Last night we had our book club, the last one in our series. We discussed, Blessing of a Skinned Knee, by Wendy Mogel.
This book is so chock full of wisdom and there was so much to talk about. We had some very animated discussions on the topic of chores, responsibility, respecting parents, over scheduling and food.
There are things that we missed though. That is what I love about a blog, I get to write that stuff down here. One of those topics was discipline, I loved Mogel’s suggestions on how to rebuke a child and gently correct their behavior.
According to Jewish wisdom, when we are rebuking someone we need to be calm. It needs to be done in private. Your motivations need to be pure, you must recognize that you are correcting your child for their benefit. Any attempts to humiliate or be vengeful should be avoided.
So according to Mogel, their are some phrases you can use to help you get into the proper frame of mind:
“I am sure you didn’t mean to…forget to wash the dishes.”
“You probably didn’t think this it through…you probably didn’t realize that speaking to your teacher in that way was disrespectful…”
“This is so not like you…you are usually responsible about your bicycle.”
There is so much value to these phrases. They help your child save face. It is hard to listen to criticism; this allows them to hear you and still believe that they are intrinsically good. It also helps us as parents. When we stop to say, “I am sure you didn’t mean to..” we actually start to believe it. Kids generally don’t misbehave because they are doing it on purpose to get us angry, or because they are bad, spoiled or irresponsible. They make mistakes or misbehave because they are kids and they often don’t know any better. In this light, our children’s transgression shrink to normal proportions. It calms us down and then we can then discipline effectively.
I would highly recommend reading this book. You can get the book here:
Blessing of a Skinned Knee, by Wendy Mogel.