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Mark Brandenburg has a Masters degree in counseling psychology and has been a counselor, business consultant, sports counselor, and a certified life and business coach. He has worked with individuals, teams, and businesses to improve their performance for over 20 years.
Prior to life and business coaching Mark was a world-ranked professional tennis player and has coached other world-ranked athletes. He has helped thousands of individuals to implement his coaching techniques.
Mark specializes in coaching men to balance their lives and to improve the important relationships in their lives. He is the author of “25 Secrets of Emotionally Intelligent Fathers,” and “Fix Your Wife in 30 Days or Less” (And Improve Yourself at the Same Time).
BOOKS BY MARK BRANDENBURG
Click here to buy
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Monthly Column... |
Accepting Your Children's Mistakes
by
, M.A., C.P.P.C., C.S.C.
One of the most difficult parts of being a father is to learn to accept your children’s mistakes. It’s certainly easy to be loving, supportive, and helpful when your children are mistake-free, but most fathers who are paying attention don’t find too many mistake-free periods of their children’s lives.
Let’s be clear about our kids and their mistakes. I don’t believe there are many kids who get up in the morning and rub their hands together and say, ”I wonder how I can screw up today and really bother my Dad!” Kids don’t enjoy or want to make mistakes, it’s just one of the ways that they learn about things in the world.
Kids generally do their best; it’s just that they are doing their best considering the resources that they have at the time. Sometimes they’re tired, sometimes they’re easily distracted, and sometimes they’re strong-willed, but they generally do the best that they can. It’s very easy for us to judge them according to a standard of what they’ve done before.
When our kids make mistakes we have choices to make. Fathers can either make choices that help to create kids that are defensive and who lie to them or they can make choices that help to create kids who can learn from their mistakes and improve upon them.
Kids who fear punishment or the loss of love in response to their mistakes learn to hide their mistakes. These children live in two different places; one place where they have the love and support of their father (parents), and another where they feel that if their mistakes were discovered they would be undeserving of that love.
It is hard for these kids to fully accept their parents love and support even when it is there. It is also difficult for these kids to set high standards for themselves because they tend to have a lot of fear about themselves failing.
These are some ideas for fathers who are committed to helping create kids
who can learn from their mistakes and who are not afraid of making a few:
• Absolutely accept the notion that your kids are doing their best and that they will learn faster about their mistakes if they are in an environment that accepts mistakes
• Understand that your difficulty with your kids mistakes is in fact a reflection of your own difficulty dealing with your own mistakes-be aware of this and deal with your own issues first
• Know the shaming messages that we can all give so easily to our kids; messages that can do a lot of damage to them and help them to feel unworthy. Here’s a few of them:
- How could you have done that?
- You don’t listen to me
- You can do better than that
- What’s the matter with you?
• Keep providing your kids with learning experiences but at the same time make arrangements so that they aren’t making too many mistakes (having expensive glassware around the house where children might break it is not their fault).
• Provide a great model for your children around how you react to making mistakes-do you get defensive or stretch the truth, or do you “own” the mistake and learn something from it?
We only have one chance to show our kids the patience and discipline necessary to allow them to make the mistakes that we’ve all made.
Your opportunity to improve just started now; let’s give our kids the room that they need and deserve.
Happy Fathering,
Mark Brandenburg M.A., C.P.P.C., C.S.C.
BOOKS BY MARK BRANDENBURG - Click here to buy
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25 Secrets of Emotionally Intelligent Fathers
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60 Tips for Fathers to Create Happy, Connected, and Responsible Kids
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"Fix Your Wife in 30 Days or Less" (And Improve Yourself at the Same Time)
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