Teachable Moments vs. Showdowns

Audio By Carbonatix

I was with one of my grandchildren recently, and they did something that all four of my own children have done. They told a lie. It wasn’t an issue of interpretation or anything like that; it was just a straight-up lie. They got caught in the lie, and I sat there and watched the whole thing happen. Afterwards, I talked with them and told them that this was not a new issue that we were running into as a family. I told them about how all of my kids had told lies before, and we talked about why honesty matters and what the consequences were. 

I didn’t want my grandchild to feel like they had made an unprecedented mistake or like they had done something unforgiveable, which is why I told them about how lying had showed up in our family before. But I also didn’t want them to think that just because other people had done this before, it wasn’t a problem at all, which is why we also spent some time talking about the consequences of lying and the importance of telling the truth. 

And I’m telling you about this because these types of moments play out in families all over the world. If you’re dealing with a child or grandchild who is lying, is defiant, is too aggressive at times, refuses to share, or refuses to listen to you, I want to remind you that you’re dealing with a normal child! And that is so important to remember in the moment, because you’re going to be tempted to fast-forward in your mind and to imagine all of the disasters that lie ahead for your child if they don’t learn to correct this behavior. Even if you’re not wrong in what you’re imagining, that is not a very helpful way to think about the behavior of a 6- or 8- or 10-year-old. 

Back when my own kids were young, one of my sons got caught cheating on a test in grade school. When Jane told me what happened, I was really mad at him. But between when I found out and when I got home from work, I remembered that I had cheated on a test when I was around his age. So, when I got home, we called up my mom and I had my son talk to Grandma about what had happened. I asked Grandma to tell him about how she had handled it when I got caught cheating, and I told him we were going to handle it the same way. So, we went and he apologized to his teacher. And that was the last time that he cheated on a test. 

The reason I’m sharing these stories is because I want you to see that I know that the initial impulse is to be mad that our kids or grandkids aren’t living up to the standards that we expect from them. But I also want you to see that when I took an approach other than just following my own natural impulse, it led to a conversation rather than a showdown. Letting out some of those big, negative emotions may feel like the right approach in the moment. But the better approach is to slow down and remember that raising kids is a process. And they’re growing all along the way, so we shouldn’t expect flawlessness. When we can make these situations into teachable moments rather than battleground moments, we’ll be winning more often at home.