Example: I’m awful when it comes to the kids waking up throughout the night. It’s not so much that I don’t deal with it well, cause I do, but more that the prospect of it causing significant anxiety in me.
It’s something I’m working on every single day, but still something that gets the better of me at times, especially now I’ve got a school age kid who’s coming home sick every few days.
Where do you feel like you need to improve as a parent?
I’m coming to accept that my kids can do things their own way, even if it isn’t gonna turn out well.
For example, my eldest insists on carrying as many things as he can fit in his hands/arms when setting our clearing the table. For a while, I nagged him saying he was going to drop something and make a mess. But he hasn’t. It looks awkward as hell, and he will eventually drop a glass on his foot, but I’ve made my point and he’s chosen to ignore it.
If it ever happens, I’ll help him clean it up. And I’ll keep my mouth shut. He needs to learn his own lessons.
I’m a big believer in giving the kids the space they need to mess up. My partner isn’t wired that way though, so it does cause a bit of tension at times.
Love your philosophy though. They learn through doing, and sometimes that’s good and sometimes that means they overextend and drop a glass on their foot.
It’s really hard to live it. I’m a control freak, so it doesn’t come naturally to me.
It’s not just that - if I constantly nag them about little things, I’m teaching them to ignore me.
And I’m being a dick, because I’m telling them they’re constantly doing things wrong, which has a self esteem cost. My big guy is really sensitive, so I need to watch that. I don’t want to push him away because I don’t like his tidying technique.
This is awesome advice. We learned so many best practices the hard way growing up, unfortunately the kids really do have to learn some of their own lessons. These lessons are relatively harmless and help them build trust in your judgement for more important lessons later.
Give him a tray so that he can do the thing he loves while not dropping shit.