I Didn’t Do It
If you’re a parent, you’ve heard the phrase, “I didn’t do it” from your child. But the truth is – accidents happen. It’s essential that parents teach children honesty and integrity, and most of all, it’s okay to take responsibility for your actions. Certainly, it can be aggravating when your child doesn’t follow directions and has an accident, but how you handle the situation can impact whether or not your child repeats the same behavior.
Try these tips to encourage positive behavior:
- Set up house rules before an accident happens. Work together as a family to find solutions to common negative behaviors. When everyone works together to determine a solution, the solution is generally easier to achieve.
- Try to remain calm once a situation arises. Is the level of anger/agitation truly based on the event that occurred? Or are there other contributing factors such as work, financial worries, family matters or fatigue playing into your reaction? Should you be this upset? If not, you should give yourself some parental time to cool off and gain some perspective. Make sure your children are safe and remove yourself from the situation until you can think calmly and rationally.
- Model the behavior you want to see. If your child sees you taking responsibility for your mistakes and being honest – even when it is uncomfortable – he or she is more likely to do the same thing.
- Look at the big picture. Is this really important enough to get upset about?
- If you witnessed what happened, do not ask for the child to recount every detail of the event. State the facts as you know them, and provide consequences for your child’s behavior.
- Remember the family solutions previously agreed upon and do not begin to make up alternatives at the time of the incident. Be consistent, fair, respectful and reasonable.
- If you did not witness the accident/event, and more than one child is involved, discuss with everyone involved how you plan to handle the situation. For example: although only one person may have actually broken the lamp, everyone was running in the house and the family has rules against running in the house, so everyone will pay the same consequence because of their actions.
- Praise the child or children when they accept responsibility and are honest about their involvement. This is an excellent opportunity to build self-esteem.
Everyone makes mistakes. Helping your child learn from these mistakes and take responsibility for his or her actions will give him or her confidence to take on adult challenges with confidence when they arise.