My child is wrong! What do I do?

It’s wonderful how children can be interesting and boring at the same time.

They can lift your mood up like nothing else can do, and they can bore you to death by asking you to play a game over and over again. For that matter, they can actually get any emotions out of us. Emotions we didn’t know we had. Make us want to pull our hair out.

One such parent wrote to me because he felt his child was wrong.

He said: “I think what my child just did was wrong. So what do I do? I want to let him know that he is wrong. How should I do it - through my anger, by not talking to him or by explanation?”

This is a question a parent sent to me which got me thinking because too often I also get trapped in this.

What does it mean when we say, “My child is wrong.”. To me it means only one thing: I don’t agree with my child.

My point of view is different.

If we come from the point of view of

• I know better
• I am right
• I have more experience

then the only thing that will come to our mind is ‘how to correct the child’. And in all probability that will happen through punishment, reward or fear.

If we come from the point of view of, “My child has a different view. Why does she have a different view?” then we can move in the direction of understanding our child and the environment which is causing the action of the child. Once we move in that direction we could

• change the environment so that we can change the model the child has in their mind or
• learn ourselves and update our mental model

But for that to happen we have to leave ‘my child is wrong’ and seek to understand the ‘cause behind the action’.

We have to pause. We have to observe. We have to peel the onion so that we can understand why is the child behaving in a certain manner.

Let’s look at some of the places where the emotion that ‘my child is wrong’ can arise in us

• When our child is lying to us
• When our child hits somebody
• When our child is not doing his homework
• When our child is not listening to us
• When our child is not sharing her toys

And let us pick these situations one by one and see how can we react.

Situation 1: “My child is lying to me. Lying is wrong.”

Lying is not a great habit to have. For younger children, it can be as simple as the child was eating junk food and you saw her. But she hid it and said I was not eating. For older kids, it could be that your child bunked school and kept lying to you about it.

This ‘lying to you’ is arising from a cause. What’s the cause? I can think of 3 causes

• the child is just having fun
• the child has done something that she knows you don’t approve of
• the child is afraid of you

The first one is simple and harmless. The second one actually feeds into the third i.e. ‘the child afraid to tell the truth to you’.

So now what should we do as parents? An easy answer is to ‘hit the child,‘ ‘scold the child’ or ‘give her the silent treatment (love withdrawal)’.

What do the hitting and scolding do: they make the child more afraid of you. The child now lives in two personalities: one real and one in front of the parent. And the one in front of the parent is not the real one.

What does ‘love withdrawal’ do? It weakens the parent-child bond. Because you still haven’t understood ‘why it happened in the first place’. Only the child has understood that my parent’s love for me is conditional to me doing what they think is right.

So what should one do? The answer is both simple and complex. Simple because the only thing to do is to understand the child. Complex because it’s not easy to overcome our own emotions and judgements. And to only observe and really look to understand WHY? To seek the truth in a way that does not make the child afraid.

Let’s take another example.

Situation 2: “Your child is hitting somebody”

So you say to the child, Don’t hit. No hitting. Why are you hitting? Hitting is bad. Maybe even ‘don’t be a bad boy’. Because you think ‘hitting is wrong’. But why was the child hitting in the first place?

• because he does not know yet how to manage his emotions or
• that is what he has seen at home or on TV

In both cases, anger, silence or an explanation from the parent at that time won’t help. If the child is mimicking the environment, the environment has to change. If the child hasn’t learnt to manage his emotions, that learning needs to develop - new neural connections on how to respond when one is feeling the angry need to get made. That will happen only when we seek to understand the child. Through a hug for the child who is hitting (also for the one who got hit) and a conversation later when he has calmed down.

When our goal shifts from obedience to understanding. We are starting to lead with connection instead of correction. - J. Milburn

Situation 3: “When our child is not doing his homework”

This a parent can easily force. ‘Sit down and finish your homework’, you will say. And the child will sit down in all probability. But where will this lead? To reluctant work. It could lead to better handwriting but it can’t lead to better comprehension. It can dull the mind of the child. It cannot make it livelier. But why was the child not doing homework? May be because

• she does not like the subject
• she does not understand the subject
• her friend is waiting for her

Any number of reasons. And these can be understood only when we seek to understand the child.

Situation 4: “When our child is not listening to us”

This is where I get trapped too. I was in the kitchen making tea and realized we don’t have milk. There was another pot on the stove so I didn’t want to leave them. So I asked my 7-year-old daughter to help get milk from the neighbours. She was lounging and reading a book. She refused. I asked again - Diya I can’t go because of so and so, can you help? She said no. I snatched the book out of her hand. She glared at me and went and took another book. I snatched that too. She took another book (she has a lot of books so this wasn’t going anywhere). I went to get milk and continued making tea. I could have just gone by my parents’ wisdom and told her or made her get milk kyonki, ”Bachey ko maa baap ki baat sun ni chahiye”.

But genuinely why did my daughter not help

• she didn’t think I needed help
• she was engrossed in her book
• she hasn’t seen us helping each other in the environment

I don’t know. This was recent. I haven’t gotten around to chatting with her about this. But I know what I had done hadn’t helped. I had reacted. It did not improve my relationship with my child and it did not teach her or me anything. I plan to do two things: find the right time to talk to her and also be more upfront about helping each other in the house.

Situation 5: “When our child is not sharing her toys”

A parent can think: How can MY child be so selfish? Forget friends, he does not even share toys with his cousins. Yesterday he was playing with his cousin but now he is unwilling to share even a single toy. He has 100 toys. Doesn’t he get it?

This can play on our minds but this really is about us. About the feeling within us on why we think the child should share. The key thing is not to ‘ask to share’, not to ‘get angry’ but something else. At that moment maybe you can ask ‘once you are done playing with the toys, can your cousin play with them. But the real truth is in understanding ‘why it is hard for kids to share’? Why having the same blanket for them while sleeping can become the most important thing in life?

Our children are never wrong. Neither are you. Just our points of view are different. And it is only by understanding theirs we can really cure both them and ourselves. Or else we will just be wasting effort by applying band-aids to a deep wound.

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