J-Si’s Blog: Don’t teach these words to kids…
J-Si’s Blog: Don’t teach these words to kids…

I have not regretted many of the things I have taught my son… until I taught him these two words. I do know this, the way you treat your lil ones, does have something to do with how they interact with others, and it could have something to do with how they react in certain situations. I see parents yelling at their kids over the littlest things, that are truly unintentional… like spilling a cup of water, or dropping something and breaking it, dropping their ice cream cone, etc. Things that in the end are not a big deal.

jsi-blog-pic-052115You can easily tell them to be careful and not make them feel like it’s the end of the world, or make them feel worthless. That was my goal when telling my son these two words. It may have backfired. Now that Cason understands things, and has conversations, I try to teach him small life lessons. So when Cason dropped his yogurt on the floor, and everything exploded everywhere, he put his hands over his mouth and almost started crying, because he made a mess. I want him to know that mistakes will happen a lot, so I grabbed him, and I gave him a hug and said “it’s ok, buddy, don’t get upset over little things that can be fixed! It happens!” I could tell this helped him because he looked up at me, didn’t look scared anymore and said, “it happens?” so I said, “yup, sometimes we mess up on accident… it happens… ok?” He looked at me and said “ok, papa! I can clean it up.” So we grabbed some towels and cleaned it up. So now if he has little accidents, he doesn’t freak out, he just says, “it happens!” It’s cute.

Hold on, let me rephrase that: it was cute. It stopped being cute when I walked in and noticed that something was wrong with my guitar… my strings were cut… or they all miraculously just snapped for no reason. So I walked in and this took place.

Me: what happened to my guitar?

Kinsey: what do you mean?

Me: all my strings are busted…

Kinsey: what happened?

(Cason walks in holding some scissors… have no idea where he found it)

Me: Cason? What happened to my guitar strings?

Cason: I cut them, papa.

Me: what?! Why?

Cason: I dunno

Me: Cason that’s not ok! That’s bad

Cason: it’s ok, papa, I’m sorry… It happens.

Me: no… It doesn’t “happen”… YOU did it. You can’t do something voluntarily, and then say “it happens”. Accidents happen, cutting my strings is not an accident, and you can’t play with scissors.

Cason: yeah, I did it… it happens.

(he comes over and gives me a hug, and hands me the scissors, and walks over to his coloring books and starts coloring)