

In this case, the parent can simply explain what would have happened if she had been responsible for the broken vase and then let go. When the teen realizes that she would only be required to clean up the mess and that there would be no great punishment or loss of love, she will be more inclined to feel accountable and be responsible for her mistakes in the future.

WHOSE FAULT IS IT ANYWAY?

From the perspective of positive parenting, when a seven year old knocks over a vase, it is not her fault. She is seven and cannot be expected to understand the value of the vase.

Even if she can understand its value, she can’t be expected to remember it. When seven year olds play, they sometimes break things. Even if the parent told the child not to touch the vase, it is still not her fault, because the child forgot during that period of time. In a very real sense, she was out of control. When the child loses control, what occurs is not her fault.

If the brakes on a car stop working, it is not your fault that the car goes out of control. It is not due to your mistake that the car crashes, because there was nothing you could do about it. When you are out of control, because the brakes are not working, crashing the car is not your fault.

Yet from a different perspective, if the car’s brakes fail, it is your fault. It was your car and you were driving when you smashed into someone’s hedge. From the perspective of being responsible to correct the problem, it is your fault.

After all, someone has to pay for the mess.

Still it is not so clear-cut. It may be your mechanic’s fault for not noticing and correcting the problem. Do you pay or does the car mechanic who just serviced your car pay?

Maybe it is the car dealer’s fault because he sold you a lemon. Maybe it is the carmaker’s fault because that car model should have been recalled.

From this simple example, it becomes clear that determining fault and responsibility is a complex matter that often requires many expert lawyers and judges to determine.

If adults can’t handle determining fault without lawyers and judges, how can we expect our children to deal with it?

Fortunately, positive-parenting skills provide a practical alternative to making our children pay for their mistakes in order to motivate cooperation in the future. When children are raised this way, as adults they have a greater sense of responsibility, cooperation, and motivation to correct their mistakes, and there will be less need for lawyers, judges, and courts.

LEARNING RESPONSIBILITY

Instead of teaching our children to feel bad for their mistakes, we need to teach them to learn from their mistakes and, when appropriate, to be responsible to make amends for their mistakes. Some parents are happy to stop punishing or making their children pay for their mistakes, but they worry that their children will not learn to be accountable or responsible. This is an important consideration.

After all, you cannot learn from a mistake or be responsible to make amends unless you first recognize your mistake. This accountability is certainly essential for adults to self-correct, but it is not so for children. Children don’t need to be accountable to learn from a mistake. Babies have no sense of self at all, and yet they are constantly learning and self-correcting.

Accountability is the conscious recognition that “I made a mistake.” Children do not develop a sense of self until they are nine years old. Before the age of nine, self-correction occurs automatically without accountability. There is no sense of a self who has made the mistake. The innocent child self-corrects, not because he has done something wrong, but to imitate his parents and to cooperate.

When children are held accountable and responsible for their mistakes, it restricts the natural ability to self-correct by means of imitation and cooperation. This self-correction is essential for learning and growing. Life is always a process of trial and error. Everyone makes mistakes.

The sense of accountability and responsibility without feeling unworthy or inadequate comes from feeling comfortable making mistakes. After nine years of feeling safe to make mistakes without punishment or the loss of love, children are ready to assume an appropriate sense of accountability and responsibility. When it is really okay to make mistakes, then it is safe for children to recognize their mistakes and consciously learn from them.

HARDWIRED TO SELF-CORRECT

Children are hardwired to self-correct automatically after making a mistake. The main reason children or adults don’t self-correct after making a mistake is that they don’t feel safe admitting they made a mistake. This natural self-corrective reaction requires feeling safe to make mistakes.

Anxiety about making mistakes only increases the chances of making mistakes. Punishing or shaming children for making mistakes only increases the anxiety and weakens the natural ability to self-correct. Parents need to remember that children are from heaven. Self-correction is an automatic process that occurs primarily by means of imitation and cooperation and not punishing and shaming.

YOUR CHILD’S LEARNING CURVE

Even when punishment and shaming is avoided, the process of self-correction is gradual. As with any behavior or attitude, there is a learning curve. As we have already explored, each child’s learning curve for a particular task is different.

Some learn to ride bikes faster, while others will get ready for bed easily. Even if a parent is doing everything right, the challenge of getting a particular child to behave at the dinner table may take time and require a good deal of energy, effort, and attention.

By simply giving directions and demonstrating correct behavior, a parent teaches a child right behavior resulting from constant self-correction. This is all a parent can do, and the rest is up to the child and will be done in his or her own time.

Parents tend to be very generous with their love and patience in reaction to children’s mistakes until they learn to communicate. At this point, parents mistakenly assume the child can hear and understand the reasoning of their request.

Expecting a child not to draw on the wall because it won’t come off requires logical thinking that a child isn’t capable of. Expecting a child to go right to bed because she will feel better tomorrow requires too much reasoning.

When a baby drops its food on the floor, a parent is forgiving and patient because it is clear that the baby does not know better. Once the child can communicate, the parent assumes that the child should know better. Why? Because he or she has been told before, and the parent has given a logical reason. Parents assume that just because a child can communicate, he or she can comprehend the meaning or reason for the request.

In some cases, a child may need to be told two hundred times before learning a behavior. A runner may learn in one request, but a jumper may take two hundred times, before suddenly mastering the behavior. A walker will show progress with each request, but will still take a lot of repetition. Understanding and accepting your child’s unique learning curve is essential to provide the loving support your child needs to self-correct.

UNDERSTANDING REPETITION

This concept of repetition is easy to comprehend when we consider learning to hit a baseball. By continuing to swing the bat to hit the ball, it may take two hundred attempts before you can hit that ball where you want it to go. After two hundred learning opportunities, the ball goes where you want it to go.

In a similar manner, it may take two hundred learning opportunities before a child automatically responds to a particular request such as, “Please, don’t throw your food on the floor; keep your food on your plate.” When feeding a very young child, a mother wisely puts plastic on the floor.

Parents need to remember that, even though a child can communicate, the child’s brain is still developing and changing every day. The child is not motivated by reason or logic. To continue self-correcting, he or she is motivated by repeated requests or commands.

A child may consciously appear to learn from a mistake, but doesn’t. Up until the age of nine, a child learns by imitation and following directions. If you feel bad about something, your child will feel bad about it, too. Children imitate your reaction, but they don’t understand it. They are not capable of logical reasoning until age nine.

If you get upset about children’s mistakes, they will feel bad, but that doesn’t in any way mean they have learned anything except to fear your reactions and suppress their will. Positive parenting allows you to preserve children’s will and strengthen their will to cooperate. This is how children learn best.

LEARNING FROM MISTAKES

One of the biggest mistakes parents make is to assume that children can logically learn from their mistakes before age nine. Parents try to teach children to learn from their mistakes rather than focusing their attention on increasing cooperation and guiding them in appropriate behavior.

When children make lots of mistakes, it is no wonder that they just continue to do so.

Children cannot and do not consciously or logically learn from their mistakes before age nine. They do, however, automatically self-correct. They learn behavior skills like respect, offering help, listening, cooperating, and sharing by imitation and direction.

When children continue to make disturbing mistakes or forget what you asked, it is often because they are not getting the structure, rhythm, or supervision that they need.

From this perspective, when a child makes mistakes, the parents are always responsible. It is actually incorrect to make your child feel responsible.

Until children are nine years old, they are not capable of self-supervision or direction, because, without logical thinking, children can only imitate. From ages nine through eighteen, children are still only learning to be accountable and responsible. Once they can be fully responsible, around age nineteen, we set them free to live in a world that holds them fully accountable for their actions.

Children learn to be respectful of objects or others not by being held accountable or responsible, but by seeing their parents are respectful. It is not uncommon for a mother to hit her child saying, “I don’t want you to hit your brother. Now say you are sorry to him.”

Children learn by imitation. If the parents yell or hit their children, then children hit and yell at each other. If parents respect and apologize in relating to each other, then their children eventually respect each other and are better prepared to be accountable and responsible at nine years old. When children are able to feel innocent and not responsible for mistakes for nine years, then they will be prepared to learn from mistakes when their brain has developed sufficiently.

Children who do not experience nine years of innocence are also able to learn from mistakes, but they may not easily forgive themselves for their mistakes. They will have a greater tendency to be defensive about making mistakes and fail to self-correct. When children experience nine years of innocence, they possess a strong foundation to deal with mistakes in a healthy way. They are able to forgive themselves and gradually learn from mistakes.

Before the age of nine, children know what to do, because they have been guided by parental requests. With positive-parenting skills, children are motivated to cooperate not from the fear of punishment but from the natural instinct to please and cooperate.

When children cooperate with their parents’ will and wish, they learn what is right. Children don’t learn what is right by analyzing what they did wrong. It is a mistake to give a child a time out and ask him or her to think about what he or she did wrong. When you give a time out, it is simply to bring a child back into control and not to teach what is right or wrong.

When children cooperate with the parent and gets positive feedback for cooperating, they learn to behave in a responsible manner. They are “able” to be “responsive” to their parents’ needs, wishes, and wants. In this way, the child is responsible. This is the only kind of responsibility a child younger that nine can develop.

LEARNING TO MAKE AMENDS

With the safety to make mistakes, children can then focus on what to do after they make a mistake. When a mistake is made, parents need to demonstrate how to make things right or better again. By imitating their parents behavior, children gradually learn how to set things right again or how to make amends.

The best way to teach this important lesson is to lead by example. If your son should hurt a friend while wrestling, take your son’s hand and go over to the friend who is hurt. While your son listens, say, “I am sorry this happened. Let’s make it better.” With your son’s assistance, get some ice and take time tending to the injured child’s wound. Rather than blame your son for a mistake he made, share a sense of loss with him.

Demonstrate to your child that there is always the chance in life to re-balance the scales when a mistake or wrong doing has occurred. In this manner, by taking responsibility to make things better, the child gradually develops a willingness to make things right, as he naturally begins to acknowledge his own mistakes later on.

If parents on a regular basis acknowledge their own mistakes, then the child is better prepared to recognize his own mistakes. The way of taking responsibility for a mistake, besides self-correcting, is to make appropriate amends.

Making amends is making things better after making a mistake. Most parents hide their mistakes from their children and rarely apologize. They assume they will lose power over their children if they acknowledge that they are not always right.

Parents can teach their children to be responsible by demonstrating responsibility. When parents are late to pick up a child, instead of explaining why they were late, they should listen, apologize, and make amends. The way to be responsible for a mistake besides self-correcting is to make appropriate amends. Making amends is simply making things better after making a mistake.

When a parent is late picking up a child, they can make amends by doing something extra special, such as going out of the way to get a treat. The parent might say, “I am so sorry I was late. I want to make it up by getting you a treat. Let’s go get a smoothie.” To make up for their mistake, parents could even offer to do one of the child’s chores that day or create a fun activity. By setting an example of making amends, children are well prepared to be responsible teenagers and adults.

Children’s ability to self-correct, up to the age of nine, is nurtured when they are free from the consequences of their mistakes. The ability to be responsible for mistakes and make amends is developed by experiencing again and again parents making amends for their mistakes. In this way, children not only learn to be accountable, but also learn to make it up or pay for their mistakes in a responsible and appropriate manner.

When a teenager is late and keeps his parents waiting, besides learning to be more respectful of time, he needs to make amends. The message is simple, “If you keep me waiting, what then can you do to make my life easier?”

If a child is raised with the parent making amends for her mistakes, then automatically a teenager will be more considerate and happy to make amends. She will sometimes automatically say, “I am sorry — how can I make this up to you?”

At other times, she will immediately make a suggestion. “I am sorry for keeping you waiting. Would you like me to wash your car to make it up?”

Another healthy response is, “I am really sorry to keep you waiting. I owe you one.” This means parents can think of something extra they would like over the next few weeks and the child will be happy to do it for them.

In the meantime, if the parent happens to be late, the parent might say, “I’m sorry to be late. You owed me one from last week, so now we are even.”

If your teenager was not raised with positive-parenting skills, then you will have to ask, “How would you like to make this up to me?” Or, simply let him know that he inconvenienced you, and so he “owes you one.”

He will catch on very soon and gladly trade the notion of getting punishments to making amends whenever appropriate. Teenagers as well do not need shame and punishment. The safety to make mistakes will pave the way for them to be more responsible no matter what age they begin.

DON’T PUNISH, MAKE ADJUSTMENTS

Positive-parenting skills do not use any punishments to motivate cooperation, but sometimes a parent may have to make adjustments regarding certain freedoms given to a child or teenager. If your eight-year-old son keeps jumping on couches in the living room, then you may have to restrict his ability to play in the living room unless you are around.

Before making this adjustment, the five skills of positive parenting need to first be employed.

In making the adjustment, let him know that he can earn back the opportunity to play in the living room. Say something like this: “When you can cooperate by not jumping on the couches when I am with you in the room, then I will reconsider, and you can play in the living room when I am not here.” In this example, the parent is not punishing; she is just adjusting the rules or guidelines.

If you have given your sixteen year old a weekend curfew of 1 A.M., and she is consistently late, then an adjustment may be required. The curfew needs to be earlier, not as punishment but because you realize your child is not yet responsible enough to stay out that late. If she is not responsible enough to remember the time and respect your curfew, then she is not responsible enough to stay out until 1 A.M.

Long before making an adjustment, the teen should be forgiven, but also required to make amends for inconveniencing you. After using each of the five skills of positive parenting, if the teenager continues to be late, then a parent needs to acknowledge that he made a mistake in giving such a late curfew and adjust it to an earlier time.

The parent could say something like this, “I know you understand this is the curfew, and I understand that things happen, and you just forget the time. We have talked about this several times. I know you do your best, and I think you have too much independence. I am resetting your curfew to midnight. If you can respect that three times in a row, then we will move it to 12:30, and when I can trust you to remember that time, we will reconsider a 1 A.M. curfew. On the weekends I want you home by midnight.”

HOW TO REACT WHEN CHILDREN MAKE A MISTAKE

When a child up to the age of nine years old makes a mistake, we should respond as if making mistakes is normal and happens all the time. The child should not be required to apologize or make amends until age ten. For example, when a child breaks something, ultimately it is the parents’ responsibility because the child was not getting the supervision required. The child is not required to apologize or make amends in such a situation.

When one child hits another, the child is not to be punished nor forced to apologize. Instead, the parent should redirect the children. If there is any blame, it is always the parents’ responsibility because in some way the child wasn’t getting what was needed from the parent. It may be that the child didn’t have enough understanding, supervision, structure, or rhythm.

When two children are fighting, instead of making them apologize and make up, just have them make up. Say something like this, “Okay, let’s make up and be friends. I’m so sorry that you got hit. Let’s play this game . . .”

Children demand that the other child be punished only if they themselves have been punished for their mistakes. They demand apologies only when they have been expected to apologize. When parents take responsibility instead of blaming their children, then siblings don’t blame each other so much nor do they demand apologies.

It is hard to be so accepting of mistakes because most parents are not accepting of their own mistakes. They feel the need to punish, because they were punished as children, and they believe that is what happens when someone makes a mistake. Fortunately, positive parenting still works even when parents make mistakes. If a parent gets upset with a child for making a mistake, he or she can always come back and simply apologize for getting so upset and give reassurance that it is okay to make mistakes.

You could say, “Mommy made a mistake by getting so upset with you for breaking the vase. I should not have yelled at you. I am sorry. It wasn’t such a big deal. We can always get another vase. It was just a mistake, and mistakes happen.”

For an older child say, “I am sorry that I got so upset with you the other day. I should not have gotten that upset. A lot of other things were bothering me. It wasn’t such a big deal. We can always get another vase.”

If a child knocks over a vase, it’s natural to feel upset about the broken vase, but a parent should be careful not to be upset with the child or with him- or herself. Some parents don’t blame their children, but harshly blame themselves.

Although they don’t intend to make others feel bad, they unknowingly do. Parents need to model forgiveness for their children’s mistakes as well as forgiveness for their own.

Positive-parenting skills are new. Most parents have no idea how to react when their children make a mistake. These are some helpful insights to react appropriately to your children’s mistakes. Take a few minutes to reflect on how you would respond in the following circumstances.

If you had a great day, were well rested, and felt you had a bright future, how would you react when your child knocked over the vase?

If your child was helpful, cooperative, and always listened to you, how would you react when your child knocked over the vase?

If your child was trying to clean the vase for you and a loud alarm went off, how would you react when he or she dropped and broke the vase?

If the president of your company were to accidentally knock over the vase, how would you react?

If you allowed five boys to play football in the living room and they accidentally knocked over the vase, how would you react?

If the vase was very cheap or you were thinking of getting a new one anyway, how would you react?

If you had a blind guest who accidentally broke the vase, how would you react?

In each of these examples, your reaction to the broken vase would probably be nonshaming and forgiving. You might feel a little upset about the loss of the vase or the inconvenience of cleaning it up, but you would not dwell on it. You clearly would not be upset with your child, yourself, your boss, or your guest. You recognize that these things happen. You would naturally care more about your child’s feelings, your guest, or your boss than the vase. You certainly wouldn’t want anyone to feel bad. This positive, forgiving reaction is the appropriate response even when the conditions are different.

Try putting this new insight into practice by reflecting on different upsetting mistakes your child has made. Take a particular mistake and insert it into each of the seven conditions listed above and explore your reaction.

For example, if your child recently made a mess and didn’t clean up after herself, ask yourself how you would react if you had a great day, were well-rested, and felt you had a bright future and your child made a mess and didn’t clean up after herself. In this way, go through each of the seven conditions above to expand your awareness of how to react from your most loving self. When your children make a mistake, regardless of the circumstances, they deserve a forgiving response.

Now, let’s change the circumstances and explore how you don’t want to react when your child breaks a vase. Take a few minutes to reflect on how you would respond in the following circumstances, recognizing that this is not the way you want to respond.

If you had a terrible day, were exhausted and overwhelmed with too much to do and not enough time, and your future looked dim, how would you react when your child knocked over the vase?

If your child was always breaking things and never listened to you, how would you react when your child knocked over the vase?

If you asked your child not to play in the living room or touch the vase and she did anyway, how would you react to your child’s knocking over the vase?

If a paid housekeeper were to knock over the vase after accidentally breaking several other things, how would you react?

If you asked your child specifically not to play in the living room or touch the vase, and it was knocked over, how would you react?

If the vase were extremely expensive or very special to you, how would you react when your child broke it?

If you asked your spouse to put the vase away, and he or she forgot and then it was accidentally broken, how would you react to your spouse?

Unless you applied self-restraint, you would probably react in a shaming manner. If you had a bad day, you would probably unload the stress of your day on your child. This broken vase might just be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. Unfortunately, children will take your overreaction as if they were completely responsible, and they will feel disproportionally guilty.

If your child regularly doesn’t listen to you, then you would probably get really upset and use this as an example of what happens when he or she doesn’t listen. Your upset would not be just about the vase, but about the many times your child has not listened and a projection of the many times in the future he or she will not listen. This message is confusing and ineffective to your child, as it would be to your spouse.

If your child defied your request to leave the vase alone, then you might feel as if you should punish the child to teach the child a lesson. As we have already explored in previous chapters, punishment and shaming messages do not work any more. There are other ways of getting your children to do the right thing. When a child is deliberately defiant, a parent needs to use the five skills of positive parenting instead of punishing. Punishment will just increase defiance.

Punishment or getting upset with your child are outdated ways to communicate. The best kind of reaction to your child’s mistakes is a kind of neutral or bored look.

Don’t put much attention on mistakes. Instead, put attention on redirecting the child and by asking him or her to do something. In this example, you might just ask the child to help you clean the broken vase up.

When a paid housekeeper breaks your vase, appropriate amends need to be made. If the problem continues, the housekeeper should be fired. He is not your child, and you are not responsible to teach him anything. With your children, your challenge is to teach responsibility by responding in a forgiving way.

If the vase was very expensive, most parents would get even more upset. Parents need to remember that a child doesn’t plan to make mistakes. If something is really expensive, the parent should protect the vase, not blame the child.

If a teenager were to break an expensive vase, she should make amends, but within reason. It would be very unfair to expect your teenager to reimburse you. She doesn’t make as much money as you do. A more appropriate action might be cleaning up the mess and then helping you to purchase another vase, but not having to pay the cost.

If your teen invites friends over and they damage or steal your computer, then together you need to find a way for your child to make amends. If you decide that you want some financial reimbursement, it should be proportional to your salary versus your teen’s. Make the reparation fair by comparing resources. If the stolen or damaged computer cost $2,000, and you earn $1,000 a week, and your teen earns $100 a week, then he should contribute $200. If he has more in his savings account, it is not fair to raid it unless you compare what he has saved versus what you have saved.

Besides punishment or unfair reimbursement, a parent can make the mistake of assuming that their child knows better. If you asked your spouse to put away the vase and he forgot, you might get upset, because you feel he was warned and didn’t follow through. You would feel that he had been warned and knew better. Parents tend to get upset when children forget to do things. They mistakenly assume their child knew better. They forget that it is perfectly normal for kids to forget. Some children need to hear many times before they remember, and, if they are stressed, they may forget again.

DOING YOUR BEST IS GOOD ENOUGH

Children should get the message that their best is good enough and that mistakes are a natural part of the process of learning and growing. By making mistakes, we learn what is right or best for us. We should just do our best, and the rest is a process of trial and error. This is a healthy message, but it can easily be misused to shame our children as well.

Parents will often agree with the notion that doing your best is good enough. When their children fail or make mistakes, parents incorrectly assume that they are not doing their best. The child then concludes that his best is just not good enough. When criticized for making mistakes or not doing their best, children begin to feel bad about themselves.

Parents often mistakenly conclude that since their teens are more mature they should have better memories. When teens forget to do things, parents mistakenly assume that they are just not trying hard enough. Trying has nothing to do with memory. Either you remember or you don’t. Forgetting needs to be treated like any other mistake.

One of the best ways of dealing with a child or teenager, who often forgets, is to ask as if you are asking for the first time. As you continue to ask in this way, the child or teen recognizes that he or she forgets. When a teen recognizes on his or her own, their ability to remember is strengthened.

When you stop reminding your children what they have forgotten and they start to recall on their own, they begin to remember more of what you have asked.

For most children and teens, the more stressed they feel, the more they forget. Nagging or getting upset with them is not effective. It just creates more stress, which blocks better memory. Rewarding is a better way to increase memory. If your child or teen regularly forgets something, then at the end of each week give a reward for what they remember.

When children make mistakes, disappointed parents unknowingly give a variety of shaming messages that make children feel bad, wrong, inadequate, or unworthy. These are some common messages:

You know better than that.

You can do better than that.

You should have known better than that.

How could you have forgotten?

I’ve told before.

I warned you.

If you would only listen to me . . .

What’s wrong with you?

I’ve seen you do better.

What’s the matter with you?

You just don’t listen.

Parents incorrectly assume that when their children are making mistakes, not behaving or performing up to their expectations, they are not doing their best. Telling children that you think they are not doing their best is shaming. It is using disapproval as a way to motivate children. As we have explored, using guilt to manipulate children is not only unnecessary, but, for children today, it just doesn’t work.

Positive parenting recognizes that children are always doing their best. When they make mistakes, that is part of their learning process. When they are out of control, they are not getting what they need to be in control. Regardless of what children are doing wrong, at that moment, they are doing their best.

Children don’t wake up thinking, “How can I do my worst today? What can I do to really fail? How can I disrupt my parents’ life and get them to hate me?” No one thinks this way unless they are deeply hurt and wounded. Even then, a child would be doing his or her best, albeit in a misguided manner, to get his or her needs met.

To do one’s best does not mean that one’s full ability has been expressed. It just means that based on your resources at that time, you did your best. Let’s take a simple example to make this point clear.

Yesterday, I did my best writing. I wrote thirty pages in one day. For many writers, this is really great. When I started writing this book, I did my best, but put out about three pages a day. Today, I was tired, but I did my best and wrote about five pages. One day I wrote three pages. Later in one day, I wrote thirty pages. Then the next day I wrote five pages. Yet, I was doing my best every day.

Considering this example, you will see that the result or outcome is not an accurate measure of doing my best. In a similar manner, it is a mistake to measure our children’s best by their performance. The secret for making it okay for our children to make mistakes is to recognize that they are always doing their best.

WHEN IT IS NOT OKAY TO MAKE MISTAKES

When making mistakes is not acceptable, children react in a variety of unhealthy ways. The following list contains four common ways our children react, when their mistakes are not accepted:

1. Hiding mistakes and not telling the truth.

2. Not setting high standards or taking risks.

3. Defending themselves by justifying mistakes or blaming others.

4. Low self-esteem and self-punishment.

These four reactions can be avoided when children get a clear message that it is okay to make mistakes. Children come into this world with the ability to love their parents, but they cannot love or forgive themselves. Children learn to love themselves by the way they are treated by parents and by the way parents react to their mistakes. When children are not shamed or punished for their mistakes, they learn that they don’t have to be perfect to be loved. They gradually learn the most important skill: the ability to love themselves and accept their imperfections.

When parents apologize for their own mistakes, children automatically forgive. Children are preprogrammed to forgive their parents, but not themselves. If parents don’t make mistakes and then apologize, children will never learn how to forgive. If parents make mistakes and don’t apologize, children will blame themselves. Without enough practice forgiving their parents, children do not learn how to forgive themselves.

Self-forgiveness dispels the darkness of guilt. It is learned by having the opportunity to experience repeatedly that their parents make mistakes and are still lovable. When children see their parents as imperfect but still lovable, then at the age of ten when they suddenly become more self-aware, and thus aware of their own imperfections, children will not be so hard on themselves.

At about nine years old, children start feeling embarrassed when their parents do things they think are strange, for example, when Mother sings in the grocery store. As they become more self aware, they are suddenly more aware of what other people think. When children have been raised with a forgiving attitude, they are more forgiving of their own imperfections. Let’s explore in greater detail the four ways children react when it’s not okay to make mistakes.

HIDING MISTAKES AND NOT TELLING THE TRUTH

When children fear punishment or the loss of love in response to their mistakes, they learn to hide their mistakes. Rather than face punishment, they would rather hide what they have done and hope that they don’t get caught. This leads to lying.

This tendency to hide mistakes gradually develops a split inside. The child has to live in two worlds. In one world, she may be getting her parents’ love, and in the other, she believes that, if her mistake were discovered, she would lose love.

This has the impact of negating the love she does get.

When children do something wrong and hide their mistake, a part of them feels unworthy of their parents’ love.

Even when the parent does love, support, praise, or acknowledge the child, a little part of himself feels, “Yes, but you wouldn’t say that if you knew what I did.” This feeling of unworthiness continues to push away the love and support that is bestowed on this child. Although there is love to support him, he is unable to let it in. To the extent that children have to hide their mistakes, they will invalidate the real love and support that is available to them.

Children depend on support from their parents to feel powerful and confident. When this support is cut off, the child becomes increasingly insecure. It is very wounding when anyone tells a child, “Now don’t tell your mother or father. This will be our little secret.” If the child doesn’t feel safe to reveal all to her parents regarding her mistakes or the mistakes of others, then a wall goes up separating the child from her parents’ support.

It is even more wounding when one parent demands that a child keep a secret from the other parent. It may even be a casual message, “Okay, I will give you this ice cream, but don’t tell your father.” This message brings the child too close to the mother and disconnects the child from the father.

It is even more wounding when the request for secrecy is backed by the threat of punishment. For example, when a child is mistreated by his father, the father may say, “I will hurt you if you tell your mother.” Unless this child tells the mother, the concealment is more wounding than the mistreatment that he received. Mistakes happen and can be healed, but if the child feels he can’t be open with his parents, then the healing stops.

CHILDREN OF DIVORCED PARENTS

Children of divorced parents often feel unable to share their feelings and experiences. When living in different homes, children must get the message that it is okay to talk about what happens at the other house. When it is not safe to share, a split occurs: They can only share a certain part of themselves at their mother’s house, and a different part at their father’s.

Children get the message that it is not safe to share when they tell a story to mom about dad, because mom gets upset or jealous and vice versa. As the child is describing what a fun time she had with dad at the fair, the mother is fuming inside that he didn’t make her do homework. Children can sense these disapproving messages and just stop sharing. To make matters worse, mom calls her ex-husband and complains to him. Next time the child does something fun with her father, the father may directly ask her to not tell mom.

It is hard to make it safe for children to share the details of their lives. If parents become negative, critical, or disapproving, the children will stop sharing. At this point, not only do they become more insecure, but the parent also loses some of his or her power to assert leadership.

The more a child or teenager feels free to share everything with you without getting hurt or hurting someone else, the more the child will be willing to cooperate with you.

Remember, when children feel safe to be themselves, they are automatically motivated to cooperate. To increase their power of influence over teenagers, parents must back off from giving judgments and solutions so that their children will continue to come to them and share their world.

NOT SETTING HIGH STANDARDS OR TAKING RISKS

When children get shaming messages regarding their mistakes, they are often afraid of making more mistakes. To protect themselves from the painful consequences of making a mistake, failing, or disappointing their parents, they play it safe. Instead of setting high standards that they may not achieve, they do what is predictable and secure. Living in a comfort zone, they not only sell themselves short, but also become bored because they are not being challenged.

Other children react to shaming messages by being high achievers. They can’t bear the pain of being less than expected or disappointing their parents, so they try harder than they need to. They may produce results, but they are never happy.

What they do is never good enough for them, and they are never good enough. It is not uncommon for these children to make all As and one B in school and to come home and hear this wounding response, “Why did you make this B?”

A father might say to his high-achieving son, who missed a football pass, “If you had caught that last pass, your team would have won.” Parents often ignore the positive and focus on the negative behavior. These kinds of negative messages from childhood are commonly heard in a counselor’s office when helping adults to deal with anxiety and depression. In most cases, it is not that their parents didn’t love them; they simply didn’t know a better way of showing their love. They didn’t know what they were doing to their kids.

Many mistakenly thought they were motivating their children to try harder in a healthy way.

When children don’t feel safe to make mistakes, they will tend to back off from taking natural and healthy risks.

Children need to take risks to develop who they are. Without the safety to make mistakes, they hold back and often don’t know why. They need a safety net. Even high achievers will feel unsafe to take risks in other areas of their lives.

Without this inner security, they may say, “I don’t like parties,” but under the dislike is the fear of being rejected. Rather than risking the pain of feeling inadequate, they would rather not come out and share themselves. Underlying their thinking is a fear of losing what they have if they were to make a mistake or to fail.

Fear and insecurity are not always the cause of resistance. Some children are naturally shy and take longer to form relationships or don’t readily take risks. Receptive children tend to be shy and resist change. Sensitive children have a greater fear of being rejected and naturally take more time to open up to potential friends. Certainly, these tendencies to hold back are magnified when children get the message that it is not okay to make mistakes.

To avoid the pain of disapproval, some children will just stop caring what their parents think. This is often the case of the teenager who shares nothing with her parents. She is used to being corrected and criticized her whole life. Now that she is freer and doesn’t need her parents as much, she goes to her friends to find acceptance. She rebels and makes a point of not needing her parents’ approval anymore.

Behind this tendency is years of having to hide herself or to hold back in order to be accepted.

Regardless of what the wounding parents have done in the past, they can make up for it at any age by using the five skills of positive parenting and applying the five positive messages. Parents need to remember that it is okay that they make mistakes, too. All parents do the best they can with the resources they have.

JUSTIFYING MISTAKES OR BLAMING OTHERS

Growing up in an unforgiving environment makes children defensive. They either actively defend by justifying their mistakes or blame someone else. When a child is asked to stop hitting his sibling, because he is afraid of getting punished, he blames the sibling. He says, “He hit me first.” This defensiveness is natural, but it is magnified by punishment. When a child isn’t afraid of punishment and a parent asks him to stop hitting, he will more readily listen and cooperate. He doesn’t feel a great need to blame others or justify his actions.

As adults, the only way we can learn to self-correct our behavior is by taking responsibility for our mistakes. As long as we justify our mistakes by blaming someone else, we cannot self-correct. Although we are adults, we behave like children who have been raised in an unsafe environment.

Carol came to me for counseling. She didn’t know whether to stay with her new husband, Jack, or leave. On several occasions, he had become angry and then violent.

The occasion that triggered her visit was when he had taken all of her belongings and thrown them out of the house.

Later, he was remorseful and wanted her to come back. He clearly loved her when he wasn’t upset, but he probably wasn’t ready or capable of having an adult relationship.

She wanted to know what I thought. I told her I would need to talk with him. When they both came in for a session, I asked him if he would ever do this again. He was very definite in his response. He said, “What I did was wrong, but what she did was wrong, too. As long as she doesn’t say the things she said, then I will never become violent again.”

After much discussion, he would not budge. I tried to help him see that what he did was wrong no matter what she did to provoke it. Jack could not accept that, and, as a result, Carol was able to see clearly that he was too immature to be in a marriage. In Jack’s mind, his violent and abusive behavior was justified by Carol’s rejecting comments. As long as her behavior justified his, he could not truly self-correct. Clearly, as a child, Jack didn’t grow up in a forgiving environment. He never learned to be responsible and to self-correct; instead, he learned to defend himself by blaming others.

When children don’t feel safe making mistakes, too much time, energy, and conversation is wasted on defending what happened, explaining why it happened, and what should happen because it happened. All this misery for both children and parents can be avoided by making it safe to make mistakes. When it is okay to make mistakes, instead of defending, children are open to listening to what parents want him to do. Looking back and trying to teach children what they did wrong is a dead-end street — it goes nowhere.

When we justify our mistakes and blame others for our problems, we reinforce the mistaken notion that we are powerless to solve our problems. When we make others responsible for our problems, we forfeit our power to heal our wounds, learn from mistakes, and proceed in our lives to get what we want.

TEENS AT RISK

I was once asked to develop a training program in Los Angeles for teens at risk who had been molested or abused in some serious manner. All these children were experiencing different kinds of behavior problems and low self-esteem as a result of the mistreatment they had suffered. To teach the first weeklong workshop, I insisted that a mix of children be present. For my purposes, it was healthy to mix teens from dysfunctional families with teens from more loving and supportive families.

Nobody was singled out as coming from a dysfunctional family or having been abused or molested. Gradually, as teens were able to talk about the negative messages they received growing up, they discovered that their pain was the same. Without pointing out the really “abusive experiences” that some of the teens had experienced, the teens realized that 90 percent of their issues were the same. They all felt misunderstood, unimportant, unappreciated, and unfairly treated at times.

Quite often, well-meaning therapists and parents put too much emphasis on one negative, abusive experience and a client concludes that all of his or her problems come from that experience. To blame one’s unhappiness on a single circumstance is misleading. This illusion was dispelled by being with more fortunate teens, who were gradually willing to disclose their inner feelings of fear, anger, disappointment, pain, hurt, rejection, injustice, guilt, sorrow, loss, resentment, and confusion. Although the teens at risk had certain unfortunate circumstances, they discovered that much of their pain was the result of common misguided parenting approaches.

Since teenagers are unaware that others feel the way they feel, they continue to blame their negative feelings on their past. Many adults today continue to blame their present pain or misfortune on their past. This blaming mentality blocks them from finding the power to change their lives.

Workshops, counseling, and support groups can help to heal the pains of the past, but, to minimize the wounding in the first place, parents can strive to create a safe environment for their children to make mistakes. Once a child has developed the tendency to defend by blaming, a parent can help by applying the skills of positive parenting and by becoming a role model of taking responsibility for past mistakes. When parents become more responsible for mistakes and less blaming of others, children automatically become less defensive and blaming.

LOW SELF-ESTEEM AND SELF-PUNISHMENT

Children learn to regard themselves by the way they are treated. Neglecting children clearly wounds their self-esteem.

When children don’t get what they need, they automatically begin to feel unworthy. Even when they are not neglected, they may begin to feel unworthy and inadequate. When concerned parents feel frustrated, angry, hurt, embarrassed, or worried by their children’s behavior or mistakes, then their children feel unworthy of love or inadequate in some way.

Instead of feeling healthy self-esteem, these children feel they don’t measure up. In trying to measure up, they desperately attempt to be perfect to please their parents. They can never succeed, because no one is perfect. They may be very good in their behavior, but it is at the cost of their self-esteem.

Unable to please their parents, they feel less than or inadequate.

Negative emotions arise in parents when children don’t measure up to their expectations. No matter how much parents say they love a child, when they get upset with a child’s mistakes or deficiencies, the child gets the message. The only way children can measure themselves is through their parents’ reactions. If children are to feel good about themselves, parents must constantly adjust their expectations so that negative emotions don’t continue to surface.

When parents are happy, accepting, respectful, understanding, caring, and trusting children get the clear message that they are good enough. Naturally, they feel good about themselves. They feel safe to experiment and be all that they can be. They trust themselves and have greater confidence.

They are more relaxed, because they do not always feel they have to measure up to some impossible standard. They simply and innocently feel that they are who they are supposed to be, and they are doing what they are supposed to be doing. The freedom to make mistakes without consequence in the first nine years of life generates a comforting feeling of security.

Imagine right now how you would feel if you could do anything without getting into trouble or that whatever you attempted would be good enough. How would your life be different if you had no fear to hold you back or guilt to hold you down? Feel the freedom and peace you would have to be yourself, and the joy and confidence you would experience in doing new things.

This is the gift you can give to your children during the age of innocence. This feeling, when allowed to flourish for nine years, never goes away. Even though children grow up and learn to be responsible for mistakes, the feelings of innocence remain as a foundation. As adults, when they make mistakes, they easily come back to self-forgiveness and self-correction. They have a greater sense of compassion and respect for others, because they are not concerned with defending themselves.

When parents take responsibility for a young child’s mistakes, that child learns that he is innocent. On the other hand, when he is punished or shamed for mistakes, he begins to feel unworthy of love and inadequate. If he has been punished for mistakes, then he gradually learns that to be worthy of love after making a mistake he must be punished.

Many adults hold back from taking risks, because they are so hard on themselves when they make mistakes. They suffer anxiety because they are so afraid of the misery they’ll experience after making a mistake. They often have a nonspecific fear that looms over them whenever they are faced with the possibility of making a mistake. These adults were often punished as children for mistakes, and continue to feel the fear of punishment as a result. Even though their parents are no longer around, they still feel the fear. When they do make mistakes, they are generally much more demanding of themselves than others would be.

In some cases, to avoid being so hard on themselves, they are hard on others. To protect themselves from punishment, they blame and punish others. This tendency can also go in the opposite direction. A person can be very accepting of mistreatment by others, because she feels so unworthy of loving and good treatment. Others may mistreat her, but she feels that in some way she deserves it. She may be very forgiving of others, because she has low self-esteem and feels worthy of punishment.

Whatever punishment goes in eventually comes out, either on others or on themselves. Girls particularly punish themselves, while boys feel more justified in mistreating or punishing others. A girl might punish herself by getting involved with someone who hurts her, or she may just beat herself up with negative thoughts and self-criticism after making a mistake. A boy has a greater tendency to blame others for his mistakes and punish outwardly. Any child, boy or girl, could demonstrate either of these tendencies.

Whether boy or girl, when a child is punished for making mistakes, the outcome is that the child is unable to forgive him- or herself and others for those mistakes.

MAKING IT OKAY TO MAKE MISTAKES

Without an understanding of the five skills of positive parenting and the importance of making it okay to make mistakes, shame and punishment have been the only tools parents had to control and protect their children. Parents thought that too much praise weakened self-esteem and made children egotistical. They believed that if they did not punish their children for their mistakes, then their children could not learn right from wrong. While these notions are clearly outdated and abusive today, there was a time when they were the only tools that would work.

In putting the new ideas of positive parenting into practice, it is important to remember that parents make mistakes, too. Our children are incredibly adaptable; they have within themselves the power to adapt and be all they can be regardless of a parent’s mistakes. Life is a process of making mistakes and encountering the mistakes of others. It is through this very process that our children can become all that they can be.

If you recognize ways that you have wounded your children, instead of feeling guilty, forgive yourself, as you would have your children forgive themselves for their mistakes.

Remember that you are always doing your best with the resources that you have. Be careful not to beat yourself up with this information. Instead, be happy that you now have a new and better approach than what was given to you.

Instead of wasting energy blaming your parents for their mistakes, forgive your parents, as you would want your kids to forgive you, and use that energy to continue your research into being a better parent. Use Children Are from Heaven as a resource you can return to again and again. Take parenting workshops and create a parents’ support group to work with other parents using this positive-parenting approach.

As you take time to move through your learning curve, you will automatically become more accepting of your child’s unique learning curve as well.