Where you see a disaster, your child sees a new ability or ability

Having children is an experience that although it is accompanied by many wonderful moments, it also presents us with new challenges and challenges that teach us to be parents. One of the parts that sometimes we find it difficult to understand as adults is how our children's brains work.

An example of this is the moment when our children do something that does not have much logic for us, such as some experiments or occurrences that they have. However, we must try to see things from their point of view and keep this in mind: they don't do it to bother us, because sometimes, where you see a disaster, your child sees a new ability or ability.

When your child grows up and begins to want to do everything by himself

It happens to all of us: eventually, the day comes when our children want to start doing things without our help. It is great news! It means that those little eyes have been attentive to what we have been doing, and your mind already wants to start having initiative and do things for itself.

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However, at the beginning we may not see it that way, because as I said at the beginning, our adult mentality often prevents us from understanding how your brain works. To do this, I share an example that recently happened to me with my daughter.

Lucia is five years old and although I have given her the option of choosing the clothes she will wear during the day, I have always helped her at some point in the process, either by taking her out of the drawers or putting on some clothes. Since a time ago, she decided to take the initiative and one day she started doing it all alone.

Naturally, being just a girl, The first few times the results were a bit disastrous: the clothes were untidy or out of the drawers and dressed in some clothes that, according to my adult mentality, did not combine.

I remember a day when he did everything without first consulting with me, and then appearing in front of me, proud and telling me: "Look mommy, I dressed myself and I'm ready!"In addition to wearing what looked more like a costume made with randomly chosen clothes, the clothes he chose not to wear were out of place.

For a second I thought: "No, what a mess!"But then I saw his smile and his emotion again, and I understood that" disaster "as I initially saw it, it was proof that she had decided to try to do things for herself and had succeeded.

After that event, I didn't give much importance to that kind of thing, after all, she was just learning to dress herself and all I needed to do was explain how to store and return the clothes you would not wear to the drawers.

However, a few days ago I read a reflection in Scary Mommy about a broken crayon, which made me realize that we have to change the way we see things in many of our children's actions, because although some may seem like a mischief, behind them lies something wonderful.

Where you see a disaster, your child sees a new ability or ability

Probably all parents agree on this: life with young children is a beautiful chaos in which there will always be something dirty or messy at home. From dirtying their clothes or furniture, to that abstract art that they reflect on floors and walls with crayons, the pranks of our children are the order of the day.

Some of them, make us a little crazy, because we do not understand why they do them and even we think they do it for disturbing. But nevertheless, we must pause for a moment and change our mentality to try to see things from the eyes of a child: Don't the walls and floors seem like a blank canvas ready to be decorated?

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To better explain this, I allow myself to enlist some examples of the "pranks" that a small child can do at home, and that hide much more than they seem:

  • Where do you see that it has dirty your clothes with food, there is the ability to eat alone.
  • Where do you see the drawers of messy clothes And out of place, there is your ability to choose and dress without help.
  • Where you see muddy toothpaste, is his initiative to wash them by himself.
  • Where do you see her wet or gel hair, is his ability to comb himself.
  • Where do you see a halved crayon, there is the discovery of the strength it has.
  • Where you see milk or spilled water on the floor, are your intentions to start serving it without support.
  • Where you see a mess in the kitchen, are your intentions to help and learn to cook.
  • Where you see a pack of empty wet wipes, there is his eagerness to help you clean the furniture.
  • Where you see a face or arm with pen strokes, he sees his ability to hold and draw with him.
  • Where you see the walls or floor with crayon scratches, there are his experiments to express his creativity.
  • Where do you see the toilet paper on the floor, your son celebrates that he went to the bathroom without help.
  • Where you see the messy clothes on the floor, are your intentions to help you separate it to wash it.

Sure there are a thousand more examples about those disastrous actions that our children do, but with this I want to show that sometimes there is much beyond a simple mischief, such as supporting homework or trying to do things without your help.

So we should allow them to do everything alone and say nothing?

The answer is more complex than a yes or no. Initially, the answer would definitely be "no," because it is not good to allow children to do and undo at their will. But what we can do is to be more relaxed and less closed about this type of thing and reconsider the level of demand we have with our children.

We must give them the freedom and space to start experimenting and trying to do things for themselves, if not, how will they learn to do them? Of course, the first few times will be a disaster and our first impulse will be to jump to do them for them or to correct them.

But we must contain these automatic behaviors and we must allow our children to be wrong. We have to give them that opportunity to try to do things and understand that they will not do them the first time.. And probably neither the second nor the third.

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The message of all this is as follows: children do not do things to bother us. In many situations, they are just trying to help, to be self-sufficient or to continue exploring a new ability or ability. And we have to be more relaxed, especially about our expectations and understand that they are barely knowing their abilities and putting them into practice.

Of course, although we must give them space, our job as parents is to continue to guide them and that is why, when any of the examples I have cited happen, we can recognize their effort, but we must also show them how to do things correctly, as well as explain to them that everything they do has consequences (such as that their clothes may be permanently stained or that shoes turned upside down can hurt their feet, for example).

But having clear beforehand that these kinds of things do not do them only by naughty or with the intention of making us angry, we can help them better in this experimental stage of their development, because where you can see a disaster, your child sees a new ability or ability.

Photos | iStock

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