Inspire Your Kids - Readers Digest Article

I keep a reading file of articles that I want to read again later or refer back to at another time. One such article is dated February, 2008 from Readers Digest, "Inspire Your Kids" by Cynthia Dermody. Here is a link to the article. It's about watching what you say to your children and better ways to say it. I sure am feeling like a bad mom now!

After reading this, I am starting to understand why my daughter sometimes has trouble talking to me. It's not that we don't talk, we do. I think she is afraid of me being too hard on her instead of just listening and being there for her. Part of that comes from my need as a mother to help her solve her problems. This has come up a few times recently with the middle school drama! I thought fifth grade was the worst, I was so wrong. I try to help her see how something she has done or said may have triggered a response she wasn't prepared for.

The most recent incident was last week. She was discussing another friend with one of her friends and said that the friend they were discussing was mean sometimes. Well the friend she was discussing this with told the other friend and boy did she prove the truth in what was said (hopefully you were able to follow that)! She blind-sided my daughter in the cafeteria, lots of yelling, in front of everyone of course, so my daughter had her feelings hurt and was embarrassed. The girl also threatened to beat her up. My daughter went to the principal and explained what had happened and wanted to make sure the principal knew that if this person hit her, she was going to defend herself.

This went on all week, my daughter sat by herself at lunch as the girl rallied all of the friends and turned them against her. It broke my heart to hear this so I tried to really break it down with her from the beginning. How what she said made the other girl feel and if her friend is "mean", then she reacted the way she knows how to react, by being mean. I discussed trust with her again and how you have to be careful what you tell people because you don't know what they will do with the information. I told her that you shouldn't talk about people, even if you think what you are saying is justified. Basically, after reading this article again, my daughter probably heard "you screwed up and it's your fault this happened", and "don't trust anyone".

My daughter went back to school the next day and tried to talk to the girl and apologize for what she said. Her apology was not accepted so now it's just a matter of waiting for things to blow over.

My point here is, how is it that we think we are teaching our children and helping them through a situation and end up making them feel like they can't do anything right? It's like you need a psychology course before you have children and have to take continuing education classes until they are 25 to keep up with the current trends. Following your instincts doesn't seem good enough anymore. Maybe I should start a parent's support group. We can meet once a week to discuss how difficult it is to raise our children right and how bad we are messing it up!

Ok, maybe I'm not doing that bad! I have a wonderful, caring daughter that is blossoming into an intuitive, street-savvy, smart teenager. She learns not only from her mistakes but the mistakes of others as well. She does still talk to me, at least for now. I think I am going to work on asking her more leading questions so she can get to the answer on her own instead of taking her down the road of "here's where you went wrong". After all, isn't the point of going through the drama and growing up to learn from your mistakes and hopefully come out a stronger person in the end?

I think it's time for mama bear to stop trying to rescue her cub and let her fight her way through it a little more. That's not to say I won't be here, I will. If she comes to things on her own she can be proud of herself for solving the problem and have more faith in her ability to do so in the future. Any thoughts on this topic? I would love to hear them, especially from parents who made it through the teenage years! Your experience can help the rest of us!

Any advice or opinions I give are simply advice from life experience and not that of a professional!