Ask the “big” and the “small” questions!

When we see a mess next to the bread bin or discover an unidentified puddle in the lounge, isn’t it so that most often we will act immediately without stepping back to think about the situation for a minute? We will often react with an instruction or a scolding without even pondering what the appropriate reaction to the situation would be.

We can spare ourselves and our children many tears by asking two questions before running off to wage a war! I call these two questions the “big” and the “small” questions.

The “big” question is: “How should my child handle this situation when he is BIG?”

When we answer this question before we react, the chances are high that we will actually TEACH our children something through the situation instead of just punishing them. If I ask myself “Did I teach him everything he should know about making sandwiches all by himself now and when he is older?” I’ll immediately realise that I’ve never actually shown him how to use a cutting board. Then I will know how to instruct him to avoid making a mess. Another example will be if I ask myself: “How should my teenage daughter talk to me when she’s older?” I might realise that I actually wish to chat to her over a cup of tea. I can then plan to have regular tea dates with her so that I can train her about tea-time conversations.

The “small ” question is: “Is my child perhaps too SMALL for what I expect of him?”

There are resources that we can read to discover the indicators for every childhood phase so that we can know what to expect from our children during the different phases. We can also make better use of our common sense and realise that we might have communicated a very long, undetailed instruction; or we may have omitted critical details from a vague instruction, such as: “… your room must be perfect when I return in 10 minutes”. Your pre-schooler can’t focus on numerous tasks at the same time and your teenager may not always be able to swallow her tears (remember those hormones?)

Ever so often, please take a few steps back to gain a better perspective on a disciplinary situation.