Understanding Intentions!

Sometimes our children do things with the best of intentions, but unfortunately their judgment is incorrect and/or misguided. As parents we have the opportunity to gently guide our children and teach them with love the correct way to react to a situation.

I learned this lesson when I was 9 years old and it has truly helped me as I parent and teach children. Even as a young child, I believed in the importance of honesty. I truly believed in letting people know what I really thought, and I greatly disliked when people said one thing to a person’s face, but then talked about them behind their back. It’s not that I didn’t sometimes do this, but then I felt obligated to eventually tell the person.

As you can see, there are some definite flaws in my theory, and this somewhat backfired on me when my sharing what I had heard greatly hurt one of my best friends. She went home and told her mom that I said that because she was an only child, she struggled with sharing. Her mother called the school and my teacher made me sit in for recess. I remember feeling very scared and confused. I knew in my heart that I would never never say anything to hurt my dear friend. I had simply shared with her what everyone was saying behind her back in an effort to help her improve her behavior. My teacher’s reaction was that of fear in that she didn’t want me to hurt others, yet that was never my intention. If my teacher would have taught me about how to filter my thoughts and choose gentle words to hone my communication skills, this would have been a beneficial life-long lesson for me.

The lesson that I learned that day was to make sure that I do listen. I need to hear my children’s intentions before I make a judgment statement as to what I think that they are thinking. This has helped me run a calmer home and classroom.