Raising the Imperfect Child: Becoming the Fascinated Parent

By Richard Lange

We learn from mistakes. However, parents do not seem to apply this basic concept to their children. They expect their children to be perfect: to be the best in the class, the best on the team, and to win the contest. Even at home, they expect their children never to knock things over, slip on the floor, or forget lunch.

When a child fails to be perfect, parents see the behavior as "bad," never as a "mistake." A mother who finds a broken lamp in the living room never says, "It looks like you made a mistake here." No, they say, "I told you not to run in the house; now look what you did."

Changing being "bad" into a "mistake" shifts the perspective from assigning blame to helping the child learn. When a child is blamed, the message is, "There is something wrong with you." Parents reinforce this by adding descriptions such as, "You are so wild," "You never follow the rules," and "You don't listen." However, a statement like, "It was a mistake to run through the house, now the lamp is broken, what are we going to do about it?" is a different message: This is something we can fix. Educational psychology demonstrates this approach works; parents have to catch up.

Why is this so? Caroll Tapirs and Elliot Bronson, the authors of Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me), suggest a reason; "Most Americans know they are supposed to say we learn from our mistakes, but deep down, they don't believe it for a minute. They think that mistakes mean you are stupid."

Making a mistake, however, does not mean you are stupid; it just means you made an incorrect prediction. Let's say you are a chemist. You believe adding chemical A to chemical B will turn the mixture blue. If it does, you confirm your prediction, but if the solution turns green, you make a mistake.

Similarly, children are exploring the world. They are learning the rules for school and social situations. Teenagers are constantly learning, but now it's figuring out how to be an adult. For children and teens, the world is puzzling, and they sometimes, like the chemist, make wrong predictions. For example, they didn't expect their sister to scream when they took her toy. They didn't realize their friend would be angry when they "borrowed" the videogame. They didn't understand that coming in late to dinner would upset their grandmother. It is easy to see these "misbehaviors" as being "bad." I proposed that they are poor predictions, misjudgments: and mistakes.

Parents who radically change, and I do mean radically, their view from "misbehaviors" to a "mistake" can help their children do better in the world because it changes the child's self-image from "I'm incompetent" to "Oh, I just discovered something about the world." The child can then learn how to solve the problem.

Let me give two examples. Let's say you get a note from your son's teacher reporting that he was talking in class. Our initial response is to start correcting the behavior; "You know you shouldn't be talking in class! That is so rude of you. What's wrong with you? You know better!" However, if we remember that the child is still exploring the world and learning new skills, we can change this interaction to explore the child's mistakes. You could say, "It was a mistake to talk during a lesson; did you realize that?" Here the conversation could go two ways. The child could know it was a mistake but did not know what to do. "Yea, Mom, I knew it wrong, but Jason kept asking me questions." The parent could then work with the child to solve the problem, such as having Jason sit at a different seat or teaching the child to ignore Jason when he is talking during a lesson.

Now there could also be the possibility that your son did not know it was wrong and tried to blame it on the teacher. "The teacher is stupid. She doesn't know what she is talking about." The parent can then teach the child that his behavior is socially unacceptable. "Robert, when you talk when others are sp

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jul 31, 2023
• ISBN: 9798350913033

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Introduction

It was early fall, the kind of night you needed a jacket, when I took my two boys—Ed, eight years old, and Ricky, five—to play baseball in the park. Baseball was throwing the ball around while Eddy tried to hit it, usually unsuccessfully.

We lived in the city and drove about twenty minutes to get to the park. Since routine was necessary, everyone received a job before we left. Ed’s was to get the bat, Ricky’s was to get the ball, and mine was to grab the water. We did this every Wednesday at a leisurely pace. However, because it was the start of fall, I began to worry about it getting dark and chilly, so I hurried them along, hoping for plenty of time at the park.

Ed, got the bat? I called out. Ricky, the ball? Ed, your jacket? OK, Ricky, sweater or jacket? You can’t go out like that; it’s getting cool. So, finally, we started driving to the park. Halfway there, I hear Ed’s voice from the backseat. Oh, I forgot the bat.

I’m usually a calm person. I pride myself on my self-control. However, this time, for some unexplained reason (maybe it was all the rushing around), I got so angry that I couldn’t think straight. So I pulled the car over and parked, mainly to give myself a moment to calm down.

Once calm, I turned to the boys in the backseat, and I’ll never forget the fear on their faces because they rarely see me angry and do not know what to expect. I thought, well, this is their problem; let’s see how well they can solve it. So I said, OK, we have a choice; we can go back to the house and get the bat, but we will lose some time, or we can go ahead and play on the swings and the jungle gym in the park. You guys decide. After a few minutes of backseat negotiations, they agreed that baseball was more important; they wanted to return to get the bat.

I’ve told this story in parenting classes for over twenty years as an example of how to teach children how to solve their problems. Yet over the years, this story began to teach me another lesson. When I tell the story, I leave out an essential part about what I saw when I returned to the house. I immediately noticed the bat leaning beside the door when I walked in. Ed did have the bat; what must have happened was that he put down the bat to put on his jacket and then rushed out the door, leaving it behind. He didn’t avoid doing his job; he forgot to pick up the bat when he left.

I began thinking about how we, as adults, forget things. We put papers to take to work by the door, only to leave them; we arrive at the hardware store only to realize we left the measurements for our project on the kitchen table. Yet we expect children not to forget. We become upset when they forget their lunch money, homework, gym clothes, or a book they need.

This concept of expecting children to remember everything leads me to a broader question about children’s behaviors. Do we allow children to make mistakes? Children, like us, are imperfect, yet we seem to expect perfection from them. We want them to be the best in the class and on the team and do well consistently. We buy parenting books hoping to learn how to make our children listen to us and follow our directions without struggles. We want children to behave.

But that is not reality. What if one day your child suddenly did everything you asked? Robert will you put your things away? OK, Mom. Robert, will you help me with these bags? OK, here I come. Robert, will you help with the dishes? OK.

You might begin to wonder, What’s wrong with this boy? Parents think they want a robot child, but they don’t. A child who can question and disagree is a child who can think for themself. These children grow up to be better adults in the long run because they have the skills to ask questions and not be deceived by others. A parent should not hope for the perfect child.

In hindsight, why did I get so upset with Ed when all he did was forget something? Why did I see this as misbehavior, as if he did something wrong? Children are not misbehaving when they fail. Yet when a child calls home to report they forgot their lunch, we act as if