Even the most patient person in the world can get like this and guess what, its completely natural! We are not all perfect and this is something that parents tend to give themselves a hard time over because, just like all the rest of us, we want the best for our children. This is why I chose to write this entry today, not just to reassure those of you worriers out there but also to share with you an invaluable piece of advice i have recently heard.
This child I refer to can be a toddler or they can be in their teenage years, either way the same rule applies, to rediscover the term 'Oops!'. Now i know how it might initially sound but don't judge, instead lets discover the underlying messages that this simple saying can convey to the child. First off we are showing the child that we are aware of the error they have made and also seeing it as a natural thing that happens and simply cannot be avoided. We only have to look at ourselves to understand that. How often have we knocked into something or someone in the street when our mind was wandering, or realized we left the house without checking we had all the essential (keys, money, phone). These are all mistakes and are there to remind us that this is essentially what they are, 'mistakes'.
Now talking from my own personal experience, I have come across times in my life when i have also made the odd 'mistake' here or there and even before I've even made them there was always someone there telling me how to avoid it before it happened, which brings me onto the next point.
If you want to further reassure your child that this is just a natural consequence that occurs we can then turn to them and say something along the lines of 'Hmm what do you think we need to do to clean this up?'. By saying this we can help the child not only to think for themselves how to best solve this 'problem' but also we are helping them to train themselves to know what to do if a situation like this occurs again.
Lets just look at it from another viewpoint. Lets say they spill something and instead of reacting calmly and understanding we let our emotions get the better of us and react. This can be either through our body language, tone of voice or what we say. We are then only making the young child scared of what they think they are incapable of controlling. If we then go and deal with the 'problem' ourselves this will be giving the child the message that any problem they come across they will end up having to rely on others to sort it out.
While i fully understand that this calm approach cannot be used in every situation e.g crossing the road, i do believe that if we want our children to grow up into independent adults then these situations would be a great opportunity for them to start to practice and learn how to be self-reliant human beings.
